I was so into Legos when I was little, and I'm on the hunt for some of the Harry Potter sets. What I really want (and I don't think they make) is The Burrow. Wouldn't that be great?

I've knit the blue/green/orange in the bottom left of the picture, and it just turns out so lovely. I'd never used Regia before that, and the stripes were spectacular - nice and thick.

Oh yes, Kristin, a Burrow set would be great! I've been tempted to get a Harry Potter set for myself, but I really don't like any of the ones they've made so far.

LEGO PEOPLE: We want the Burrow and a decent Ron figure! Please. :)

"Mooooom! Can you take this apart?!" Oh, the brick separator will save me!

As a Lego mom myself (and my son is now 13) I can tell you a couple of tricks. #1...go to Home Depot or Lowes or one of those type stores. Purchase big plastic fishing box. These were great because on the top are little compartments...perfect for storing little lego heads, or bodies, or small accessories. It has a see-through plastic top that stays locked down when you want it to. Then the box open up and can hold many, many legos. #2. Look into buying Rokenbok sets in the future. This a pretty cool wireless remote controlled thing with trucks and stuff. It is pretty expensive for the initial sets...but, the best thing is that Legos can be built on the platforms adding to the fun and enjoyment. (Again, big rolling plastic bins with drawers are a big help to store all the track and cars, etc.) Just a thought. Oh...and love that sock yarn. Will be looking at my LYS for some in the future or online if not available locally. Elise

It looks like you don't have lego in the US :)
Have you ever been to Legoland in Denmark? That's great fun both for big and small lego lovers.

woooow that's a lot of sock yarn (and a whole lot of legos!!) I hope all three of you enjoy your new treasure trove!

I see you snagged that Regia Canadaian Color in Calgary like my friend brought me back from Germany! I love mine. It will be Jaywalkers eventually, I've ripped it out once, but the pattering that comes out is fabulous!

I'm a Lego-Mom, too.

And I've heard from special stores (one in Frankfurt, one in Köln) where you can buy stones by weight.

Big Boxes of stones are also still available, I just bought one for christmas.

I'm not a Lego mom, but I am a Lego wife. My husband has tons of Legos (think on the order of 10s of Rubbermaid bins -- he can't complain about my yarn stash without me holding him accountable to this fact!) and I never thought that him sharing his Lego findings with me would be useful, but maybe now it can be helpful to you!

There's a website with scans of instruction booklets (and parts inventory lists) from discontinued Lego sets seemingly from the beginning of time. (www.peeron.com - click on 'Instruction scans') Your sons probably have enough pieces from their other sets to make many of them.

Drooling over your sock yarn purchases! I need to find some of the Regia yarns because they are yummy!

Two sets for the boys' birthday in summer? Can they wait that long? And even 2 for Christmas? Woo ... I am amazed!

I actually gasped with a little laughter at the sight of all that sock yarn! :) And hooray for the great Lego finds. I found over Christmas vacation that the real advantage to traveling with kids is that I get to check more luggage (full of yarn!). LOL! ;)

Knitting socks while the kids make lego masterpieces... what a life, eh?

Ooooh, I almost bought some of those nice bright pink Regias on Sunday but ended up with the muted colors... for now! Welcome back and thanks for the lego tip. It's stored away in my brain for some possible day when I have builders of my own. :)

Ooooooh, Julie, thanks for the link!!!

For a brief period of time (around 1996?) they made Lego Freestyle, which was a big bucket of random pieces. It was like a good starter set for the big jumbled box-o-Legos that I ended up with as a kid- the castle set mixed up with the space set mixed up a whole bunch of flower stems and trees. Such a nice alternative to the super branded, specific sets out there now!

Wow- I really hope my kid loves Lego as much as I did!

I know what you mean about the Lego sets! The set that my boys have now that I had when I was a kid came in a big box with sections in it, and when you lifted the "lid" it had all kinds of things you could make, plus the outside of the box was covered with pics of stuff you could make, too. I bought them a set a couple of Christmases ago, and I had a really hard time to find a multi-purpose box! I think I will order them some bags of assorted pieces from the Lego site. They're usually priced really well.

Oh, I miss the Legos! My son (now 15) and I could spend hours just building and rebuilding. *sigh* My favs were the people - I loves me the Lego people :-) All his Legos are in a big rubbermaid tub in the garage saved for his children. *sniff*
I am so jealous.

My aunt and uncle (who live on the north shore) found some guy on craigslist who was selling a crap load of old legos dirt cheap. Something like 20lbs... It may be a good resource for you!

Hi

If you get a chance and you want to, take a look at my blog. I just took a picture of our "Lego City" that is built in our extra bedroom/craft room/lego room. My husband, son, daughter, and I are all into legos. I even have a mini fig on my desk that is knitting. There is a pic of that on my blog too. Gotta love the legos and yarn.

I don't have time to read all the comments, but have you tried eBay for older Lego sets of just basic pieces? Looks like you've got enough to last you a while now anyway. heh :)

There is a lego store at Downtown Disney a few miles from my house.

Oooo... pretty yarn and fun legos!

