Cogitation du jour

[aernethril]

I have a wee fidget that is swilling around my ever decreasing little grey cells.

The background - I purchased a large, 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle from a charity shop in another town a while back - marked as complete - only £1.

Very lovely jigsaw it is too, fairly challenging in the shapes of the pieces and similarities in many areas of the picture.  Eventually, after a few weeks I set myself the task of tackling it which took another few days.

So, you can probably guess what happened next - or perhaps did not happen.  I could not complete it as there was one piece missing.

I searched  - everywhere I could think of but that piece was definitely not to be found.

So, at that point I took the view that it was only £1 and as it was only a small background piece with hardly any identifying features or contributory aspect to the puzzle as a whole, apart from filling a hole, it was not worth pursuing.

I felt overall I had enjoyed the puzzle very much.

But now - I wanted to pass it on as it is in otherwise very good state and an unusual puzzle all round.

So, thinking that someone else might still like to tackle the puzzle, especially if I put a little sticky where the missing piece came from, I offered it up to other local charity shops.

Nil takers - and quite sniffy about it too!

So it seems that no-one wants this puzzle, I don't think it would sell and the postage would be a big turn off if the missing piece was not.

I don't want to mislead anyone and lie about it being complete and pass it off to another charity shop as they may suffer an irate customer through my lack of integrity.

I don't want to throw it away either.

So - what to do?  Does one just ditch these poor things which would grieve me to do, even to compost it.

Is there any other hope for this fine jigsaw?

Here endeth Act 1

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

I tend to just take things into charity shops in bags ... and leave them to sort though and discard anything they don't think is "worthy" enough. 😉  (I have to say, I often see charity shop vans up at my local amenity tip, so I think they chuck a fair amount.)

Choose a down-at-heel-ish looking one, and they may take your puzzle.  I found one that would take video tapes (most won't) and I was so please, I gave them a huge amount of other very saleable stuff. 🙂

Or maybe try a jumble sale.

[cee-dee]

Make a piece to fit.

Pick the correctthickness of card or laminate some, glaze the surface before cutting and then paint to match. Use non-shrinking varnish to finish.

[aernethril]

ooooer CD - now that had definitely not knocked on the door of the leetle grey cells.

That might work.

[aernethril]

Caution, I know charity shops do that and it's so sad because most stuff could be recycled or reused in some way and not shoved into landfill.

Years ago I witnessed a charity shop van unloading loads of books into the skip - box loads - and they went in too far for me to clamber in and try to rescue some of them - and yes - I have been naughty and done that before with a perfectly good terracotta pot for the garden in the subtleness of me youth.

So, I'm rather going to try anything rather than encourage that habit of throwing things out ad nauseam.

It also doesn't help that all our charity shops around here are very clued into marketing, only take the 'good stuff' and really do turn their noses up at stuff which would still fetch a few bob. 

Right - I shall now have to make that darn jigsaw up again, to see how to make the missing piece!

[blackburn_stevie]

You could send it to me via 2nd class post and I'll pay the postage. Folk on here will tell you that I'm honest enough when it comes to paying my dues.

Cheers

Stevie

[aernethril]

oooh without even seeing the piccy?

I'll happily stick it in the post to you Mr Blunder if you can make good use of it.

I'll try and find a pic on the web.

[aernethril]

Wow - I found one that sold on eBay just three weeks ago - number 140958368796.

It's not a brilliant picture but gives a good idea - each inner section has quite a lot of detail which shows up even better when the jigsaw is made.

The missing bit is on the sky, at the bottom right of the Cancer the crab sign.

It would fit in for second class small parcel post and I'm happy to send it to a good home for free.

[aernethril]

Have pimmed you.

:^O