It’s been pretty quiet lately. I’ve not been fishing or camping since Christmas. The plan was to do something on New Year’s Eve but most of the time was spent putting together jigsaw puzzles and covering shifts at work.
Today we’re looking at a nasty snowstorm by later in the afternoon. Up to 7 or 8 inches are predicted. Shortly after that, the temperature is going to plummet to -20 degrees. With the next couple days off from work, it’s a great time to hibernate and work on hobbies.
The latest fun activity is assembling jigsaw puzzles featuring pictures drawn by Charles Wysocki. His depictions of felines are adorable and show each cat resting after getting into mischief. The drawings are so detailed that many pieces are readily identifiable; it makes assembly much easier and all the more captivating… at the expense of the housework not getting done.
I used to have Hobby Lobby dry mount the glued jigsaw puzzle at a cost of about $15. Unfortunately, the puzzles did not always bond. What works best for me and is MUCH cheaper is to buy a simple piece of foam board from Walmart. I prefer black. Then I draw spider webs of Elmer’s glue all over the back of the puzzle as well as on the foam board. To get the puzzle to lie flat, try using soup cans or other weights on the front surface off the jigsaw puzzle. A couple of hours and … voila! For 1/5 the price, you’ve just mounted your artifact as well is not much better than the store! Simply use a razor blade to score the edge, bend, and trim the extra foam board so it’s flush.
The picture on the left is a jigsaw puzzle of a state penitentiary just down the street from where I live. They add some character to the walls.
Assembling jigsaw puzzles is not just fun, they’ve helped me with a couple of issues. The biggest is the diabetic eyes. A month ago the eyes were focusing slowly and slipping in and out of focus. Since working on hobbies requiring detail (crochet as well as jigsaw puzzles), the problem vanished. It seems to also have helped with some peripheral neuropathy in the fingers. If that’s not enough, keeping busy also helps with feeling depressed at this time of the year… when there’s not much to do but listen to the forecast for more and more snow.
With a little luck, the weather will improve later in the week after the temperatures recover. I’m hoping to drive up north a do a little winter fishing… If not, well there are more puzzles on the way from Ebay and plenty of hot apple cider packets are in the cupboard. Hibernation is not a bad thing right now!
Take care and thanks for stopping by eastern Iowa!
Bradford, Serena, and Jesse James
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