O Lego tree, o Lego tree ...

... your candles kept falling ohoff, o Lego tree, o Lego tree, they really drove me nuhuuts."
Actually, this project went rather quickly. Although some of the steps had to repeated for the different branch levels, it wasn't boring at all, maybe because I did it in several rather short sessions.
If you wonder, I let den Dekan join me in two of them, but the first time I forgot to take the camera to the table and he left me when I went to get it, and the second time I had the camera, but the batteries decided to die just that moment when I was about to take a picture of him checking the bags.
As there wasn't a box for him to sit in, he got bored rather quickly and left the room after making my desk chair crash by trying a new wide jump record from its top.

Here's the tree now. I really like it.
At one point, I thought I had make a big mistake and took the single levels apart from one another, but in the end I found that it needed an open ring instead of a plate in one spot (which absolutely made sense if you're not a numpty like me 🤪).
You can make one big tree or a smaller and a really small one, therefore there are pieces left over and I had grabbed the wrong one.
And of course I kept losing the candles until I finally got smart enough to leave them off until the end.
If you make the two trees, one of them has the candles and the other has all the baubles, red and other colors. On the big one, the baubles are all red per the instructions. Not on mine. I put them where I found space. Much better.

When exactly the tradition of the Christmas tree in private homes began isn't known. It was not unusual for different cultures to bring evergreen into the houses in winter.
There are several records for fir trees being put up without them being called Christmas trees explicitly before, but in 1527 the term turns up in an existing document.
Whatever the exact year is, the Christmas tree had been around in German speaking regions for a long time.

Since the mid-18th century, it was mentioned more and more, and in the 19th century, the tradition had already spread to Austria and then went to New England, England, France, Italy, The Netherlands, and Russia.
At first, trees were decorated with sweets, apples and nuts some of which were painted in silver and gold. The children were then allowed to plunder the edible decorations off the tree.
The legend goes that a glassblower in Lauscha, a town which is still known for its glass art and Christmas ornaments - which now come in all kinds of shapes from traditional to very modern - couldn't afford apples and nuts for his tree and made them from glass instead. True or not, the first written record of glass ornaments is in an order book from 1848.

You may also have heard the idea to hang a Christmas tree from the ceiling - upside down to save space - for example to discourage pets from getting into it.
That's actually not a new idea, but I don't even want to get into the theories who did it first or maybe not or why.
It's not something I'm going to be doing as I have high ceilings and have no interest at all at having someone put a hook up there for me, but mostly I just don't like the look. I want my tree on the ground where der Dekan and Gundel can wreak havoc easily. It's fun for the whole family, and after I made sure they can't get caught in the string of lights, I'm fine with picking up gnomes and "pineapple slices" all the time even if I moan a lot about it!

This picture is from last year,
I'm behind with my tree decorating.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

A new Lego project

Here's just a short post today as there isn't much to see of the new Lego project yet. I just wanted to get started and I haven't even invited den Dekan to join me yet.
While having a look through the different bags to get a first idea what's where, I tried out my new under-desk cycle which I got now that I'm reading more again.
It would definitely not work for me while crafting, I would probably shoot tiny beads all over the place which I'm not too bad at (why did I first write "bead" and then "bed"?) even without cycling, but it will be fine for reading, I think. Maybe I'll pick up speed when getting to a particularly exciting scene in a book. "Oh no, it's the killer behind you! Run!!" 😂
It won't be working well for bricking either, but it gave me an idea how to sit.

Anyhow, this is my new project.
There's a lot of green for sure, what do you think it can be?

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

With a little help from my friend

I couldn't resist the title even if George Harrison neither wrote nor sang the song, yes, and there is an s missing, but Gundel stayed out of this one completely while der Dekan was eager to help.

Are we playing again?

Although I had planned more WIP posts of my Lego Art set, I finished it more quickly than expected.
Please meet the colorful George Harrison!
It is a cool piece of pixel art, but it wasn't as much fun as a regular Lego project. In fact, in the end it felt more like a chore that had to get finished so I could take it off a to do list.
As I mentioned in replies to comments on the original post, it could be fun to try and make a design of my own, but 1. I don't feel like ripping all the studs out despite the included brick separator (which I wish I had had as a kid), 2. designing it would be the fun, the actual bricking might feel like a chore as well, 3. I still have a pattern for another fan wall portrait waiting to be bead loomed which is a lot more fun (if I could only muster the courage to finally try out the muffin tray solution, but I put it at the top on my Christmas vacation list now).
There are studs left over, though, so maybe I can get myself a plate and try out something small on it.

