Published: Sunday, December 19, 2010
Longtime friends piece together a tradition
25 years of friendship and 52 jigsaw puzzles reassembled in Arlington
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Sarah Weiser / The Herald
Sonya Shipley (left), of Chimacum, and Suzie Nelson, of Arlington, have been doing puzzles together since college.
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Sarah Weiser / The Herald
Suzie Nelson (left) and Sonya Shipley have been completing jigsaw puzzles together since college, and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their puzzle-making together, they reassembled all of the puzzles they had ever worked on — 52 in all.
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Nelson and Shipley work on their newest puzzle, called “A Merry Christmas,” at Nelson’s Arlington home on Thursday.
One night, a California college student stopped by her friend's apartment. It was Christmastime. That friend happened to be working on a jigsaw puzzle.
“I stopped by to drop something off, and just couldn't leave,” Sonya
Shipley said Thursday.
Together they finished the puzzle, a picture of four angels. “They're the stained-glass angels at Mission Dolores in San Francisco,” said Suzie Nelson, Shipley's friend.
That was 25 years ago, in 1985. Both were students at California State University, Sacramento, known as “Sac State.”
By their count, it was also 52 puzzles ago — or more precisely, 31,639 pieces ago. Some years they did more than one. To mark their unique anniversary, they reassembled all their puzzles Wednesday.
I drove to Nelson's rural Arlington home Thursday to get a look at a puzzling tradition. I had to enter through the garage. The front door into Nelson's living room was blocked. On the floor, along with dozens of other completed puzzles, was that first one, the four angels.
And sitting at a dining room table covered with puzzle pieces, with a bright light shining down, were Shipley and Nelson.
They have moved, married, and seen life's ups and downs. In a quarter-century, they have never missed a Christmas season.
Whatever else is happening, they get together to put together another holiday-themed puzzle.
“We've been doing this half our lives,” said Nelson, 51. She moved here from California in 1999 after marrying Chris Nelson, who works for the Boeing Co. “I married into it,” he said.
Shipley, 52, now lives in Chimacum, near Port Townsend. On her ferry ride Wednesday, she hauled a big suitcase packed with puzzle boxes, the projects of Christmases past.
The puzzles are stored in sections in the boxes. “We found every last puzzle, didn't we?” Shipley said.
Puzzle pictures of nutcrackers, Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, Santa and reindeer, holiday street scenes and snowmen covered Nelson's living room. A few inches of carpet were left between them to tiptoe around for a closer look. “It's like playing Twister,” Nelson said.
In 25 years of puzzles, there wasn't a missing piece that I could see.
They managed also to hang onto the stories. For each puzzle, they know when and where it was done, and what else was happening.
For Nelson's 40th birthday, they went to Disneyland. They put together a Mickey Mouse Christmas puzzle at the hotel. “See that tiny puzzle?” Nelson said. “In 2004, we went to New York and sat on Santa's lap at Macy's. He gave us that one.”
The year they assembled a Saturday Evening Post Santa illustration, pipes burst in the Red Bluff, Calif., house where they were. “The Victorian angel year, Sonya was fixing a bagel,” Nelson said. “I told her, ‘Sonya, that knife is really sharp.' ” Sure enough, her friend cut her finger. “We finished the puzzle, then I had to go get stitches,” Shipley said.
The 2008 snowman puzzle was a nod to that year's snowy Christmas. Funniest is a 3D scene of fish, a gift from Shipley's father. “I thought he knew we did holiday puzzles,” she said. They assembled the fish, but also bought a Peanuts Christmas puzzle that year.
Their favorite brand is Springbok. Nelson picked up a completed Springbok puzzle, which stayed together. With oddly shaped interlocking pieces, they don't easily fall apart.
To celebrate, they started Thursday on one of two expensive new wooden puzzles. Called “A Merry Christmas,” it was made in England by Wentworth Wooden Puzzles and cost $100. The other is a $275 snowflake shape from Vermont's Stave Puzzles, which advertises its beauties as “the Rolls-Royce of puzzles.” It has no straight-line border, and no picture to show the way.
“This is a totally new thing for us, to do a wooden puzzle,” Shipley said. “The first quarter-century is cardboard, the second quarter-century is wood.”
Shipley is an administrative assistant. Nelson works for Western Washington University at Everett Community College as a practicum supervisor for teachers in training. Nelson has a 17-year-old daughter, but puzzles aren't a family hobby. They're about friendship.