My mom used to buy lego at garage sales for me. :)

Ooooooh, Legos! My son at 17 will not part with his- mostly Star Wars. His Millenium Falcon cost the earth, but he still has it in his room, as well as Droids and R2D2. Just think of all the yarn I could have bought.....

Oh yeah those big Star Wars sets are expensive!

My boys always look at the age estimates on the boxes to see which Legos they can do and 'how old you have to be'. When they saw that some of those Star Wars boxes say age 16 or so on them, they asked why and I told them because you've got to be old enough to have a job and pay for them yourself! ;0)

OH I have to go to the basement and get the boxes of Lego we inhereted from the cousins here. We've had so much fun with Playmobile, I haven't brought it up yet. What a great booty!! Thanks for the tip with the Trenner!

My son is 14, and he still makes stuff with his Legos. So you can see it as an investment for the boys' future!

I agree about the branding, HATE it. There are Lego stores in the US though that sell the bricks by color, piece, pound, whatever you want. I know there's one in the Mall of America in Minneapolis. And get on the Lego e-mail list, they have special offers and so forth all the time.

About the legos not coming in "generic" sets...Write the lego company..let them know that there is a demand.

There is a Legoland in San Diego, CA similar to Legoland in Denmark. And you can buy legos from bins at a store in Downtown Disney right outside the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim. So, if your family ever makes a trip to SoCal...it may be worth the visit.

Wow. I think we had a couple windows and a little dude or two, but everything else was blocks. And we didn't have any instructions. I like the unfettered creativity that we were afforded!!

That orange Regia in the center back row? AWESOME.

Those brick separator things really saved my teeth when I was small. I was always hell bent on chewing everything off instead until we got one of them with a box.

Uiii! My sons's got that helicopter set and he really loves it. The LEGO store in Cologne is right in the city, on the upper part of Hohe Straße (seen from the cathedral). They sell single lego items in bins.

My daughters always loved legos. Their main complaint was the lack of female action figures such as pirates. All the female figures were mother types. I don't know if this has changed. The three of them are in their early 20's. They used to set up legos all of the living room. We had a lot of them.

The brick separator looks like the top part of a pill cutter. Hmmm...are those rubber grips?

Also, the one thing I didn't like legos were when you stepped on them with bare feet. Owch!

I can tell you that Lego actually has tried going back to the "old values" and old standards with making these more general packages with more all-round bricks that can be built into a lot of things - and it actually saved the company from having to be broken into smaller units. I am Danish so we've heard a lot of it in the news. ;o) I can see it myself with the newish Lego series for toddlers which they called "Explore" (at least here in Denmark) which they seem to have discontinued to go back to the old line, "Duplo", which every mother in Denmark probably will know from their own childhood. "Explore" was a lot of fixed things, no interchangeability, but Duplo was more or less like Legos but kind of "big size".
And as far as more female figures goes, which one of the commenters asks for, Lego has a series called "Belleville" with small figurines, especially targeted for the girls. :o)

I have a lego nut, and he's 6. I don't think he's ever built one of the sets per the directions before - except for the TIE fighter from Star Wars.

ANYWAY - we have a Lego store by our house that sells legos by the bulk; I just get them that way and let him run crazy with them.

I second Kit's mention of the bare feet meets Lego pain. Especially in the middle of the night. Ouch.

I have a "lego" boy myself. He always builds according to the instructions, then builds the most wonderful little cars/planes/boats/spaceships. We lamented the passing of the regular sets, but turns out they exist(they come in plastic tubs). But you've enlightened me..I spent a full ten minutes one day trying to figure out what that durned thing was--a brick separator!!! You've saved me! "mommy, please take this apart" There are days I hear that over and over...

So true about the old-days Legos. That's what I grew up on, and I haven't had any need to buy Legos in the past 10 years, but I've noticed that it's all about the sets. Bleck. Maybe we should all write to Lego and let them know what we want!

The Lego stores are really great! There are a couple of them in the greater Boston area. We always visit the one in the Natick mall that has all the bins of individual pieces and buy up buckets full of wheels. What can I say, the boys love to make things with wheels. One of them will make a crazy car and then boast that his car has 25 wheels. Then his brother has to try to make a car with more wheels. So we need a lot of wheels! I really like that you can get individual pieces there, but every time I go I am just overwhelmed at how uninteresting the majority of the boxed sets are. I don't want Dinos Attack or Killer Robots or a thousand city buildings and the boys don't know Star Wars or care about pirates or knights. They just want to build vehicles. We've got plenty of designer sets and general sets, but need more instructions for basic vehicles.

Maybe I will write to Lego to let them know that there is more demand for the Creator-type of sets. And no more creatures with guns!

Oooh, I need me one of those Lego separators! Here's another insanely useful Lego item - a coffee table that slides open with just enough room for an under bed storage box and plenty of room on top to build: http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?topcategoryId=15564&catalogId=10103&storeId=12&productId=51461&langId=-1&parentCats=15564*15797*15799

Oh, and this is the ULTIMATE Lego accessory - a lego sorter! Coolest. Thing. Ever.
http://www.box4blox.com/

My husband once took a business class that discussed the difference between how American and German kids played with Legos -- German kids opened the box, built exactly what the directions said, and then were done with that set -- they moved on to the next one. American kids opened the box, tossed the directions, and just experimented. It's interesting that the roles have reversed now.

