2024, Art, Fantasy, Games, Mysteries

Dragon Forge

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I just finished the Dragon Forge puzzle.  1000 pieces.  And I promise, this is not a blog about how I succumbed to temptation (repeatedly) to sit for hours at the table working on this thing.

I chose this puzzle from the fantasy section of the Puzzle Warehouse in St. Louis, a fascinating place I discovered on a visit to Nonny right before pandemic.  It’s a huge warehouse with puzzles sorted all kinds of ways – mostly by the company that produced the puzzle but also in theme areas including my favorite.  Fantasy. 

My first big plunge into science fiction/fantasy was Star Wars, which I saw at the Grand Theater in Northfield.  Four nights in a row.  Then came the reading of The Hobbit when I was 20.  This was followed immediately by all three volumes of Lord of the Rings.  The barn door was open – the horse was not going back in! 

I’m usually more drawn to fantasy than science fiction and it’s almost exclusively due to dragons.  Sure, wizards, witches, fairies are great but dragons are the draw.  I’ve been known to search the library website using “dragon” as the keyword.  There are amazing numbers of books out there with “dragon” in the title.  I prefer sympathetic dragons, dragons who can communicate, smart dragons, dragons with magic but I can handle the dark side as well. 

Nobody that I know is into dragons like I am.  This is where my problem is this week.  I love the artwork on this puzzle and I’d love to know that the next home that it travels to will have someone who appreciates it as much as I do.  I’ve thought about keeping it and maybe putting in in a frame but I don’t really have any wall space and I’m pretty sure that YA would object anyway if it went in any communal space. 

I know that there are occasional puzzles swaps around the Twin Cities but I’ve never gone to one.  A friend said that they are opening a permanent spot in a Hennepin County Library for jigsaw puzzles; I haven’t found any information on it yet.  Hopefully I can find a good swap or location for Dragon Forge, so that it goes to a good home where dragons are appreciated!

Where do you like to get rid of your excess stuff?

41 thoughts on “Dragon Forge”

  1. Habitat For Humanity gets my stuff. There’s a ReStore in Dayton. It’s been a few years now but I’ve worked flooring on a number of projects. “There’s more happiness in giving than receiving ” Acts20:35

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  3. First stop is the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Then recycle bin. Next up is if someone happens to want/need the item. Occasionally I’ll advertise something on social media for free or very reasonable. Last resort is trash can.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. We take things like garden produce to work, or to the Food Pantry. There is a place called The House of Manna that takes household stuff, as well as the ARC Thrift Store, which benefits developmentally disabled folks. I just took two extraneous cookbooks to work on Monday.

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  5. Have you read any of Patricia McKillip’s or Naomi Novik’s books? They created excellent dragons.

    My parents always had the DAV pick up their donations. When I drove I’d drop stuff off at Goodwill, but since I gave up the car we have the Epilepsy Foundation come out for pickups (we had the DAV a few times, but they haven’t had pickups in our neighborhood for a year or more now). Last autumn we had Junk Genius come get some large, heavy items (broken TV, broken A/C, an old bureau, etc.). They were great to work with and very reasonably priced; if you need large items moved, we recommend them highly!

    –Sister Crow

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  6. Our co-op building has a table in the garage called “Give and Take.” It’s one of my favorite things about the building, and I really like the building. When you have something you no longer need or use or like, you put it on the table and almost always it’s gone the same day. Some people make a daily stop at the table to browse. You never know what might be there. I brought home two outdoor pillows for our deck that were in brand new condition and the prefect colors. The best part is being able to just pop down and bring something that has identified itself as superfluous to our life (a lot of that happened in the first few weeks after moving) and knowing that it will go to someone who wants/needs it. The biggest drawback is when a resident moves on to assisted living or passes away and their family dumps baskets of crap on the table, after a few days management has to toss most of it, but for the most part, the G&T table is a wonderful addition to the building.

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  7. Local thrift shops (rather than Goodwill), and extra produce goes to the Food Shelf.

    I’ve come upon a local posting via Winona Neighbors Helping Neighbors: ”Don’t Throw It Away Let Me Haul It Away.” Plan to check him out for electronics, appliances, et al.

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  8. Depends on the nature of the stuff. Occasionally someone will express a need for something I have in excess. That’s easy and a no-brainer.

    Furniture and appliances usually go to Goodwill or Savers. The key there is that once we’ve decided it’s excess it’s just in the way and we are eager to see it go. Last year I brought some very nice and scarcely used coats to a place in St. Paul that looks specifically for those. I was going to bring another this year but the place was not accepting more coats.

