This is the first I’ve done from a Schmidt series with camping images, and it was lovely. I have a few more of these, and they all look great.

I was afraid this was going to be a bit too dark, but it was fine. The quality was, as always with Schmidt, excellent. The rigging of the ship turned out to be the most difficult part, and the sky was the easiest.

This was fun and easy! While this is a Schmidt puzzle, the same image is also available by Buffalo. For my puzzle challenge, this is the bonus challenge for March, which is the song Northern Lights (Revontulet in Finnish) by Anssi Kela, who is the first of this year’s artists that I’ve actually heard about. I still haven’t heard the song, though.

Lovely image by Aimee Stewart, but it was more difficult than it looks.

Since painted cakes is one of my all time favourite thing to puzzle, it’s no surprise that I loved this. I also love the Schmidt quality, nowadays it’s every bit as good as Ravensburger, perhaps even better.

I’ve been doing less puzzling lately, this was on the table for well over a week, so there will probably be fewer posts in the near future.

I loved this! From the box, I was afraid that the image would be too dark, but it was just right, and the kind of puzzle that had the same level of difficulty from start to finish. I’ve said it before, but Schmidt puzzles really are fantastic quality now (about 20 years ago, they were hit and miss, but now they are reliably excellent).

A very pleasant puzzle, although the fit was so tight that I damaged a few pieces while taking it apart. Since I really like lazy Sunday breakfasts, I’m counting this as #11, “the puzzle somehow illustrates my personality or me” for my puzzle challenge. Although honestly, I would probably not have the breakfast in bed, that would be too messy even for me.

Anyway, I have a lot of lazy mornings to look forward to, because I’m taking four months off work! This is made possible by a system that we have in Finland (although not for long, the government has decided to discontinue it, this was my last chance) whereby if you fulfill certain requirements (like having a 20 year work history), you can take up to six months off and be paid 70% of what you would get if you were unemployed. Your employer then has to hire an unemployed person for the time you are gone, although they don’t have to perform the same tasks that you do. Overall an excellent scheme to give people who have worked for a long time a bit of a break, and also to give someone who is unemployed a chance to work for a while. I actually started in the library as a sub in this scheme. That was in January 2002, and I’m still there, so the scheme also helped me find a permanent job. Too bad that it’s being discontinued, but at least I can do whatever I please, every day, until August 1!