My latest puzzle is a five-hundred-piece titled Fireside by Jim Mansel. To spend time putting a puzzle together, I must have a connection to it. My connection to this puzzle is my love for old log cabins. This puzzle certainly fits that bill. I have put several other puzzles together that highlighted an old cabin sitting on a lake.
Fireside 500pc assembled and photographed by Elmer Prather
Puzzle pictures tell a story. The story I read as I put this puzzle together was “WELCOME TO MY HUMBLE CABIN.” The scene captured in this puzzle was an invitation for guests to sit by the brightly burning warm fire and enjoy each other’s company.
As I put this puzzle together, I watched the warm evening sky and the sun reflecting on the water come together. I imagined how it would feel if I were sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs placed near the glowing fire in the fire pit. This puzzle was special because it reminded me of a cabin our hunting and fishing club once rented to meet and plan hunting/fishing trips and to socialize. The cabin was built in the early 1900s for an executive with the Coca Cola Company. It overlooked a lake like the one pictured in the puzzle. It was built on forty acres of land abutting the Chattahoochee River just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The old cabin has been torn down and the land is now a Nature preserve.
The cabin pictured in this puzzle has a massive rock chimney constructed of river rocks. There is a stack of firewood on the front porch to keep the fire burning. The cabin in this puzzle was probably constructed in the early 1900s since it has asphalt shingles on the roof rather than the wooden shingles found on older cabins. The cabin owner must be an angular since he has a boat tethered to the small dock by the lake.
The puzzle made a statement that the owners enjoyed spending time with their friends and neighbors. “Come on over.”
My latest Cobble Hill puzzle is a one-thousand-piece puzzle titled Lumbering Along by Mike Bennett. This is the third Mike Bennett puzzle I have put together. The other two were Santa Fe 3751 and Southern Pacific.
Lumbering Along assembled & photographed by Elmer Prather
I must have a connection with a puzzle before I spend the time putting it together. This puzzle displays a steam engine pulling a load of timber from the mountains in the background. The location of this train must be Colorado because the mountains are the front range of the Rocky Mountains with the stands of Aspen trees displaying their bright yellow Fall leaves shown in the puzzle.
This puzzle reminded me of the time I coordinated a trip to Colorado with five of my close friends and family. Our main objective was to take a steam engine powered railroad trip from Durango to Silverton. We started in Denver, Colorado and on our way to Durango we stopped at several old mining towns: Georgetown, Breckenridge, and Fair Play, Colorado. These old western towns built near the gold and silver mines supplied food and merchandise to the miners.
When we arrived in Durango I arranged for a steam engine powered train trip from Durango, Colorado to Silverton. This railroad track was constructed in the 1800s to carry gold and silver from the mines in Silverton to Durango and on to the U S mint in Denver. This track today ferries tourists from Durango to Silverton and back.
Since it was mid-September when we made this trip, the weather was still comfortable so we carried clothes that we thought would keep us warm. We spent the first night in Durango and the next morning we discovered that it had snowed during the night and was still snowing. There was about three inches of snow on the ground. We put on the warmest clothes we had but were still shivering when we left the Chevrolet Suburban we had rented for the trip and walked to the train for boarding. I had arranged for tickets on the open-air rail car not knowing it would be snowing during our trip. It snowed on us all the way to Silverton.
We toured Silverton and had lunch in one of the quaint cafes on Main Street. That afternoon it stopped snowing, and we boarded the train for our return trip to Durango.
When we left Durango, we drove to Mesa Verde National Park where the Pueblo Native Americans had built massive dwellings in the cliffs. When we left there, we headed for Leadville, Colorado then on to Ouray, Colorado and then drove back to Denver. We spent the night in Denver and caught a plane back to our respective homes around Atlanta, Georgia, having toured much of the state of Colorado.
When I put a puzzle together, I try to understand how and why the image was presented as it was. What was the artist thinking? What statement was the artist trying to make. A picture tells a story and I want to know what that story is trying to tell me as I put the puzzle together. I did some research on the steam powered locomotive displayed in this puzzle. The locomotive depicted in this puzzle had a #2 posted on the front of the engine and on the door of the engine cab. I found that the serial number for the steam locomotive pictured in the puzzle was #1240. It was one of the 625 steam powered locomotives built by Heisler Locomotive between 1892 and 1943. The steam powered locomotive depicted in this puzzle has been retired and is located on a farm in Freeport, Illinois. It has lost its beautiful blue color but still looks great in its black patina.
Lumbering Along 1000pc by artist Mike Bennett
We hope you enjoyed Mr. Prather's story. He has a lot of history and life experience that we always find a pleasure to read about. Thank you!
P.S. We got a fun fact message from the artist, Mike Bennett. He appreciated Mr. Prather's review, as do we. And we love how Mr. Prather investigates and researches to try and figure out what the puzzle image may be based off of. It turns out that Mr. Bennett had some real life visuals! We'll share the links below if you're interested in learning more about this specific puzzle he created. This is the link to the story of the train and this is the link to his sketches of the train. While Mr. Prather's uncovering of locomotive #2 may not be for this one - it exists out there and we had fun going on his journey!
This puzzle is also a part of our new bundle offering for trains. You can view it here for Canada or here for the USA. And to stay up to date on our news and deals, please subscribe below.
Whether you call it Fall or Autumn, it's time to bundle up for cooler weather. Yes, we're talking about sweater weather, but we're also talking about our favourite thing - puzzles!
To help our puzzlers get the most bang for their buck, we have bundled up puzzles in themes to help you save money so you can collect more of your favourite pastime. Every bundle that we offer gives you one free puzzle. You can expect to see different bundle offerings with new holidays or celebrations. Right now, we have a few fall favourites available in different piece counts, so we highly recommend taking advantage of those while they last. We were going to take down the Cottage Collection since summer ended, but it remains quite popular still - so if you're interested in those, grab them before we swap them out.
Fall 500s (visit our website, we have 1000pc bundle too)
And seeing as how we're talking about weather, let's talk Elements - the Elements Collection by Shelley Davies. Water, Earth, Fire Air - sounds like we're talking about Avatar The Last Airbender tv show, but we're talking about the four 1000 piece puzzles with a seamless vertical alignment that create one bold collage. There are a lot of fun objects to discover once the puzzles are completed. If you haven't participated in an Elements event, we highly recommend adding these to your collection!
We've also recently added one of our popular artists - Diane Dempsey! If you're a planner and want to think ahead to the Christmas and winter season, then we highly recommend snagging this deal right now. It includes three winter puzzles, as well as her Mid-Century Modern Dream Home architectural theme, which has a seasonal vibe. The other three are: Vintage Main Street, Mid-Mod Seasons Greetings (which was a Zulily exclusive), and Christmas Campers - all 1000 pieces. We'll be adding other Christmas bundles as we get closer, so we can't promise this deal will stay online.
If you know a train lover, then we highly recommend our latest giftable bundle. It's a buy four get one more deal, so you'll be setting up that train fan in your life to go full steam ahead with jigsaw puzzles! It includes puzzles from amazing artists like Mark Keathley, Mike Bennett, and Ken Zylla.
If there are bundles that you think we should offer, then feel free to reach out and post on our new Facebook group - Quirky Together! It's a place where we celebrate the Cobble Hill puzzles and the quirky pieces that we all love.
Ship to Canada
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