As it happened (from my Journal archives)

November 27, 2009

Friday 1:33 pm - Today I finished the prep work for the print for the next puzzle, #832, Tiles 11, the annual Geometric Pattern Puzzle for the 100 Puzzles Project, the 96th of the 100 puzzles in the project. The print is now mounted. I'll have a picture of the image after I make an animation showing how the clever pattern works. I will work on the animation this weekend, and will start cutting the puzzle tomorrow after I have the figurals designed.

Friday 7:25 pm - The Tiles 11 pattern is geometric tiling pattern based on a pattern sequence I discovered in 1987. This little animation with some added color shows the early sequence with some intervening steps left out for simplicity's sake. December's puzzle is based on this pattern.

November 28, 2009

Saturday 8:28 am - A small spot of some kind of dark gummy stuff got onto the mount despite my usual precautions. Trying to get it off made things much worse, I've declared the otherwise perfect mount a failure. There is going to a small get together at Mixed Media this evening for the closing of the recent show; I'll prepare a new board then and re-print and re-mount Sunday morning. Cutting has been pushed back, of course. I now plan to cut the puzzle on Tuesday and Wednesday (December 1 and 2) and start the auction on Thursday December 3rd as a seven day auction. So this weekend will be free.

November 30, 2009

Monday 10:20 pm -c I still need to print and mount the image for #832, Tiles 11.

Monday 4:45 pm - I prepared a new board today for #832, Tiles 11. Will print and mount late this evening.

December 1, 2009

Tuesday 12:18 pm - This morning I printed and mounted the image for #832, Tiles 11. I made sure my work areas were super clean so I do not have a repeat of the failed first mount attempt. Assuming all goes well, I'll start puzzle cutting tomorrow. I've since learned the identity of the runner-up bidder, all is well.

Tuesday 10:27 pm - The mount for #832, Tiles 11 looks perfect. Cutting will start tomorrow.

December 2, 2009

Wednesday 5:35 pm - Cutting of #832, Tiles 11 is underway. It's nice to cut a basic Long Round puzzle after the very intricate Creative Art with Five Tricky Eggs! Cutting is going well, I did the edges, initial cutting, the figurals and about 100 pieces. The figurals are the Fractagon which is present in all of my full sized Geometric Pattern Puzzles and no other puzzle, plus The Observer, making an appearance after a considerable absence. I've upped the estimated piece count from 500 to 525 pieces. I expect to make good progress tomorrow, but I doubt I'll finish the puzzle. I'll have the puzzle done by Friday afternoon at which time I'll launch the auction.

My main camera died today. I can still takes pictures but the view screen is black so I can't see what I want to shoot, can't focus, etc. I managed to get one picture of Tile 11's current status which is presentable. The colors are a bit washed in the picture:

December 3, 2009

Thursday 10:49 pm - In a major puzzle cutting marathon today I completed #832, Tiles 11. Late yesterday I "fixed" my camera by smacking on the back of it, the digital picture display came back. Alas, when I was at my shop today, the camera failed again and I was not able to get it working. The pictures I took were not good enough for this journal. I did take a picture later with another camera with flash, shown here - the colors are still not right. I'll have official pictures here tomorrow along with the puzzle piece count.

Like most of my other Geometric Pattern Puzzles, this one will be very difficult to assemble. The edges are 100% interlocking, to help things out. I will launch the auction tomorrow afternoon.

December 4, 2009

Friday 4:33 pm - With a weekend Argentine Tango dance workshop that starts in less than three hours, I've run out of time in trying to get the auction launched today. I'm delaying the launch until Monday afternoon. I did buy a new camera today, still need to unpack it.

December 6, 2009

Sunday 5:38 pm - A major rainstorm is predicted to hit here tomorrow with high winds and heavy rains, the strongest storm in several years. We've had just 1/8" of rain in the past five months! Will be interesting to track the storm's progress across the United States this week.

December 7, 2009

Monday 5:21 pm - The auction and puzzle shipment have been delayed one more day until tomorrow for various reasons including the weather. The final piece count for Puzzle 832 - Tiles 11 is 531. I'm individually wrapping each piece of Creative Art with Five Tricky Eggs, I got about half done today. I'll complete this tomorrow morning and ship it; the auction will start in the afternoon.

December 8, 2009

Tuesday 5:43 pm - Auction launched. Will update the rest of this website later.

December 14, 2009

Monday 10:42 pm - I've been taking a break from Custom Puzzle Craft and Mixed Media. I'm just about caught up on "dance notes", this is still my focus for the short term.

The Auction ends tomorrow. Interest in the puzzle, based on a dearth of emails, lack of eBay inquiries, and fewer eBay "watchers", has been much lighter than for recent puzzles in the 100 Puzzles Project. However, based on the pattern of recent auctions, I expect some bids to come in near the close, as the current price is still quite affordable for a wider audience.

In the next several days I'm going to go "hunting" for a good poster for the January puzzle, paying visits to local museum shops. I'll be looking for a rather large print as I want the January puzzle to have a very high piece count. I'm currently thinking around 1200 pieces, but may go for 1500! The January puzzle will be the last all Swirl Curl cut puzzle in the project! I also expect to populate this puzzle with a lot of figurals, at least 20.

December 15, 2009

Tuesday 10:06 pm - The auction is over. Unlike the recent "final countdown" puzzles of the project, this auction was quite normal. Of the nine previous Geometric Pattern Puzzles in the 100 Puzzles Project four had bids more expensive on a price per piece basis and five less expensive.

December 17, 2009

Thursday 5:52 pm - Puzzle #832 shipped.

From the auction description:

This is the 96th Custom Puzzle Craft wooden jigsaw puzzle to be offered in my ongoing 100 Puzzles Project of almost-monthly auctions.

The 100 Puzzles Project now completes its 10th year! I held auctions in all 12 of the 12 months of 2009. With just 4 puzzles to go within the project, the project should end by mid 2010; some of the final puzzles will take longer than normal to complete. My goal is by April, but things could slide a month or two.

As it is December, I continue the tradition of offering one of my Geometric Pattern Puzzles within the project - the 10th and last one to be introduced. This pattern is a "tiling" pattern and this is the first time I've included a tiling pattern within the Project.. This pattern was ""grown" by a pattern generating program I wrote quite a few years ago. I did some "manual" work on the computer with my own software to come up with the final image, specially the coloring and transforming the line work to a higher resolution. The pattern contains a neat duality of vertical and horizontal "bricks" and aqua and dark green lattice shapes. The edges reveal the way the pattern propagated. I think the image is a cool work of art all by itself. I have included an animation (scroll down to see it) which gives some insight into the way the pattern grew. At the most basic level, the Tiles 11 pattern consists of two simple linear elements. I will document the elements on the webpage to be created for this puzzle sometime in the future. I haven't mentioned this before here on eBay, every puzzle within the 100 Puzzles Project, going back to #1, has its own webpage within the Custom Puzzle Craft website! The Gallery Log within the Gallery section has the links.

Like other puzzles in my Geometric Pattern Puzzles series, this puzzle is a difficult puzzle to assemble. Like last year's puzzle, the edges are 100% interlocking.

This puzzle was cut in my Long Round cutting style with 531 pieces, including two figurals: a Fractagon (unique to my Geometric Pattern Puzzles), and The Observer who felt he should "honor" (ahem) the last Geometric Pattern Puzzle within the 100 Puzzles Project. For this puzzle I used a 5-ply Apply-ply (maple on the exteriors and three ply of birch in the interior).