If it is any comfort, Lego is going back to the old-fashion kind of lego where you can build whatever you want and not just one set. It seems that the demand on old-fashioned lego has been great enough to put it back in production. Either that, or the sale of "build-one-thing-only" sets have been to bad.
Nina, Denmark

Funny, my son builds and builds but we are a Knex family instead of Legos (except for Bionicles - he LOVES his bionicles).

I LOVE all the sock yarn you brought back. sigh. What beautiful colors. . . . .

have you ever been to a lego shop??? there is a big on in cologne. they're fantastic: you can buy the sets and single pieces. all the kids i know just love to play with lego, and all these kids always put together their own creation. they like the sets, but think that they're boring.
woah, you got some yarn, sock yarn....enough yarn to knit socks for the next hundred years....
sabine, berlin

have you ever been to a lego shop??? there is a big on in cologne. they're fantastic: you can buy the sets and single pieces. all the kids i know just love to play with lego, and all these kids always put together their own creation. they like the sets, but think that they're boring.
woah, you got some yarn, sock yarn....enough yarn to knit socks for the next hundred years....
sabine, berlin

Did you try ebay for just tubs of non particular set legos? Just tubs of the building legos? might be worth it for the two little architechs you've got there. Oh, and I'm jealous of the sock yarn....

I've read your blog for some time now, and am fascinated by your knitting and legos. I second the suggestion to try ebay for just a ton of legos, not the themed ones/sets, you might want to wash them first? I'm a germ freak tough. hehe. Did you know that there's a lego room at MIT? I've only seen pictures. At a birthday party for a one year old her grandpa said that if he ever heard a burglar he would just throw the box of jumbo blocks down the hall. lol.

I really wonder what my parents would say if I just come home with a luggage full of yarns and needles. (They have absolutely no idea that I knit...)

I salivate over your German sock yarn.

Alison, have a look around your area to see if you have a Lego outlet. We have one near Toronto that you can buy the Lego in BULK! You can pick whatever pieces you want!

My mother saved a small box of plain Legos from when we were little. The kids love them because they're so functional and so PLAIN. They spur the imagination rather than confine it to instructions. Sam used to be a big LEGO man but those massive sets where you build just one thing (like Yoda)? He built them once and after they started falling apart, he refused to put them back together. Once was enough he said!

Whoopsy daisy! That was me, not the VIP!

Maybe you can talk hubby into making you a lego ball winder or a lego knitting machine: http://marysvirginwool.blogspot.com/2006/01/lego-knitting-machine.html

Maybe that's it, Erica. My boys really do that "German" thing of wanting to follow a set of instructions and build a thing that they have a picture of. Don't get me wrong, we have two giant tubs full of general pieces and they love to make crazy cars too (B likes to make cars with wheels on different levels that touch each other so it's like a gear system and S likes to put dozens of satellite dishes all over his cars!). But they are just totally into following the instructions to make something. They like to explain how many steps each thing took after they make it. Then they'll take it apart to make the next thing.

That's why I think what I'm really missing from the general Lego sets is the instruction booklets with lots of different ideas. Pieces I can get at the Lego store, but not idea books. It's like you can either get a boxed set with instructions to make just one thing or a giant box of general Legos with no instructions at all.

Hi Alison,

now I get the point. :) Nothing my son (same age as yours) ever does. But I once found a little computer programm, where you can make your own instructions, have to dig around my laptop a bit to find it again. Maybe that would be some fun for your boys.

My three Lego boys make me worried for walking on the ground at home! We end up buying the sets because they're easier, but my oldest makes up whatever he wants from the pieces.

Have you tried Tuesday Morning? Ours often has older Lego sets for cheap(er)!

I was not happy when the Lego store opened up at our mall -- now I have to avoid it whenever we go there! Why don't they open up Regia stores at our malls? ;)

If your kids love Legos, try K'Nex. My kids got the roller coaster and ball factory one year for Christmas and spent days--because they are HUGE working on them. Then they took them apart and redid them. So cool! Oh, and when they're a little older--Fisherteknik (check for spelling). Lego used to sell robotic stuff too, maybe check their site or a site that sells science stuff.

My four year old is Thomas nut, who is nearing Lego fanaticism. So his favorite uncle decided at Christmas to feed the addiciton with three of five Thomas the Tank Engine sets. And your EXACTLY right, as soon as he saw on the flyer that there were two more sets he did not have, the foot stomping started!
And the yarn....*gasp*...the yarny goodness! Oh just to fondle it!

Okay, Okay, when you put it that way... ;-)
isn't it fun to do shopping over seas...you might want to try ebay for the older stuff.
I have some really older lego...from the 80's...the ones my folks got me...I kept it in the origianl package.
What I can't find and would really like to find is this bin we have with just regular lego blocks...I think DS is coming to the age where he would enjoy it. Right now he is still using the 2+ set...

Lego is even in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. See http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=3205

I loved LEGO when I was little. You are right... I see my nephews with these new LEGO sets and I just want to cry.