The Garlands women were excited because one of the members brought in a new jig-saw puzzle to challenge them. It was a gorgeous butterfly particularly difficult to do because of its many muted shades of brown and gold with touches of white and red. The puzzle had 700 pieces, a daunting challenge for the ladies. Some puzzles are even harder with 1,000 pieces and those without pictures of the finished puzzle on the box-cover are the hardest.

A few days later, I walked to the Resource Center to look at all the completed puzzles. They were beautiful. The butterfly is my favorite, but the row of period homes on a quiet street with American flags flying is a close second. Possibly more difficult to assemble was the windmill on the lake because of the expanse of green vegetation.

"How long does it take you to finsih a new puzzle?" I asked.

"It varies by size, difficulty and how much time members work on them."

"And, how do you put them together?"

"It isn't easy," Joyce Carlson continued saying as she studied a new puzzle, "but we have a system."

"Interesting," I said. "What kind of system? It seems to me that you just pick up pieces and search around forever to find a matching spot, right?" Delores Lobraico added, "In a way we do that--search and pick routine--but mostly that happens at the very end of finishing the puzzle. At the beginning, we have a system like Joyce said," Ruth Hanson told Rita, "Our plan is first to do the complete edge encircling the puzzle, then obvious objects in the puzzle are selected: white houses, church towers or distinct flowers, and we group the pieces for thse scenes together by color for assembly. This technique makes it a little easier."

"Sounds simple," I said. "But what makes puzzles hard to do?"

"Scenes of white fluffy clouds or fields of green grasses cause the most problems because it is hard to distinguish on puzzle piece from the other. Searching and picking is needed for this," someone heard Pricilla Marsh say. Patricia Jonelis recently joined the group concentrating on starting the puzzles by completing the outside edge. Our women enjoy putting together each challenging puzzle.

Go to the Resource Center to see the beautiful finished puzzles on display and have fun picking and searching the loose pieces to help builde the puzzle in progress. You could have your own favorite put together by donating one--just give it to one of the women involved or leave it in the Resource Center.