The Great piece rose was designed to be a hard puzzle to put togehter. Areas of similar color appear in different places, and the fun is eventually figuring out how the sections go together. The wavy border is design to frustrate the efforts to assemble the edges first and to work inwards.

As it happened (from my Journal archives)

November 28, 2001

11:25 pm - Started at 7:30am - this morning printed the twelve prints for the Team Building puzzles and then mounted the twelve. My one man assembly line mounting methodology worked out during the infamous 100 circular tray puzzles episode came in very handy as things went smoothly, but it was still a lot of work. Dropped the twelve boards off for laminating around noon, will pick up tomorrow before noon.

I then worked out the wavy border for "The Great Peace Rose"(#164) - better methodology and thus much more precise than the one in the failed Fantasy Faire. I finally started cutting around 2:30pm. By 10pm I was about 70% done and had to stop - tired. I meant to cut this puzzle in larger Long Round pieces than normal, but they ended up small to start, so I kept them small for consistency - at the cost of throwing my estimated time to complete the puzzle out the window (need to practice larger long round pieces sometime in the future). I decided no Creative Pieces would be mixed in, needed to focus cranking out the Long Round pieces. This puzzle will end up being my highest "no figurals" piece count puzzle. I must have cut at least 400 pieces. Had a couple blade / handling problems early on, resulting a couple small pock marks (guess I'll have to mention this in the auction, sigh), but overall the puzzle looks to be another excellent Long Round Dreadnought.

November 29, 2001

10:53 pm - "The Great Peace Rose"(#164) is done, and the twelve team building puzzles (#165-176) are done. I must get rest after today, what a long day.