I left the picture small because
it brings out the pixel art better.
Click on the picture for more detail.

George Harrison didn't end up on my wall, it would feel weird to have just him up there and also I don't want to give up wall space for this. He's on a shelf behind my big Steiff Leo now and the box - real Lego collectors may want to skip the end of this sentence - will go into the recycling after der Dekan is done with it.
I always invited him to brick with me, but a few of the sessions ended without him. He was quite good at the beginning, but mid-session he lost all patience with me not being faster and not letting him play with the contents of the box.
Some of the baggies were hidden under cardboard with an opening, for example, so you could see something was in there.
As much as I didn't want the brat to get in there and maybe escape with an open plastic bag, I couldn't be mad at him for following his natural instinct of investigating the "mousehole". My attempt at distracting him with head kisses was only partially successful because he started kneading while sitting on the box and ended up in the opening with one foot which immediately reminded him of his mission again.

There were other temptations as well, though.
I took photos during just one of our bricking sessions and thought I'd share them with you.
Der Dekan was purring the whole time, by the way, don't let his look deceive you.
It made me laugh and tell him how much I love him, but also yell "stop" and "no" and "you little devil" a lot. A video would have been great fun for you to watch, no doubt, but I would have needed a lot more arms for that!
And if you need to know, he did actually get "thrown out" after that last picture because he went for my desk then which I'm afraid to say has a few unstable piles on it at the moment and of course those are the ones der Dekan choses for his shenanigans. It's my own fault, I know, but I have to say that he has been obsessed with my desk since he was a kitten and even then was always on the lookout for stuff to knock over or down - including my laptop - although it was really organized at that time. Since then he has been using my desk for pressuring me into getting what he wants - playing, food, snacks, mere attention - or simply for letting me know he's miffed with me.

Is this thing edible?

I have to take a closer look.

What do you mean, don't destroy the instructions before you're done?
I'm good, I'm good, gee, Mom!

Maybe just a little claw action ...

You never let me have ANY fun!

Exhibit A to prove der Dekan never gets to have any fun.

You know what? You can do this thing alone if you wanna be like that, Mom.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

So it begins ... Lego Art WIP

Ten days ago, I told you about my Lego "collection" whose pieces so far all have been gifts (so far because I found out about a minor, but really dumb mistake which required immediate retail therapy, so I bought Lego for myself for the first time). 

In that post, I mentioned my Lego Art set of "The Beatles" and how I've had it around for a few years because I couldn't even decide which Beatle to make. Well, on the day the post went live, I chose George because I just liked his picture best.

What even is Lego Art?
According to Wikipedia which has a load of quotes for articles on the topic, the theme was introduced in 2020 (which I think was also the year my friend gave me my set in order to make self-isolating easier, but being used to working on Lego projects together with him, I didn't see the appeal at the time).
The product line started with four mosaics, one of them "The Beatles", and didn't use 3D bricks, but 2D 1x1 studs. Later items also featured bigger tiles.

The sets depict iconic personalities or art, for example Warhol's Marilyn Monroe or Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
During our Crafternoon - a Zoom meeting of bloggers coming together to chat and craft - I started working on the first square.
There are nine squares and fifteen different colors of studs and also tiles for the "frame".
The squares get attached to each other to form the whole picture.

Now I had to make another decision about how to work on the squares. Should I do one color after the other which means I would have to concentrate on counting or should I lay out all the colors I need for a square and do it spot by spot either horizontally or vertically?

As most of the first square was just black and dark grey, I went for the counting. I did the grey first, then filled up the gaps with black and did the few colors in the end.
I don't know yet if that will be a good idea once there are more colors on a square. If I had enough empty bead cups, I could set them all up like beads for beading or bead looming. Or I could use a bead tray if I had one, but that's not how I bead. We'll see.

Usually, when I started something like this, I kept going until I had finished. My pal and I spent hours chatting, laughing, and bricking, but these days I simply can't sit for that long anymore.
Ponder and later Gundel loved to help out.

Just checking if you left some of the bricks in
the shipping box.

Let me sort this out for you, Mom,
before I lose any interest at all forever.

During Crafternoon, I found out that der Dekan does NOT make a good Lego helper. The studs were too tempting and I'm too old to crawl around on the floor and look for little colored dots everywhere. Not only did he go for the ones I had taken out of the bags - very few at a time because I had expected that - but he also tried to rip out the studs on the plate, both with claws and teeth!
Possibly it would have helped to have my pal around because der Dekan is strictly a family guy meaning he usually retreats to the top of the wardrobe if non-family comes around.
My goal was to make one square a day, at least on the weekend. Yeah, that didn't happen. I finished the first one during Crafternoon on a Saturday and the next one on the Thursday after that.

