Well, Chatty loves the tradition established years ago by her cousins - a jigsaw puzzle set up on a card table within sight of the Christmas tree...and willing participants who would walk over, gaze for a bit, then put in a piece or two...

    So, she decided to do a jigsaw this year. It wasn't a Chrismas themed puzzle - Chatty doesn't have one of those - but it was a fun one. Oh, and Chatty keeps her puzzles to 550 pieces - the 1000 piece puzzles just make her crazy! 

    She set up her "area"...got lighting, dumped out the puzzle - and then challenged her cousins to a jigsaw race.

    Her cousins are far away, but this brought us closer together. We were racing for...no prize...no fame...just because!

    The "rules" included help, of course. Chatty was amazingly lucky with that part. She asked her neighbors over, and they are KILLER jigsaw puzzle people!

    They arrived at 4:30 on Boxing Day (that's December 26th for all you non-anglophiles).

    Here's the puzzle:



    It looks square in the picture, doesn't it? And fairly straight-forward.

    HA!

    It was neither square, nor straight-forward. It was, in fact, rectangular - with fully one third of the right side of the puzzle NOT depicted in the picture on the box. Chatty has issues with these particular puzzle-purveyors...she's just sayin'...

    Enter Chatty's volunteer kitty, Dos. He was very happy to see his parents, because Dos loves his parents - he just can't stand their "new" dog  (because the dog is WAY bigger than Dos is, and loves to "play" with Dos. Senor Dos is having none of that - so he prefers to hang out at Chatty's house, where the dogs are smaller than he is). So, thrilled to see Mommy and Daddy, he immediately jumped up on the table and tried to help:



    As you can see, "help" is a relative term...

    Happily, Dos (being a cat and all) soon got bored with all that helping, and jumped down to pursue other interests (i.e. climbing up the branches of our Christmas tree...and torturing Toot and Cleo, both of whom apparently love being tortured).

    So, we got down to business, and set to work with a will. Here, we have the edges put together:



    It was at about this point that we realized 1/3rd of the puzzle is not pictured...

    But, we perservered, and soon - in record time, in fact - we had the puzzle completed, and the last piece went in (this last piece, by the way, having been knocked off the table by Dos when he sashayed off the table - and which drove us CRAZY because it was such a unique piece - we couldn't believe it just WASN'T there! It was there, of course - but it was under the table, and when Steeler Girl found it, she got the honor of placing it...the final piece...


 
    Tap tap tap!


    So, here is the puzzle, in all it's glory (and bad lighting):



    Now, Chatty grants you that it is only 550 pieces...but - remember that she started out by saying that we began working on it at 4:30 pm? Well, we FINISHED it at 7:45 pm. Three hours and fifteen minutes, folks!

    A personal best for Chatty!

    Her cousins are impressed!

    But now, Chatty has the jigsaw fever! She has already boxed the completed puzzle up and spilled out another one on the table. THIS one is ROUND - so, no possible cheating with the picture on the box on the part of the manufacturers. Let's hear it for FINITE box pictures!

    Happy between Christmas and New Year's to all!