Back during the initial lockdown phase of the pandemic, jigsaw puzzles experienced a resurgence in popularity. I even spent a little money purchasing a couple puzzles, one for my dad as a birthday gift and one for myself because I have always had a soft spot for jigsaw puzzles. I wanted to buy more but at the time I practiced restraint realizing that I wanted to complete all the hobbies at the same time.

Eventually I broke out the puzzle I purchased for myself, a circular 500 piece puzzle from eeboo depicting influential women – and one man, Frederick Douglass, in the fight for female suffrage. I had just watched a Try Guys video in which the four of them raced Karen of karenpuzzles. Of course, she defeated them. I then thoroughly enjoyed putting together my own puzzle, often losing track of time while I worked.

The completed puzzle sat on my kitchen table for months. (Only yesterday did I finally break it up and put it back in the box.) Occasionally I had thoughts about getting more puzzles but the time consuming school year I have already described in detail pushed all thoughts of jigsaw puzzles out of my head.

As if the Google/YouTube algorithm could sense my schedule, my YouTube homepage put up one of karenpuzzles’ videos, one of her videos about the enormous 24,000 piece Life puzzles. Instantly, I fell down the rabbit hole which reignited my desire for puzzles.

I held off purchasing any puzzles for several days, even spending a small chunk of time searching before closing those tabs. As one might surmise from what I have already written so far and the fact that this post exists, I gave in to the urge and purchased 15 puzzles. Yes, you read that right, 15 puzzles.

Over the past weekend, I binged karenpuzzles videos to maintain my enthusiasm. (I have a tendency to get distracted.) The whole weekend I wanted to break out a puzzle of my own but they arrived yesterday, starting with a 1000 piece Ravensburger puzzle depicting several rows of doors. I chose that one with Mom in my mind since she has a thing for doors. The arrival of this puzzle prompted the break up of the first one I mentioned. (I need my table space to work.)

Although I will save the aforementioned Ravensberger to take the beach with us, I cannot wait to get started on one of the other ones I purchased. I ended up using the childhood rhyme “eenie, meenie, miney, mo” to decide on the one of Paris.

Even though I never thought I would write about jigsaw puzzles, I unexpectedly have enough for at least two posts. I want to keep these posts at a manageable length and. I have not gotten into what I like so much about puzzles and what went into the puzzles I chose. Stay tuned for a part two.