“Even though puzzles are what bring us together, it's really our friendship that has become the true blessing. We have definitely seen each other through some hard times,” Nelson said. Shipley, she said, helped her through a divorce and twice was her bridesmaid.
Eyeing pieces on the table, Shipley paused when she heard a noise.
“That's the sound of Christmas,” she said. “Suzie knocking pieces onto the floor.”
Julie Muhlstein:
425-339-3460;
muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
“I stopped by to drop something off, and just couldn't leave,” Sonya
Shipley said Thursday.
Together they finished the puzzle, a picture of four angels. “They're the stained-glass angels at Mission Dolores in San Francisco,” said Suzie Nelson, Shipley's friend.
That was 25 years ago, in 1985. Both were students at California State University, Sacramento, known as “Sac State.”
By their count, it was also 52 puzzles ago — or more precisely, 31,639 pieces ago. Some years they did more than one. To mark their unique anniversary, they reassembled all their puzzles Wednesday.
I drove to Nelson's rural Arlington home Thursday to get a look at a puzzling tradition. I had to enter through the garage. The front door into Nelson's living room was blocked. On the floor, along with dozens of other completed puzzles, was that first one, the four angels.
And sitting at a dining room table covered with puzzle pieces, with a bright light shining down, were Shipley and Nelson.
They have moved, married, and seen life's ups and downs. In a quarter-century, they have never missed a Christmas season.
Whatever else is happening, they get together to put together another holiday-themed puzzle.
“We've been doing this half our lives,” said Nelson, 51. She moved here from California in 1999 after marrying Chris Nelson, who works for the Boeing Co. “I married into it,” he said.
Shipley, 52, now lives in Chimacum, near Port Townsend. On her ferry ride Wednesday, she hauled a big suitcase packed with puzzle boxes, the projects of Christmases past.
The puzzles are stored in sections in the boxes. “We found every last puzzle, didn't we?” Shipley said.
Puzzle pictures of nutcrackers, Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, Santa and reindeer, holiday street scenes and snowmen covered Nelson's living room. A few inches of carpet were left between them to tiptoe around for a closer look. “It's like playing Twister,” Nelson said.
In 25 years of puzzles, there wasn't a missing piece that I could see.
They managed also to hang onto the stories. For each puzzle, they know when and where it was done, and what else was happening.
For Nelson's 40th birthday, they went to Disneyland. They put together a Mickey Mouse Christmas puzzle at the hotel. “See that tiny puzzle?” Nelson said. “In 2004, we went to New York and sat on Santa's lap at Macy's. He gave us that one.”
The year they assembled a Saturday Evening Post Santa illustration, pipes burst in the Red Bluff, Calif., house where they were. “The Victorian angel year, Sonya was fixing a bagel,” Nelson said. “I told her, ‘Sonya, that knife is really sharp.' ” Sure enough, her friend cut her finger. “We finished the puzzle, then I had to go get stitches,” Shipley said.
The 2008 snowman puzzle was a nod to that year's snowy Christmas. Funniest is a 3D scene of fish, a gift from Shipley's father. “I thought he knew we did holiday puzzles,” she said. They assembled the fish, but also bought a Peanuts Christmas puzzle that year.
Their favorite brand is Springbok. Nelson picked up a completed Springbok puzzle, which stayed together. With oddly shaped interlocking pieces, they don't easily fall apart.
To celebrate, they started Thursday on one of two expensive new wooden puzzles. Called “A Merry Christmas,” it was made in England by Wentworth Wooden Puzzles and cost $100. The other is a $275 snowflake shape from Vermont's Stave Puzzles, which advertises its beauties as “the Rolls-Royce of puzzles.” It has no straight-line border, and no picture to show the way.
“This is a totally new thing for us, to do a wooden puzzle,” Shipley said. “The first quarter-century is cardboard, the second quarter-century is wood.”
Shipley is an administrative assistant. Nelson works for Western Washington University at Everett Community College as a practicum supervisor for teachers in training. Nelson has a 17-year-old daughter, but puzzles aren't a family hobby. They're about friendship.
“Even though puzzles are what bring us together, it's really our friendship that has become the true blessing. We have definitely seen each other through some hard times,” Nelson said. Shipley, she said, helped her through a divorce and twice was her bridesmaid.
Eyeing pieces on the table, Shipley paused when she heard a noise.
“That's the sound of Christmas,” she said. “Suzie knocking pieces onto the floor.”
Julie Muhlstein:
425-339-3460;
muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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