Puzzle Season

Day 82: I'm taking a break from weaving today (well, more or less) to work on a puzzling puzzle I received as a Christmas gift. It was billed as a "mystery puzzle," one which has no picture to guide you along. If the puzzler gets desperate, there's a sealed envelope with the image inside, but that would take the fun out of it, in my opinion. In fact, it's coming along rather quickly. I've determined that the scene (a painting) is of a group of Canadian kids holding a hockey match on a frozen pond, with a neighbourhood scene of quaint buildings in the background. As usual, I sorted for edge pieces first and came up five short when I had the edge put together. That worried me, because I seldom miss more than two, but when I was picking out the most identifiable shop (red), I found four of them. And then I really did start to worry, because even after laying the pieces out on cookie sheets, the one missing edge piece failed to surface. "Patience," I said to myself. "The box says 'no missing pieces' on it. It'll show up eventually." The good news is that I found it...after putting together several buildings, most of the sky and horizon, and a large portion of the pond. Poor Tippy nearly leapt out of his fur when I yelled, "EDGE PIECE!" in triumph.