2025-10-19

You’d think that after my last puzzle I would take a break from painted images with lots of trees. But no! Instead I’m diving in with more of the same, except this time the trees are mainly pink and there’s no cabin. Actually, the images are quite different, but the trees still gave me a whole lot of trouble. I started with the boat and pier as they seemed the easiest colours to pick out, but as much as they seem distinct on the finished images, the pieces themselves aren’t as easy to identify. Still, I managed to put most of the left side of the image together before attaching it to the border and then completing the frame. The water was the next easiest step, including the three little ducks and all the lily pads, and from there I only had the green trees or the pink tree to choose from. I went with the green corner first, leaving everything with pink in it for the very end.

I knew the pink leaves would be a struggle, but I really thought I’d do a bit better this time around. I’ve been taking videos of my speed puzzling attempts and in reviewing this one it looks like it took me a whole 30 minutes just for the last part of the puzzle, maybe 100 pieces at most. I swear they all looked exactly the same. Even shape sorting didn’t really help as I kept getting distracted by the pattern of the leaves and convincing myself I could figure it out by matching the textures. Eventually I was able to put the whole thing together, but I know that with more practice I should be able to cut my time significantly. Painted images in general are definitely a challenge for me, but that just means I get to keep practicing them! As with the previous speed challenge, I think I’ll be practicing this one a few times without keeping track of my speed, just to get more familiar with the image and specifically to get more comfortable with the pink leaves.

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Anatolian

Name: Willow Spring Beauty

Artist: Sung Kim

Time to completion: 98 minutes