Over the weekend I added photos for five additional puzzles to my Pandemic Puzzles mini album. I messed up on the very first one 😬.

Ideally, the right-side page should be flipped so that “chickenology” is on the edge, facing in. The thing is, there was…a wildlife situation happening on the roof of my apartment building when I was putting these pages together. It was extremely loud and distracting (and, at times, sounded kind of like chickens). I would’ve gone outside to get a better idea of what was happening (I was watching it as best I could via the reflection in the top-floor windows of the building across from mine) if there hadn’t also been an aggressive and likely rabid raccoon terrorizing tenants in our parking lot. It was an eventful holiday over here (and, quite frankly, the most excitement in my life all year). Anyway. I was distracted by all the chaos and I messed up. Oh well.

I bought this ramen puzzle at Two Rivers/Weird Sisters, a super cute combination book store/yarn shop in North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood. If you’re planning a visit to Portland, I highly recommend checking this place out while here. (Hound & Hare, a vintage shop a few blocks over, should also be on your St. Johns list of places to visit.)

I picked up this needlepoint puzzle (and a holiday-themed one I haven’t started yet) in October at Portland Puzzle Exchange‘s monthly event. It was my first time attending. There was a live band, free refreshments, and a lot of people—the line was through the community center that it’s held in, out the door, and down the block. It was sensory and social overload.

This tarot card puzzle is double-sided, which I didn’t realize until I got home and was a little annoyed about. I thought it would make doing the puzzle unenjoyably challenging. Fortunately for me, both sides of the puzzle pieces were coated differently, which made it easier to distinguish which side of any given piece was the side I needed.

This Golden Girls puzzle was more challenging than I expected. Some of the pieces have a “normal” puzzle cut, some of them are shaped really strangely. The hair was the hardest part.

This puzzle was a very unexpected and fun find—I walked into it on the sidewalk while on my way home one afternoon. It was with a stack of other puzzles, left beneath a Little Free Library in the neighborhood. Incredibly, no pieces were missing.

It’s not uncommon to find free piles around the city. Portlanders (myself included) leave out all sorts of things—in various states of condition, and in various types of containers (or no container)—for others to take. There are almost always several free piles lining the sidewalk on my street, and I encountered a lot of free piles during my summer walks. This was the first time I came across puzzles. The Golden Girls puzzle is the only one I took and it’s for sure my favorite free pile find so far.