The Hancock County Public Library is hosting a puzzle swap this week, giving local puzzle enthusiasts the chance to swap out their puzzles for new ones. Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023.
HANCOCK COUNTY — Rarely a day goes by that Jeanine Campbell doesn’t work on a puzzle spread out on the dining room table in her Wilkinson home.
The 83-year-old has enjoyed working puzzles since she was a little girl.
Her friend and neighbor, Brenda Wolski, also works on puzzles just about every day.
“I find it relaxing,” said Wolski, executive director of a local nonprofit called LINK, Leaders in Navigating Knowledge.
The Wilkinson women are among a number of Hancock County puzzle enthusiasts who plan to swap out puzzles in a community-wide puzzle exchange hosted this week by the Hancock County Public Library.
Library patrons can drop off used puzzles in good condition — ie: no missing pieces — at both library branches in Greenfield and New Palestine, now through Jan. 15 during operating hours.
Patrons are issued a ticket for each puzzle donated, which can be used to redeem one puzzle each Jan. 23-29.
The library’s communication specialist, Ryan Fennell, said puzzles may be picked up at any time during regular library hours that week on a first-come, first-served basis.
Libby Manship, a longtime Hancock County Public Library board member, can’t wait to swap out some of the puzzles she and her family have done in recent years.
She and her husband, Mike, and their three sons have already done four puzzles since New Year’s Day.
“For us, they are a nice break from the stress to unwind. It’s relaxing and fun,” said Manship, who lives just outside Charlottesville.
“We are also a very competitive family and highly involved in lots of sports and competitive activities. Puzzles let us step away from the competition. We make our puzzle fun all about collaboration and working together as a family,” she said.
That doesn’t mean that competition is completely absent from family puzzle time, as family members scramble to find the next piece.
“We all have a different approach on how we like to organize the pieces, and there are some of us who just like to work on the edges,” said Manship, who has one cardinal rule when it comes to placing the final piece.
“Anyone who helped on any given puzzle gets to help put the last piece in place. It’s all hands in,” she said.
Once a puzzle is complete, the family typically leaves it sit out for a couple of days to enjoy their completed work before raking the pieces back into the box and starting a new one.
To keep pieces from getting scattered, the Manships work puzzles on a special mat made for rolling up puzzles when not in use, keeping the pieces intact.
They family of five often work puzzles while watching football games.
“It’s good family time and something we can all do together — whether it’s for 15 minutes or for hours,” said Manship, mother to Eli, 15, Luke, 13, and T.J., 9.
While they don’t gravitate to any certain puzzle theme, their most recent puzzle depicted a roaring dinosaur — a Christmas gift 9-year-old T.J. bought for the family.
Wolski isn’t that particular when it comes to the pictures depicted in the puzzles she puts together, either, although she’s partial to the White Mountain brand.
Rather than working a puzzle with a single image like a landscape scene, she prefers puzzles with collages of multiple images, especially National Parks or 1970s and ’80s pop culture themes.
A puzzle with multiple images gives you more opportunities to successfully complete an image on any given day, without having to complete the whole puzzle, said Wolski, who got hooked on puzzles when the isolation from the onset of COVID first set in nearly three years ago.
“I really enjoyed it so just kind of stuck with it because it’s such a good stress reliever, and it keeps your mind sharp,” said Wolski, who keeps her puzzles set up on a card table near her living room so she can watch TV.
She works on each puzzle a little bit each day, sometimes taking a week or two to finish.
“Sometimes it’s very addicting. You always want to stick around to try to find one more piece,” said the puzzle enthusiast, who prefers puzzles with 1,000 to 1,500 pieces.
Her neighbor, Campbell, prefers puzzles with 1,000 pieces but enjoys an extra challenge. She’s partial to the Wasgij brand of puzzles (jigsaw spelled backwards), many of which don’t come with a picture portraying what the finished puzzle looks like.
“It’s so fun. I’ve got eight or 10 of them,” said Campbell, who has enjoyed working puzzles nearly all her life.
“I just find it calming and so much fun,” she said.
Campbell doesn’t frame or display any of her completed puzzles, but takes them apart and puts them back into a box to potentially put together again some day. On Wednesday, she perused her wide collection, pondering which puzzles to exchange at the library’s puzzle swap event this week.
