Day 25: The Puzzles of my Father Part One

My dad loved jigsaw puzzles. He always did, but once he took early retirement from Hughes Aircraft at the beginning of the 90s, he could devote all his free time to his moth and butterfly collection, his newfound interest in television, and solving jigsaw puzzles. He had one going most of the time, either on a card table in the den (my brother's old room) or on a huge board atop the bumper pool table (and yes, we have a bumper pool table; it has been covered up since the late 70s; hence no photo of it yet, but it's all in order, so any offers considered!)

He always completed the borders first and in later years would keep all the border pieces together in a baggie within the box. Sometimes he would appreciate my help but if I placed too many pieces he tended to get mildly annoyed. (Though sometimes it was addicting!)

He gave away most of the earlier puzzles but there were still a lot left, and this is only the first installment.

Although this boat scene has a lot of detail and not an overabundance of blue sky, it would not have been one of his favorite puzzles. He and I liked the same type the best, with lots of little pictures within the big picture. He must have been hard up for more interesting puzzles in May of 1999, February 2004 and March 2007.

Whoops! I made a big mistake. I was going to edit what I wrote about the previous photo, but decided just to amend my assumptions here. this puzzle was indeed a favorite, as it was also worked in February 2001, 9 April 2002, and 3 May 2009, and here we also are given the full dates in the other years: 24 February 2004, 19 March 2007. Most importantly, all pieces are here!

 

This was more his style; there are certainly a lot of little pictures within a collage of stamps! However, it only had two rounds, in February 2005 and October 2006. He preferred puzzles with at least 1000 pieces, you see.

Like this one (displayed on my mom's Eames chair.) I might have even given it to him for Christmas in 2003; I do remember working on it one time.

This must have been in January 2004 (completed on the 8th!), as I wasn't here on 14 April 2002, 10 October 2006 or 28 September 2008.

Not all the dates make it to the outside labels, but only the most recent date is really relevant when choosing a puzzle from the shelf.

Here's another 500 piecer. My dad liked doing the borders but if the content was too "samey" he might drop it in favor of a more interesting puzzle.

This puzzle was a gift from a fellow butterfly collector, probably at Christmas 2004.

And although he certainly would have appreciated the gift (you can see the Christmas gift tag), my father, being a Lepidopterist, was a bit annoyed by inauthentic butterfly specimens. His eyes would have been more frazzled than dazzled by the colors and patterns shown here. He also amended the puzzle size, as you can see here, from 20" x 16" to 20" x 25".  (That's quite a difference!) [Oops! I realised later that 20 x 25 was not referring to inches, but to how many pieces made up the height and width. Silly me!]