Well, Ami and CC, I have hit a brick wall with Suze's gift and I am admitting defeat.

I have bagged up the color-sorted puzzle pieces for the convenience of the next solver and put them in the small box they arrived in; the box will go on a shelf in our basement with all the other puzzles in my collection. I started working on the puzzle on April 30th and made absolutely no progress during the last week other than muttering every time I sat down to work on it.

Then I went to my computer and looked for ideas for fun scrappy blocks.  (Karen Griska on Etsy has creative ideas and sells downloadable instructions at the click of a computer button.) 

"Fandango" looks like slap-happy fun. Karen writes that this pattern once appeared in Quiltmaker magazine. And lookee what I found under my ironing table ... a large box plus a large bag, both full of one and two inch strips!

Wonder who put those there??

Now the issue will be how slowly can I stitch? You might recall that I gave up working on quilts because of painful shoulders; at my age my shoulders do not like doing the repetitive work required for shoving fabric under a sewing machine needle.  Can I learn to be a pokey-slow block maker?

Plus Lily Aurora has been moved to southern Kentucky so I no longer have access to a longarm machine. If I do manage to make a batch of blocks I will have to be content making tote bags or pillow tops.

But I can fiddle around for a bit with fabric and give Cecil Faye some play time again.

And there are always 500 piece jigsaw puzzles with pictures of vintage quilts or Coke machines, puzzles that will not cause mental breakdowns. 

I guess that puzzle is a real brain twister!!!

Sounds like a great idea to just play with fabric and make some small projects.

eh...so sorry the puzzle was a bust.

pokey slow...eventually you'll get something done. I like your idea of doing smaller items. Wouldn't do more than 15 minutes at a time.

I'm sorry, too.

I hated to admit defeat but the design of the puzzle was just too vague. If it had been a 500 piecer I might have been able to stick it out ...

Oh my!!  That is a crazy downright mean looking puzzle!