Slow start with dark pink

Yesterday I took out the rest of the pink.
Those are all of the pieces that have any bit of dark pink.

So I had already sorted them by color combinations. But that left me with a LOT of pink-black pieces.
So there was some more sorting to do.
The kind that I will have to do over and over. I sorted them by shape. (remember, I mentioned in an earlier post the 8 different shapes I always sort in)

Than I started to lay them out.
First I did the "special" shapes.
When I came to the 2 "normal" shapes I had a little problem, there were a LOT of them.
I made the decision to lay the ones on the board with the straightest pink-black line. I figured they would make the boarder of some images and they would be easier to assemble.
I put them down in a way that would be easy for me to check if the pink-black line would connect to the piece that I already have.  So they are laid down by image on the piece, instead of my "normal" curvy holes and curvy hooks facing the same side together. If I do this here, the "straight" line will be facing every direction. Anyway ... Here is the result:

Than I tried to fit some pieces together ....


You see the couple of rows I have on the picture below? That probably took from 9:00 this morning until 15:00 this afternoon (with some small breaks in between).

NOT a great result!

But then.... I found this:

                                  

It's the left border of the middle Image, Image 21.

Now this is progress. 

So I continued but ....

a little later I found this: 

What's the problem with those 3 pieces? Wel the 2 on the left are identical And they both fit the right one:

But that's not all, it get's worse!

turns out there are 4 identical pieces! The shapes are exactly the same, the color is slightly different and the black-white line on the lower pieces is in a slightly different position.

And then it get's better!!

Because once you find one neighbour you know that there are 3 exactly the same shape of pieces to find. And if my sorting is any good, they should be in the neighbourhood!

You can see that when I stopped the image wasn't identical anymore. Maybe next time I will find the pieces that mach the left side!

So what is the end result of the whole day puzzling? 

This:

Compared to a "normal" coloured puzzle of around 4000 pieces not a great result, but it's a start.

I hope next time (not tomorrow, because I have other things to do) it will go a little quicker, but I don't have high hopes. I think that after a couple of more hours puzzling straight borders I will have to resort my "normal" shaped pink-black pieces in order to speed up the process. 

Overview

I probably should have made this post a little earlier, but better late than never!

This is a closer look on the pictures in the puzzle.

The images I already worked on are all on the right.
As said in my earlier post I decided to number them.
For now I also name them, but I think I will forget what I used to call the image and then invent another name. So I numbered them like this:

The reason I have them numbered this way is because the image that comes with the puzzle is folded this way. 

So on the front I see number 1- 8, then 9-16, then 17-24 and on the back 25-32.

Having some fun with numbers:

Yesterday my dad had a nice questing. 

How big is one image? 

Let me start with saying that the whole puzzle is 544 x 192 cm. (I can not believe I never mentioned this before, like in my first post!)

This would mean that 1 image is 68 x 48 cm. But that's not what he wanted to know because he wants to have an idea of the size of the pictures I make. 

Well, I measured the width of image 26 (in between outside of black lines), that is 58, 5 cm. 

Now the hight I can't measure yet because I don't have a whole black line. But I'm guessing it's something around 40 cm

So one image is about 58 x 40 cm, not including the white boarder in between images. 

If we woud make one puzzle without all the white that would make a total puzzle of: 464  x 160 cm .

Since the whole puzzle is 544 x 192 cm. That means there is 80 x 30 cm of white! Just plain white! Oh, and a border :)

Another fun number: according to amazon the pieces weigh 17 kg. I actually forgot to weigh the puzzle, would have been fun. somewhere else I read 19 kg. maybe that is with the box. In any case the puzzle is delivered with a trolley!

Light pink DONE!

First milestone.

All he light pink pieces that I had sorted out are put down.

Remember that I was missing a complete line of solid pink pieces on Image 26 (backwards bending guy)? Wel, turns out they were just laying there, waiting to be put in the right spot.

I also found the hands of Image 30 (diving guy).

 AND! I still had a part of Image 28, dolfin-man, laying around!

So... if you take a closer look at that first picture, you will notice ...  RIGHT!

I'm missing pieces!

6 solid light pink pieces to be exact! I haven't tried to find them yet. I think that while sorting I tossed a hand full of pieces in the wrong container. Could be any of the other 7 boxes. And there is a small chance that they are still in the dark pink pieces. I will continue with those shortly so IF they are there I will find them quickly if not ... eventually they will show up.