    Novels we don’t want to keep go into little libraries in the neighborhood. I’ve taken boxes of more collectible books to used book dealers but they can’t afford to pay much for them and often I’ve regretted letting certain books go.

    Periodically Robin gets the impulse to cull some of our belongings, an impulse I don’t usually feel as urgently. We gather together a few sacrificial items and I dutifully take them somewhere.

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      1. Living on Lyndale is a great for passing stuff along. It usually doesn’t take more than a couple of hours for anything to get tossed into the back of a car or truck!

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  9. At home we usually do Goodwill. We don’t have a Salvation Army in town anymore. There’s a Savers. I’ve put a lot of stuff on FB Marketplace, but lately, there’s a bunch of fake requests almost immediately, (Why would the guy in New Mexico be asking about something here?) and rarely do they follow through. So I’ve soured on that.

    The curb is very successful at the theater in town. It might take a few days, but it’s surprising what crap– I mean treasures people will pick up! Even just metal junk, people take it for the scrap iron value (I’m guessing, I mean why else would they take old, bent, used ceiling tile framework??)

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  10. The city of Bismarck has aging garbage trucks for which there are no replacements. The old trucks allow for a worker to ride on the outside and pick up objects left next to the garbage cans and throw them in the back while mechanical arms pick up the garbage cans and empty them at the top. New garbage trucks no longer have the place for someone to hang on outside, and they no longer open in the back. Bismarck may have to stop picking up stuff that are not in the trash cans as the city trucks break down for good.

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    1. Here in the city trash pickup includes even major appliances like washers and dryers and large items like mattresses. The regular trash pickup tags them and a separate truck comes by a day or so later to get them.

      There is also a waste transfer station where I can bring scrap lumber or metal or construction debris or old electronics. Minneapolis citizens are entitled to use the station six times a year without charge.

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      1. Our city doesn’t even pick up leaves in the fall anymore. We don’t rake our leaves, but those who do have to haul them to the bins by the railroad tracks or the landfill. It is hard for people who are elderly or who don’t have pickups.

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        1. Rochester doesn’t do any of those services. I think the only pick up is with the arm and in the bins. Leaves have to be taken in. And the recycling center only has one drive through lane. It drives me bonkers because we sort stuff so I can dump the plastic or glass and be gone. But there’s always someone with the tote, walking back and forth sorting things out one. at. a. time. I hate hate hate going there!

          But I do. I’m learning the timing.

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      2. I am amazed at the trash pick-up in the Cities. In January somebody bought the house across the street. In addition to three large dumpsters full of stuff that they removed, they filled the boulevard with all kinds of stuff (chairs, sofas, shelves, monitors and who knows what else). One afternoon I thought there might be a traffic accident from all the folks stopping to pick through the stuff. And every Thursday for a month, the trash folks picked up everything and took it away. It was amazing.

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  11. I did donate two used cars to the Yellow Springs public radio station. Attached was a note that let them know both cars were haunted. This was an oblique reference to a Twilight Zone episode, The Whole Truth, written by Rod Serling who attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs. There was no response. Maybe the little joke went over the recipient’s head.

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    2. A friend of mine went to Antioch College and has terrific stories about the quirks of that institution as a paragon of left wing ideas. It finally went belly up`within the last 10-20 years. Actor John Lithgow’s father was a professor there. HIs memoir talks a lot about having lived there.

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  12. I do try to give furniture to Habitat ReStore. And we have a warming shelter that can use blankets, towels. A local pet shelter will take raggy towels, etc… Several places to take coats and boots, including a rack outside a downtown coffee shop.

    Paperback bookstore also has a puzzle corner for free, and they also have new ones for sale now.

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  13. one of my goals in life is to catalogue all my stuff.

    i have some stuff that i am interested in posting on ebay etsy marketplace etc but the logistics are the challange. always have been. what do i do with my stuff? put it in my warehouse has always been my answer. this reached problem levels a while back but now has hit pause mode in hopes of my finding a solution. i will be selling lots of stuff soon now that i realize how nice it is to have sleep as part of my agenda thanks to a broken leg but in the meantime i have quit collecting and hope to reduce steadily over the next year to get the cataloguing under way while posting items of interest on the many channels of distribution available today

    recycling is great. compost just got added. i love recycling. now if only we could make responsibility part of the collection process. they recycle aluminum because it’s profitable but not plastic steel or paper. what the heck is that?

    i did see a cart in eden prairie library ( the one used to wheel books around to be put back on the shelf) that had a sign above it proclaiming “jigsaw puzzle exchange”on a piece of paper above it. it had 3 puzzles so… it’s a start

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  14. I’ve used FreeCycle a lot, though not lately. Sometimes it’s just easier taking stuff to the local Goodwill. The Listening House, a daytime facility for “unhoused” (the currently preferred term for homeless) individuals, posts specific items they need on Facebook. I’ve taken clothing and other items there on occasion. My favorite thrift store, though, is St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store on West 7th St. It’s very clean, and organized; it has to be, it’s very crowded.

