Ravensburger - Vintage Knitting & Crochet Puzzle 1000 Pieces

A knitting basket photographed from directly above, with fifty years of pattern leaflets spread out around it. Every colour in the spectrum is in this picture, which makes it look harder than it is.

What you are looking at

In the middle, a rainbow-striped beanie half knitted on a circular needle, sitting in a wicker basket. Around it, balls and skeins of yarn in scarlet, magenta, orange, lemon, sage, teal, cobalt and violet, some wound tight, some falling open. Wooden and metal needles, a small pair of scissors with a butterfly bow on the handles.

The paper is the good part. Vintage knitting pattern leaflets with illustrated women on the covers, one pair in matching jumpers, one in a blue cardigan. A booklet headed Knitting and Crocheting. A handwritten letter. Diagram pages explaining how to make a twist stitch. Crochet flower motifs and doily rounds laid out flat, and a teal knitted swatch with red needles still in it.

What it is like to build

Sort by material, not by colour, and this becomes straightforward. There are only three things in the picture and they look nothing alike close up. Yarn is a tight regular spiral with a visible twist and a soft halo. Knitted and crocheted fabric has repeating stitch structure, little Vs for knitting, chunkier loops for crochet. Paper is flat, matte, mostly cream and pink, and carries print.

Colour is almost useless here on its own, because the same red turns up as a ball of wool, a stripe in the hat, a printed cardigan and a pair of needles. Material tells them apart instantly.

Take the paper first. It is the only region with lettering and faces in it, and it sits around the outside, so it closes a lot of the frame. Then the striped hat, which is banded and places almost in order. Leave the loose yarn until last, and within it sort by how the strands run, because a ball has a direction and a skein has another.

Why Ravensburger for a flat-lay photograph

Made in Germany since 1891, no two pieces share a shape. On a picture with a dozen balls of wool that are genuinely the same colour, the fit is what settles it. The linen-textured low-glare laminate matters here too: an overhead photograph lit this brightly is exactly the kind of image that flares under a lamp on a cheaper board.

Specifications

A little context

Craft subjects are a small seam in the category and an unusually loyal one, and the pattern is that people who do the craft buy the puzzle. The useful thing to know is that they are almost always colour puzzles rather than picture puzzles, so they reward being sorted properly before you start and punish diving in. The two nearest in the range are Quilting Craft Room and, if you want the yarn with kittens in it, Balls Of Fluff.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.