Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

I started Christmas morning off listening to the Moscow Choir singing the Kiev Chrimas Liturgy, sipping some spicy citrus chai tea, and opening the gifts Christy sent me home with. Wow does someone know me well. I’ve got Hazlenut chocolates (a fave) and cute little kitty figures.

Then I did a bit of work staining my basement stair treds.

I also did a little more cleaning up downstairs, before getting distracted with the idea of doing a puzzle. I didn’t want one that would take weeks or months (Martin & I have some big puzzles.), so I chose this little 1000 piece kitty puzzle that I got way back from my grandma. I figured I’d whip out the edges pretty quick, then could cover it up and finish it tomorrow. Things didn’t quite go as planned…

I knew the kitties would be interested, but I underestimated their amount of interest. Kyo was pretty good about hanging out off to the side, but not Abby…

Abby, in particular, really wanted to be a part of this. Constantly. All day. She expressed this mainly by attempting to nest in the puzzle pieces.

Fred stayed out of it until it got to be about 3:30 and he started to think about dinner. Then he joined in the fun. He wasn’t content to watch though. He needed to swat at, steal, and attempt to bite & pick up the pieces. He was particularly fond of the ones that I was trying to move or pick up.

I spent a bit of time chatting with my parents and my brother’s family. It was great to talk with them, but it also managed to make me feel more lonely. I did check in with Martin earlier in the afternoon. He was gaming online with his friends. Probably the same thing he would have been doing if he were here. So, why does it feel so different…

Anyhow, I spend the rest of the day on the puzzle. I forgot how hard this one was! The pieces are irregularly shaped, and don’t fit in a typical grid-like puzzle pattern. Notice below how with the cat’s eyes the pieces line up so that they make more of a Y or T shape. And there along the cat’s back there are 3 pieces that all come together with a smooth line. How many pieces come together inside there? Then notice that gap where the butterfly is. The left and right side connect by touching, but will still slip apart until the other pieces are found.

Since some pieces just sit on top of others, without interlocking, that means they may have a flat edge without being an actual edge piece! That made getting the border done really hard. In fact I didn’t get all the border completed until I was almost done with the whole puzzle!

As you can see though, I did get it finished. Took about 6-7 hours overall.

Hope you all had a good Christmas too!