First day of school and First real progress

Yesterday school started again!
So after a morning of necessary cleaning and shopping I had some time to puzzle.
Not that I don't puzzle when Alexis is home, but I get less distracted when she isn't home :)
It took me a couple of hours, but this is how far I got with the backwards bending guy.

I also identified pieces from some other images.







Like these waves

and this is a piece of a guy who looks like he is taking a dive.








So after a good day yesterday I decided to continue today. I didn't clean and didn't shop, but I puzzled about the whole day!  (I also cooked and did some laundry)
This is how far I got today!

Let me explain what the different pieces are that
I'm working on.
Here is an image of 1/4 of the complete puzzle.

I'm numbering the images:

25                     26 (that's the backwards bending                                        guy I was talking about)
27                     28

29                     30 (guy taking a dive)

31 (the waves)  32










The pink of the backwards bending guy (Image 26) is almost done, I still have a line of solid pink open and I do have solid pink pieces but I don't seem to be able to fill it. Something might be wrong, or I just didn't check well enough.

The waves are almost done too. I'm talking about the waves from Image 31.
But it turns out the pieces were not just from the waves but also from the ground of Image 25.

And then there is Image 30 with the guy taking a dive
I'm just missing his hands.

As you can see on this image I also took the light pink-black-blue, light pink-black-green and light pink-black-white.

So I have a tip to myself when I'm done with all the pink, including dark pink, and I start with the next color (that wil be orange) I need to sort them by color AND light vs. dark orange immediately.

Finally some puzzling!

Finally, a day with more putting pieces together than sorting.

But ... I still did some sorting! I decided I would like to have the completely light pink pieces on hand to complete more of one of the frames that is taking form. So I sorted the completely pink pieces in dark vs light.
 I haven't laid them out on cardboard yet, but this evening they will be laid out.

I also took the light pink-black-orange pieces off the board with (now only) dark pink-black-orange.

I found out today that the light pink pieces are probably all on the right hand side of the puzzle. With only one frame where there are pink-black-orange pieces. That's the one I'm concentrating on now. And here is how far I got until now:

On the right of the picture you see the small image of what I'm (trying to) putting together. It's the orange human shape bent backwards.

Even more sorting!

It's never going to end! ... The sorting in this puzzle...
Luckily being able to sort means less pieces to go through to find the right one.

So after putting together the 5 pieces yesterday and already coming to the conclusion that I will not be able to connect a lot of the pink - black - orange pieces, I figured I needed the pink - black pieces laid out.

That's a lot of pieces, luckily there are dark and light pink - black pieces!

So here came the sorting in dark vs light pink - black.
That is still a considerable amount of pieces, so when I laid them out I sorted them in my usual subsets by form.
Giving my the following different piece

The top row are what I call "normal" pieces. They are divided in a higher and a longer version.
The eight others are what I call "specials" the bottom 3 rows have a narrow and a wide version of the same "special".

When they were laid out I had this:

 The cardboard on the top had the pink - black - orange. The one on the right had the specials and the one on the left the normal light pink - black pieces.

After all that sorting I had a little time left to put some pieces together! Yeay!

First pieces connected!

After visitors and 3 weeks vacation at the camping site in Germany today I thought it was time to figure out if I could start making this puzzle.

So I took the first box with pieces.
That's the one containing all the pieces that have some degree of pink on them. They are divided in 2 subsections:

1. plain pink 
2. pink - black and pink - black - color

Every piece that has 2 real colours (I mean no black/white) have black on them too, since all coloured shapes have a black outline.

When I saw all those pieces with black I thought "This is never going to work, I need to sort them even further".
So I decided to sort the pink - black - color pieces by color again.
Now I have  8 smaller boxes with pieces that are:

1. completely pink (I already sorted those the first time)
2. pink - black
3. pink - black - white
4. pink - black - orange
5. pink - black - green
6. pink - black - yellow
7. pink - black - blue
8. pink - black - red

Here is how it looks like: 

Then I took the box with pink - black - orange and had a quick look. There is a small variation in orange color. Some of the pieces are lighter than others, so I took some out and after a couple of minutes I had this: 

Another couple of minutes later I had to clean up and this was my end result of the first day trying to put pieces together:

5 pieces down, 32.251 to go!  (kind of ;)

The problem is going to be that the pieces left and right of those 3 pieces that I put together will not have orange on them, but only pink and black and that is a bigger pile of pieces to go through. That is why I think this puzzle will take a long time to make. I don't have the space to put out all the pink pieces at once. 

For now I'm happy that I made something ...