Jigsaw 11, Series 2

A Masterpiece jigsaw from Philmar, a reproduction of Canaletto's Grand Canal. The same Philmar as that of Jigsaw 2 of the present series (see 16th November last) and the same Oxfam shop, so quite possibly the same first owner. But, oddly, flying under different colours, 'Masterpiece' rather than 'Elite'.

There was a more important difference in that this jigsaw was an 850 piecer and I almost logged it out of series. It may be a coincidence but it took a lot longer to solve this puzzle than usual, the usual being 500 piecers. A lot longer than the ratio of 850 to 500 would suggest. But still 99p; no extra charge for the extra pieces.

One complication of the extra size was that I needed to deploy the parental card table (less green felt) to hold the completing jigsaw, the usual table being far too small to hold both the pieces and the jigsaw. BH got a bit grumpy about the additional clutter but she did, luckily, manage to contain it and I was allowed the extra clutter until completion.

Another complication was the large amount of sky, a lot more both relatively and absolutely than is usual. A sky with little in the way of cloud to break it up, only rather subtle variations of colour. But I get ahead of myself.

I started with the edge, as usual, then the skyline. Then the dome and the building below it (Saint Piccolo), then the building on the extreme right. Then worked down into the buildings generally, slowly spreading into the canal, and so to the completion of the bottom half of the image, so leaving the large amount of sky, which I have to say was rather daunting.

So daunting that progress for the first week or so was very slow, and only possible at all because of the generous variation in piece shape, making up in some part for the lack of image or colour to bite on. Regular prong-hole-prong-hole pieces very much in the minority. In the course of all this I was able to observe the same interaction between conscious and unconscious processing as last time around (see 11th March). Also, while on that occasion the brain slowly tuned in to the subtle variations of prong shape, here the brain slowly tuned into the subtle variations of sky colour, only visible in the right sorts of light, not necessarily day light. Do chunks of brain get rewired in such a short time? Or is it rather that one is activating chunks which are ready and waiting in some dusty corner?

However that may be, there was a sudden and large acceleration at about the one third point. The second two thirds took a couple of days where the first third had taken a week, possibly two weeks.

Is there any significance in that I worked pretty steadily from left to right? With the only perturbation being that at the very end I was left with a vertical strip, two or three pieces wide and maybe ten pieces deep, a few inches to the left of the right hand edge of the image.

Although the card was quite thin, the joining of the pieces was very positive. One was always confident of a fit, once obtained. There was just one mistake on the way, this arising from over confidence, thinking that I could fit a piece on the basis of one side, rather than the usual two. I paid for the over confidence with a fruitless ten minutes searching for a piece in the heap, before finally realising that the piece wanted had been the subject of a mistake.

Next stop, National Gallery to inspect the original. Not for the first time, I don't suppose, but possibly the first time that I will have looked at it properly for a while.