Nayu's Craft Time #281 Mermaids and gaming

Sloths have the right attitude to life-take it slowly, it's not a race.

This is a catch up post on what I've been up to recently. The answer is not a lot, just lots of rest as I've had something that my body's been battling against. My family currently have a cold so it's probably a cold virus, but my body tends to react weirdly, make me feel not right for ages. I've played a lot of games, especially Pokemon: finished Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and now on Pokemon Sun (the normal one, not Ultra Sun). Due to the new game start I've been reading up on Pokemon Sun too.

Currently trying to level up the adorable Buneary! So cute and fluffy!

Disney's Stitch has great taste!

I've had my cat sleep by me while I game, I've also read a bit and even done some crochet - nothing significant enough to show you yet. I've watched a lot of BBC dramas and dvds, my favourite fluffy teen series featuring mermaids in Australia, H2O Just Add Water - the girls transform whenever they touch water, making more than just taking a bath or having a swim problematic.  I bet you didn't know that if you dye a hair in mermaid form then your natural hair colour will return when you change back to a human! 

From the left are the original mermaids Rikki, Emma (not her natural hair colour) and Cleo. 

As soon as I've shaken off this whatever my body is making a fuss about, I will be continuing my Tsum Tsum jigsaw puzzle which is cute, so will be able to show you some progress pictures. I'm having to reschedule my week's activities around how I feel, but that's entirely normal for me, if a little frustrating. I hope you are staying well during germ season - drink lots of hot lemon and honey! I like cold lemon with water, which I guess is fine too. 

Everyone needs mermaids and unicorns in their life!

Nayu's Jigsaw Puzzling #2

What's in my jigsaw case this week?

November saw the start of a new post series all about my experiences doing jigsaw puzzles. You can catch up with the first post here. I'll try and put the previous jigsaw post's link in each post, and it can be found by searching on the tag Nayu's Jigsaw Puzzling.

Today is all about a speedy (maybe?) puzzle I did the other day, and my current big one. The other day I took 1 hour and 20 minutes from start to finish to complete this super cute owl jigsaw:

It made me smile while I had a headache (which made me feel bad, I wasn't able to read, do anything with a screen). Small puzzles are easy-ish to do lying down. It's the first puzzle that I've done from Scmidt, and I was rather impressed. 

 It may 'only' be a 200 piece puzzle, but it's not a quick finish when my mind is slow. I like the bright colours: owls have gained in popularity over the last few years and there are lots of cute designs for all kinds of products. 

One really cool puzzle that I couldn't show you until know because a family member had similar items for their birthday is this Tsum Tsum 1000 piece jigsaw!

I know it says impossible, and it looks hard, but it's not. I've completed the edge and now sorting the pieces into categories: scary tsum tsums, Disney tsum tsums, Pixar tsum tsums, unknown pieces where the image isn't clear or I have no idea where it's from.

This was when I was sorting the edge pieces: the piles are for the top/bottom/left/right sides. Please excuse the image quality - it was taken on my tablet.

Once I've done that I'm going ot sub categorize into male/female, Disney collections (Mickey & friends, Winnie the Pooh & friends etc), and possibly by colour which should make it much easier to put together, with all the tsum tsums in pre-sorted (by me) piles. I can't imagine doing the puzzle any other way, including just picking up unsorted pieces and spending ages trying to figure out where they would go - that would take forever!

I'd love to hear if you're doing a puzzle at the moment - do you like ones with lots of different colours? Or ones which are harder because a lot of puzzle pieces are the same colour? 

A good & true saying

Nayu's Jigsaw Puzzling #1

My snazzy jigsaw case outside...

This is going to be an open-ended series of posts, but used the parts so it could be identified (& I'll try to remember to include previous posts in future posts (that does make sense if you read it carefully!). 

While I was ill last week I didn't feel up for gaming a lot of the time, so dived into my jigsaw puzzles. I finally finished the super hard one I'd borrowed from family. 

If you enlarge this picture you may be able to see the different types of puzzle pieces which made it difficult.

This one was evil because as well as using the standard type of jigsaw pieces 

Like these

it used unusual shaped ones. 

Like these but with more radical shapes - some had no holes!

Because of that I found it took a lot longer because my brain had to process the different shapes, and I won't be doing another in a hurry, at least not until I've improved with 'normal' shaped jigsaws. I was rather frustrated by the end, and was determined to finish the monstrosity. I'm happy now back to normal pieces, which if you follow me on Twitter you may have seen me post updates as I made progress. In case you missed it here's the progress of my current 500 piece Country Companions puzzle: 

Super cute! I love the little ladybirds helping the hedgehogs and mice out.

I've loved Country Companions ever since I was little, there's something utterly charming about the hedgehogs and mice. Sadly years ago I threw out all the cross stitch pictures I'd done of them, but one day I'll make some more! (Tip: Keep an eye in sales for cross stitch kits which generally are expensive outside of sales...my favourite online store Sew & Sew (no it's not a promoted post: I genuinely predominantly use them for my embroidery needs) 

Current progress on 14th November 2017 - I'm over half way!

500 pieces and under jigsaw puzzles are easier for me to do in bed, the 1000 piece was impossible to do at my roughest. Just because there are fewer peices doesn't always mean that the puzzle will be easier - it took me ages to sort out the flower sections in my current puzzle. I got there, and managed most of the hedgehog pieces too! I'd love to hear what type of jigsaw puzzles you've tried!