Well, and now it's Tuesday and this is as far as I have come until Sunday afternoon (of course I'll have to take the one square off again because I have to finish the whole row so I can attach it).
And der Dekan helped after all. We found a way. The next time we didn't. Then we did again, but in the end he fell off the table because he had rolled around in the open lid of the box too wildly. We'll keep working on it.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

Random Saturday - To brick or not to brick

Lego was the topic of another random Saturday seven years ago, but back then I only spoke about and showed my London bus.

You've also seen a picture of my Lego Snowglobe as part of my hallway Christmas decoration.

There's more. Not much. Lego is and always has been very much a matter of money and space both of which I prefer to spend on other things, no matter how tempting some of the projects may look like (I'm just saying cat).
There are stories, however. Of course there are, after all this is random Saturday. Old ones, new ones.

I couldn't tell you the exact age at which I got my first Legos. Back then, all of us siblings got one basic set which consisted of one baseplate - still the thicker ones then - and a bunch of bricks. We threw everything together in order to have more options for bigger projects. Basic set also meant basic bricks which we named after the number of bumps on each one (no idea if that was some official naming, but we added the Swabian diminutive -le to the numbers, so maybe not).
What I remember best was building tiny house models with limited wall height and no roof, tiny because the baseplates were small and because we didn't have that many bricks. Also no roof meant we could play in them by using the smallest bricks for the people living in the house.

Years later, my little brother had five boxes (four of them had been a lottery prize, size A to D) of Märklin's (the company is known among model train collectors and is located in my town) own brick version - the so-called Minex bricks (Märklin used the name Minex for several products, also metal construction sets or trains). You could do a lot with five boxes and the bricks were much easier to take apart which could be both an advantage and a disadvantage, but I remember having a lot of fun with those.

Afterwards, bricking (as I've heard it being called in Germany) wasn't really a topic for me anymore for many years - until one year my pal gave me the Yellow Submarine from the Beatles movie to cheer me up in a weltschmerz phase.
We spent a few evenings both working on our projects, having something to eat and drink, laughing a lot, always under the strict supervision of Ponder.
It was a lot of fun although it's amazing how many mistakes you can make on a piece that doesn't even look that difficult on the outside.

For my next birthday, he gave me the London Bus.
That really brought back memories of my first London visit (unfortunately there were only two) together with a friend and her five year old daughter. On the first day, we did bus hopping, randomly changing buses seeing where they would take us.

Again we started to work on our projects together, but then life happened and we finished them on our own. That's when I found that I wasn't made to be a lonely bricker. I gave up eventually and had to motivate myself hard to finally pick it up again. That's why it took me five months to get it finished! It's so cool.

Two more projects we did together again was the living room from The Big Bang Theory and the Santa Snowglobe (the weirdest snowglobe ever) which had been an extra gift with an order.

There's one more piece that has been waiting for me to work on it. It has been around for several years and I think it's really time to get started on it - the Lego Art set "The Beatles". With the box content you can make one of the four portraits and my first problem was to decide which one to make because, let's get this clear, if I make one I'm not going to rip it out again to make a different one.
To be honest, I wish the portraits were old black and white ones, but that can't be helped, can it?

Once I decide, I might turn this project into small WIP posts to motivate myself, so I won't give it up.
Which portrait would you choose IF you like The Beatles at all?

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

Random Saturday - London Bus

It all started last year with a surprising gift by my pal. I had been suffering from weltschmerz and somehow he had the idea that some Legos would cheer me up - and he was right!
He got the Yellow Submarine for me and something for himself and we spent a very fun evening building together. We don't have riches to spend on Lego, but every, now and then we treated each other to a kit.

For my last birthday he gave me a red London bus. It reminded me of the first time I was in London, with a friend and her five year old daughter. The first thing we did was to get tickets for a week (which was more difficult than it sounds here) and then we hopped on a bus, got out, hopped on another bus, and so on, leaving it to chance where we would end up. It's what my friend and I had done on the subway in Berlin years ago, too.


It only took me about five months to get this finished. We started when it was very hot and I simply couldn't sit anymore, then the lower part of the model went into storage in a cupboard, but last night it came out again. Although I didn't make in one sitting (while my friend managed a whole VW bus), I just put on the last brick AND I found a place for the bus on a shelf.
Now if only the cats don't get tempted to get up there for a closer look ... Gundel had been very interested in what we did ...