There’s a recycling center near the library where I work, and they rarely have puzzles, but occasionally, I find some treasure like this. It’s a vintage Schmidt, maybe from the 70s, with large and very sturdy pieces. I also think it’s the first western-themed puzzle I’ve ever done. Three pieces missing, but I don’t mind, this was a blast.

Cartoon image with lots of funny details. I did end up using the box image quite a lot, but it was still fun and quite fast.

There’s a multipurpose sports arena, where they seem to be playing American football, soccer, basket ball, golf, baseball and either tennis or badminton, all at the same time:

The local restaurant offers take-away pizza:

Fantasy type image, although it seems more like the four seasons than the four realms. On the left, it is clearly winter on top, and an autumnal scene below. Not sure which is summer and which spring on the right though. The winter pieces were the easiest to pick out, but turned out to be the hardest to put together, so that I pulled them first but ended up doing that section section last.

Quality was, again, top notch. I’m getting more and more fond of the rather tight fit that Schmidt has nowadays, it’s very satisfying when putting the puzzle together, but a bit of a pain while taking it apart.

Schmidt has really upped their game in the last few years, especially with regard to images. The quality was always great, but now the images are as well. This year, they have a series with four Aimee Stewart images, and I already have three of them.

This puzzle was just as entertaining as it looks, I loved it. It was fairly easy to pick out the pieces for the different areas, the Victory Canary Songster with the red background was easiest and first, and the dark parts of the binoculars were last.

As usual, the rather tight fit is very pleasant when putting the puzzle together, but makes taking it apart a bit of a chore. I had one damaged piece, but since the image layer piece is still there, it will be easy to fix:

This is probably the best puzzle image by Thomas Kinkade that I’ve ever seen – most of his stuff has far too much vegetation for my taste. This was really nice, though, and I liked that I was able to do it top to bottom.

For my puzzle challenge, this is #9, a puzzle that slipped into your cart (I was supposed to buy something else, no puzzles, but somehow, I ended up with this).

I didn’t quite know what to expect from this, I’ve never done a puzzle quite like this before. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be all that difficult, and the hardest part was the middle.

I don’t have much to say about this, except it was great quality as usual from Schmidt, and great fun.

There are lot of puzzles with paintings by Thomas Kinkade, but I think this is the first I’ve done. I got it cheap (3 EUR for a factory sealed copy), but I was expecting it to be really difficult. It wasn’t, really, and my dislike of green vegetation seems to be mostly about photographic images. The great quality helped too, of course. Like many Schmidt puzzles, it had a rather tight fit, which is pleasant while assembling, but a bit annoying when taking the puzzle apart. Anyway, I loved it!