It was exactly a year ago – March 10th, 2012 – when my blog, Quest for Castle (now known as Quest for Bricks) started with The Inspiration. I had began thinking about the upcoming project in the preceding days when I was acquiring and building the 7946 King’s Castle with my son. Those musings prompted me to start collecting and building piecemeal the 1984 classic 6080 King’s Castle – and to blog about the process. Eventually, that initial project and its small diary-like blog inspired me to expand the blog, re-visit LEGOLAND Denmark and start another project, the quest for Inter-City train. It has been quite a LEGO year.

Where do things stand now? I am still positively giddy about re-discovering LEGO, although also painfully aware of the limited time I have had for it. Hence there hasn’t been anything to report in the past two months. That isn’t to say I have been completely void of LEGO in my life. Me and my son have built together his first Legends of Chima (70101 Equila Target Practice) which to me looks more interesting than Ninjago, our first sizable Star Wars craft (9493 X-wing Starfighter) and I have two sets of my own waiting for the build: 9476 The Orc Forge I photographed way back when and 79001 Escape from Mirkwood Spiders I mentioned in The Hobbit post.

Speaking of things waiting to be built, I must celebrate the one year anniversary of the quest for Lion Knights’ castle with a still incomplete King’s Castle. As you know, I almost finished it last September and that’s where it stands. I still plan to get the remaining missing parts, of course. By the way, it still gets me every time I see it, the King’s Castle, even in its slightly incomplete form. There is something so powerful and familiar about that shape – a real blast from the past – that it is a bit emotional to see it, really. All those childhood years of looking at the castle in catalogs and abortive attempts to replicate it have stuck somewhere so deep that not even two and a half decades in-between can apparently erase that.

My quest for Inter-City train hasn’t progressed much since September either. I have a bunch of unopened Pick a Brick parts (and a few new sets to scavenge) for it, some tentative Power Functions stuff I may eventually use for powertrain variations (I have also contemplated powering up the portcullis of the King’s Castle), as well as one small BrickLink batch of vintage 1980s LEGO train parts – plus my infamously still-unorganized childhood collection of course. I am still missing all the baseplates for example to start building any parts of the set. All this would be easily rectifiable of course, but I have let the project be on pause until I have enough time to really concentrate on it again.

Once you get into the AFOL groove of things, it is hard to let it completely be even when you are on a bit of a pause. Especially as a parent of an avid LEGO builder. Shopping with my son, I have already observed some interesting new 2013 sets in stores and online listings, notably the interesting-looking For Young Builders – Easy To Build sets for kids (interesting from the parenting perspective), the suitably sinister robbery-themed City sets and most importantly, the return of LEGO Castle! There is even a new 70404 King’s Castle slated for August 2013 release. Now, I really must complete my castle before that… right?

Big thanks to all the readers and commenters of the first year – both here and on the forums.