that left knee is mine!

Yesterday kicked off the 3-day challenge of constructing a 12-foot Santa Yoda, made entirely of legos (with a couple of metal support beams.) The public was invited to come to Union Square and help Master Builders (that's their official title) build Lego bricks for Yoda, all next to that tiny ice skating rink.

Guess where I spent two hours of my morning...

impressive he is...
this is the mini-model.

the feet of the giant Yoda,
as cared for by Master Builder Steve

my first brick!

I've lost count already... this is between my tenth and fifteenth brick

Master Builder Eric isn't afraid to give Yoda a little tough love
with the mallet

my "team" kept hitting the bottom of the lego bucket.
Yes, I was part of an unofficial "team" of strangers building bricks together.

Master Builders Eric and Steve plan their next step

the legs at the end of my two-hour adoration of Yoda

I lost count of my bricks early on but I would guess that by the end of the two hours I spent there, I'd made 90 - 100 bricks. What I seriously needed after was a little food and a lot of hand lotion... brand new Lego blocks are sharp!

Building continues today and is scheduled to finish tomorrow around 6PM. I'm not sure if I can return tomorrow but I've been told that there were two camera filming the entire process and a stop-motion video of Yoda's emergence will be show on the official site after completion. Very cool.

Even better, when I read about this epic event in the newspaper, it sounded like they would deconstruct Yoda on Monday! The horror! But it turns out that they will just be moving him to Connecticut, the US headquarters of Lego. What a relief... you can't just destroy Yoda and crush the holiday dreams of children around the developed world.