Miscellaneous Monday

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

Lewis Carroll

Well, because I finished my crochet rug last week I was rummaging around for something else to do. What I found was another thing that always takes me back to my childhood......a jigsaw puzzle. I bought this last year with the idea that I would make it up and glue it to a canvas to hang on the wall. This idea comes from when we visited relatives in Germany in 1980. They quite often had finished jigsaw puzzles decorating their homes. It is a great way to have some of the greatest artwork in the world in your home without the expense and with being able to look at it and say "I had a part in creating that piece", even if it was just to put it back together. This artwork is created by Australian artist Gordon Hanley and is called "An Appetite for Books".

Children today don't know what they are missing with all of their electronic gadgetry. There is nothing like starting with puzzle pieces and watching a picture appear before your eyes. I remember sitting on the bedroom floor with my sister on rainy days, spending hours putting puzzles together. I had four wooden style puzzles that had different dogs on them - I remember some Corgis and an Alsatian. She had puzzles with smaller pieces, I vaguely remember something fanciful, characters from nursery rhymes.

I think this is why I love cross stitch so much, a picture is created with thread one stitch at a time in the same way that a jigsaw puzzle is put together. 

Except with cross stitch you start from the centre working outwards and with a jigsaw I start with the outside edge and work inwards. How do you do a jigsaw puzzle?

I find a few minutes every morning now to put some pieces in and it is slowly coming together. It is wonderful at this time of the day. My children are still asleep, the sun is just coming up, the birds are twittering and I can hear the sounds of Bendigo coming to life.

This reminded me of a movie starring my favourite Aussie actor, William McInnes, called "Unfinished Sky". If you haven't seen it yet, take the time. It is a bit of a puzzle and the title comes from the fact that the main character is working on a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of sky in it. If you have ever done one like this you know how frustrating it can be to distinguish one piece of sky from the other.

That also got me thinking about recently buying the latest edition of Empire magazine which lists the "500 greatest movies of all time". I thought I would compile a list of my favourite movies, one from each year, or two if I really can't decide, and put them on my profile. I have started and it is interesting to see how many Alfred Hitchcock movies have cropped up. I really do love a puzzle!

Talk again soon

Jeanette