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      1. The Apple TV show, Slow Horses, has a character named Jackson Lamb (actor Gary Oldman) who also is mistaken for a homeless person. He reminds me of Steve Bannon. The prep for this character must be disgusting. Here’s a clip:

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  15. Slow to the track today!

    I do all of the things mentioned above. The last thing I have used for family heirlooms that just cannot be used is take them to the county historical society. They actually appreciate it. Things I have donated there:

    1. A depression era New Deal loan packet for my grandparents farm, complete with their handwritten coupons.

    2. A pure wool quilt batting that my mother carded from the wool of their sheep.

    3. Farm equipment from the 1800s–an ox yoke, horse shoes.

    4. A primitive cast iron scale for weighing I don’t know what

    5. Butter churn

    6. Kegs

    7. My grandmother’s wedding dress.

    8. My other grandmother’s high school annuals from the Nevada, Ia High School graduating class of 1918. They did not have one of those.

    My mother hung on to all this and more. The 50s era Electrolux vacuum I finally threw away. A quilt club took her quilt frames. There is no reason to keep these things but county history museums use them.

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  16. Northfield has great resources for bartering, giving, and re-using. There’s a Freecycle group but it’s kind of defunct now because of the huge popularity of the “Buy Nothing” group on facebook. I’ve given lots of things away on the Buy Nothing group.

    There’s a great thrift store, The Clothes Closet, and its sister store “Used a Bit”. There are three stores in all. Used a Bit has a furniture store and a household goods and antiques store. The Clothes Closet is a great thrift store for clothes and shoes. All three stores benefit our senior center, FiftyNorth, as well as the CAC. I’ve given things to The Key which is a place for troubled teens. They help with drug abuse, child abuse, foster placement, and getting kids help, or to a safe place. I’ve taken things to Faribault to Goodwill too but not as often. People also post things they don’t want on the NextDoor app.

    FiftyNorth has a free library. It’s bigger than a Little Free Library, being a corner wall with bookshelves, but the same rules apply: leave a book, take a book. I’ve donated more there than I’ve taken, and I usually treat it as a library and return anything I’ve taken.

    I took a Bible from the 1800s to the Waseca Historical Society. It had a man’s name in it who was from Waseca and was passed along to me with our family Bible. I didn’t recognize the man’s name so I took it to the Waseca Historical Society and they accepted it. They wrote back to me about who he was – not a relative.

    I have lots of things I need to part with. I think I will donate my yarn somewhere (I have too much). I also want to donate some of my musical instruments to a school.

    I have several hundred CDs that are looking for a new home.

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  17. We donated Robin’s autoharp, which was in great condition but she hadn’t played in years to McPhail music school in Minneapolis.

    I’ve donated some photos, one of a one-room classroom in Spring Valley, Wisconsin from the early ‘30s to the historical society in Hudson, Wisconsin and one of the Barrett, Minnesota basketball team from about 1925 to the historical society museum in Elbow Lake.

    I had a letter written by Anna Cora Mowatt, a nineteenth century actress and playwright dated 1859 and announcing her retirement from the stage. I donated it to the theater collection at Harvard. I also found in a book of poetry the program for a Congregational Church in Massachusetts. The guest speaker for the dedication was Edward Everett, the man who gave the other Gettysburg address. The church is still in existence and I was able to contact its historian and send him the program. In another book I found a copy of The Sylvan Cabin, a poem by African American poet Edward Smyth Jones and specially printed and bound in pamphlet form for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. I was able to find a woman who was putting together an archive of items from the exposition. She didn’t have a copy so I sent her mine.

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  18. Fair Trade Books in Red Wing takes used puzzles. I believe they have volunteers who put the donated puzzles together so they can guarantee all the pieces are there.

    I take art supplies to ArtScraps.

    There is a laundromat near me that has shelf space set aside for books, including a large rack for kids’books. It’s sort of like a little free library, but bigger.

    Lots of places take clothes. I like to donate to a place in Minneapolis that has a free store for veterans. Lots of veterans are unhoused in the area.

    Putting stuff outside is an option, but a lot of people don’t use good judgment about it. They put stuff out in the rain and snow, or leave things out that get broken. Many times I pick things up not because I want to keep them, but because I don’t like to see them become wet broken junk that eventually ends up in a landfill.

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