My LEGO®-related Rambles
My second Architecture Skyline set is the London Skyline (21034), topical as it’s my nearest city which has been immortalised in LEGO this way.
It is quite a bit deeper than the Berlin set I already have, mainly to accommodate somewhere for the London Eye to sit behind Big Ben and Tower Bridge. There were some interesting building techniques, and I think it represents the essence of London pretty well.
I was in Central London today for an evening event with some friends from work, and took the opportunity to visit the flagship LEGO store in Leicester Square for the first time. I know it’s been open for a while, but I haven’t been there before as I usually avoid the most touristy parts of the capital, and I’ve only been out of my Dark Ages since last month. Here’s my haul:
I treated myself to the Architecture London Skyline (21034) set, the exclusive bowler-hatted Lester Minifig Polybag (40308) and a large and small Pick-A-Brick cup, which took my purchases over the threshold for two freebie sets – the festive Nutcracker (40254) and a second copy of the 24-in-1 Christmas Build Up 2017 (40253). I’m happy to get another one as one of my AFOL friends has a 2016 equivalent which they are happy to swap for my 2017 extra.
I found some useful bits in the Wall, but probably could have crammed my cups with more if I had had the time and patience – visiting the store in the last shopping week before Christmas was bedlam and I wouldn’t recommend it. I was minding my own business filling one cup when someone almost pinched the other one which i had already filled! Savages…
Here is the contents of the big cup – some slopes and inverted slopes, yellow 1×6 and 1×4 bricks, a load of 2×2 red bricks, plenty of 1×1 round bricks and tiles in red transparent, lots of pink 1×2 plates and a few in lime green. Plus some other bits and pieces.
The small cup contained a load of loose 1×1 trans yellow plates, some other useful 2×8 and 4×4 plates in various colours and a few more 2×2 inverted slopes in blue.
Pretty pleased with these, I’m not sure what I’m going to build with them yet! Watch this space.
I’ve only just emerged from my Dark Ages, so I was surprised to learn that AFOLs were a thing – Adult Fans of LEGO. Yay! I immediately looked up where my nearest group was – London. OK, bit of a hike each month, but I signed up for their November meetup and today was the day.
I started off with a quick trip to the LEGO store in Westfield at Stratford on the way in, where I picked up a few bits from the Pick-A-Brick wall. There weren’t too many pieces of use for Microscale stuff as it was mainly bigger bricks, but I stuffed a large beaker full for my money. Clearly, I need to work on my technique, though! When I got home I separated it all out and this was my haul – which included two baubles with some gold 2×2 bricks inside. I can see them being used in a fancy MOC at some point:
Anyway, on to the meetup… which was in the function room of a pub near Euston. Today’s event was a little unusual in that the good folks from the New Elemetary blog had brought along large quantities of some new pieces for us to play with, as well as using the stash of bricks owned by the club. We spent 20 minutes building something with the bits and then moved around to another table (with different elements available) so we got to chat with lots of people while we were building. It was a nice way to get to know a few folks. Here’s what I made during my 4×20-minute builds… I’m quite out of practice with MOCing, and compared to what some people managed, they weren’t very exciting, but I enjoyed it anyway.
I’m already looking forward to the December meetup and Christmas Party.