It's Puzzling to Me

When the weather is nasty outside, what do you like to do?  We like to light a fire in the fireplace and sit in the den and relax.  Or we cook something or enjoy conversations.  We play a hypothetical game and say, "If money was no object, where would you like to travel?"  "What is your dream vehicle?" "If you could live anywhere, where would you live?"  That always sparks all kinds of discussion.

But we found something else to do recently, that we really enjoy.  Something I hadn't done in a long, long time.  Some of the ladies in our church like to put together puzzles.  When they are finished with the puzzles, they sell them for cheap.  Tricia bought a few boxes and the other day, Tricia, Russ, and I pulled out one of them.  It was a 1,000 piece puzzle entitled, "The Quilting Bee."  We got out a card table for all the extra pieces...

Then we laid the box top on the sofa so that we could see what we were shooting for when we were done.  Then we gathered around the coffee table and began assembling it.  We slowly assembled all the edges and then started working on certain sections.  We assembled part of it on the card table and then moved it over.

We were so focused, we hardly talked for 2 hours.  It started coming together.  Then Russ had to go home.  It was getting late.  Tricia covered the puzzle up and wouldn't let me work on it until we all got together again.  (But I saw her secretly trying to put some pieces together!)  

Finally, on the next weekend, Russ came back over to the house and we unveiled the puzzle and got back on it.  It was intense.  The quilt, the barn, the house finally were completed, but all the surrounding grass, roads, and fields were more challenging.  The pieces soon all came together and we were happy.

There's a lot going on at the quilting bee other than quilting.  There's horses in the barn.  There's a man gutting a hog.  And then there's a man with a big cast iron pot over a fire.  He's stirring it with a big wooden paddle.  I think he's making cracklins!  We took it all apart and will likely put it together again or pass it along to someone who's up for the challenge.  On the next 'bad weather day,' we'll pull out another puzzle and get after it.