While looking through a book for some inspiration, I took a step back and realized my next post or two was sitting right in front of me.   It was my collection of Lego books!

Over time my collection has grown from the Lego PlayBook, given to me from my cousin Suzanne, to the (almost) full shelf you see above.  This collection does not include the digital books I have gathered along the way as well.   It spans from the basic Lego offerings, of the Playbook, Ideas book, Awesome ideas to the newest book, The Lego Trains Book by Holger Matthes.  This is only the second book to be written covering only Lego trains. During our trip to Austria this summer, I had been eyeing the original version at Thalia “the local Barnes & Noble”. Although this was all in German, I was very tempted to buy it.  The weight of the book stopped me from buying it.  I am glad I waited!  Mr. Matthes was approached by No Starch Press to write a version in English and boy am I glad they did.

This book is amazing.  Recently, I received an alert from Amazon, since it was on my wish list, that it had been discounted 32% to $16.90 and can be find here: The Lego Trains .  I am glad I grabbed this book. Holger does an amazing job going through the history of the Lego trains, and sharing great building tips on how to build Lego trains. He covers the types of Lego pieces needed and where they can be found. If you are someone that has always dreamt of building trains out of Lego this is THE BOOK for you.  Especially since Lego seems to not be offering any newer train sets recently!  I can’t wait to build my first Train modeling it after the MBTA, as a bonus to my minifig passengers, these trains would arrive on time!  Seriously, if you are slightly interested in Lego and trains, check out this book.

By the way, the first book, which has been difficult to find, written by Jacob McKee can be found on my shelf as well.  This has recently been re-released on Amazon, here is the link, Getting Started with Lego Trains . McKee, shares some of his most fascinating and original train designs, while including descriptive articles on basic building techniques, plus high-quality building instructions for several different projects. Veteran LEGO® trains fanatics and curious beginners alike will find this book the easiest way to get started with LEGO® trains.

The last book I’ll cover in this post is called “When Bricks Get Their Wings”, written by Stephen Fender. This is a step by step by step guide on how to build any sort of flying machine out of Lego.  These span from Hang Gliders to large Jumbo Jets.  Fender also provides a parts list to make sure you have the necessary bricks. If interested, here is a link to his book, When Bricks Get Their Wings.  If you do get his book, check out the dedication page!

Stay tuned for the next post covering more of the books on my shelf.   I plan on covering the books by Sarah Dees and also the books by Meaghan Rothrock, all three of her volumes!

What does an office furniture company and building a LEGO set have in common? Knolling.

It all started years ago when a janitor at a furniture store, which was designing the furniture brand Knoll, starting laying out the tools he found left out at the end of the day at right angles to each other. This started a popular movement where people would find any type of material and lay it out at right angles grouping like items together by size. This was made more popular by Tom Sachs and by the late Eighties knolling had become a trend. You can now see examples of knolling on Pinterest and Instagram.

How does LEGO fit into this? Well… if you lay out all the pieces from a new LEGO set and organize them by color, piece and size…you may be a closet Knoller! To some, tearing open all the bags, dumping the contents on the table to sort out, as they come out of the large sets, like the LEGO Porsche or Disney Castle for example, is just plain crazy. I mean why mix-up the contents of all the bags, when LEGO has already taken the time to break-out the bags to correspond with the manuals and help with your build?

It’s all about making order from chaos. There really is something quite calming about being able to easily find that one piece, and I know you have done this, critical to your build. In other builds, where you didn’t knoll your pieces, you swear LEGO has forgotten to include in your package and spent 15 mins looking for it. Just about ready to call customer service and get a replacement part….

So what about you? Are you a Knoller without even knowing it?

Feel free to leave me a comment, more importantly, I would love seeing your examples of knolling your sets.

Happy building!