Make Do
I’ve been babbling about my love of Lego for a while, and why not. It’s great stuff, teaches you how to make things and cooperate with inanimate objects, to project creativity into three dimensions. It’s wonderful for kids… except they make the wrong things or choke on the bricks, thus entirely wasting them.
I bought a huge box of Lego from eBay a few months ago, ostensibly to build a neat shelving solution for the Lego mini figures my other half and I obsessively collect. We have delightful half hours of frumbling blind packs in Tesco until we get the whole series. Ah, happy relationship times. Anyway, that was basically a lie – I had every intention of playing endlessly with the stuff. I will eventually build some sensible display cases, but not until I’ve had a lot of other fun too.
There was a lot of other crap mixed into the Lego, so I reckon I ended up with about four and a half kilos of the stuff (plus all the other Lego sets I have anyway!) First sort was to sift out the junk, then to sift for colour or shape. I was thrilled to realise I had loads of green and brown and fun foliage pieces, so clearly a woodsy thing was in the offing. I’ve also got a lot of black, grey and sand so castles would naturally follow.
Design Time
I recall being obsessed with symmetry when building with Lego as a child. It was frustrating to never have quite enough pieces to create sleek symmetrical spaceships without marring them with odd misplaced colours. I am no longer beset by such thoughts. I took the same approach to Lego building as I do to my writing and improv – make it up as I go along. As a consequence I have quite a lot of head scratching time, dismantling and rebuilding. It’s incredibly soothing. Now I haven’t really played with Lego for a long time, so this was my first attack on the building blocks of my mind.
Here’s the front view of the finished model:
I wanted to get as much in as possible, so at the front we start with Christmas Yoda outside his little hut (occupied by Little Red Riding Hood), with a nice speeder bike and ewoks nestled amongst elves, fairies, Robin Hood and a steampunk lady at the back.
The darker red/not quite brown bricks are delightful and I’ve found they break up the shapes really pleasingly. I think they’re from some of the newer Star Wars Lego sets.
I hope you enjoy the pictures – let me know! And remember, it’s never too late to get back into Lego.
