Part 1 sorting: DONE!

It went a lot quicker than I thought, but I was dedicated ;)
The last 3 days I didn't do much besides sorting and now it's done!

The box is empty!
And we found a new purpose for them: A bed for Alexis!

The actual puzzling part will have to wait until after our vacation at the end of August.

And ... some more sorting.

Yesterday I continued sorting, but it din't go as fast as Saturday.
I had a little less time too, since it was Pim's Birthday. Although most of the day I was sitting on the ground again.

Today I started using a box to fish out some pieces and sort those. The pieces are laying to deep in the big box to easy grab them.

So at this moment I'm down to 2 small boxes to sort. And maybe I will continue to sort some more tonight since Pim is having a meeting.

Big sorting day!

Sorting sorting sorting, my back and but hurt!
I've been sitting on the ground all day sorting pieces.
This morning I had a little helper.

 But after about 15 minutes of looking for pink pieces she was done for the day.
I continued and got about half way!
Further than I thought I would.
You can see that the box is getting emptier!

Starting the sorting!

Of course I had to start today!
So we went to Jumbo, got some big containers (my shoeboxes just won't be big enough!).
I already had a plan in mind. First I will make all the pink, followed by orange, then green, blue, yellow, red, the black border lines touching the white and finally the rest of the white.

So my system to sort was done. Any piece with pink wil go in the first box. A piece with e.g. blue, black,  red wil go in the blue box because I will be making the blue before the red. Per color I made a difference between pieces completely the color and pieces that have black and other colours.

Got it!

Last week I finally did it!

I ordered the biggest puzzle in the world: "Keith Haring: Double Retrospect"
It has 32.000 pieces, or 32.256 to be exact.
So today I went to get it at our camping-site where it was delivered.

This was the only position in witch I was make a Selfie with the box and have the number of pieces on there and the whole picture of the puzzle! That's how big the box is. And it's heavy to. Actually so heave it is delivered with a trolley.

I have made big puzzles before:

The first one was 12.000 pieces "Creation of Adam":

It came in 3 bags, so 3 panels of 4000 pieces.
I didn't mix the bags because I was afraid it would get to difficult. I did have a dedicated space at the time (wel it dubbed as a guest room, but stil I had the space to put it in one piece.
Finishing it took a long time. Mainly because in the mean time we moved from the Netherlands to Switzerland and we didn't bring the puzzle immediately. We had it stored for over 2 years. I think all in all it took about 5 years to make, including the stored time.
we mounted the puzzle and it is now hanging in our hallway.

Than came one of 18.000 pieces "Skylines of the World":

It came in 4 bags, so 4 panels of 4.500 pieces.
I didn't mix the bags, mostly because now I didn't have the space to put the whole puzzle in one piece.
Now this puzzle I made 1,3 times. When I was making my second panel, I noticed a mistake in the picture:

It has a band of 1cm that they printed twice.
So I called Ravenburger, sent them the picture and they just sent me a new puzzle. But... I had to restart from the beginning. Everybody told me just continue what does it matter. But I'm pretty sure that if I would have made that puzzle with a fault in it, it would have bugged me for the rest of my life!
Now, that puzzle is done. But ... I have no space to hang it. It will go to Pim's office where they have a wall that will fit this puzzle.  A picture of the finished puzzle will need to wait until it hangs there.

And now I have: "Keith Haring: Double Retrospect"

It came in 8 bags. 8 panels of 4000 pieces. But this time, although I haven't got the space to put it in one piece and although it only has 8 different colours and no patterns in that colour to speak of. I decided to MIX the bags! 

Yes you heard it right, I will be making one puzzle of 32.256 pieces!

If I want to claim that I made the biggest puzzle in the world, I want to do it the right way and not in 8 puzzles of 4000 pieces.

I'm guessing it will take me 10 years to make. Most of the time I will puzzle fanatically for a couple of weeks and than I don't touch it for a couple of months. With the 18.000 piece puzzle I had a break of about a year in between 2 panels. So a goal is 10 years. I hope that in that time, we will have moved to a place where there is a wall of more than 6m long and 2m high where I can hang this puzzle.