Update: Woggy #13

I am happy to report there has been progress, however small it might seem, on the construction of the Taj Mahal. These towers to the right are the only photogenic results as yet, but I have also completed the entire inner structure of the main dome, which still awaits its outer edifice to make it look all pretty for the camera.

These took an entire evening's worth of building to complete, and I can already see my supply of architectural materials diminishing down enough to know that the end of my construction triumph is very nearly in view.

Update: Woggy #13

Well, especially thanks to an experimental voluntary week without electricity, I have made some significant progress on the ole Taj Mahal. Here you can see I completed the dome, and have also created and assembled all of the main base of the mausoleum. The top of the dome is super-solid, obviously a rework of the classic & sturdy Lego sphere. But the sides are super fragile and have begun to be a major pain in my butt. Every time I even get near those sides they try and pop off, and when I try putting them back on they usually become disconnected from the base, which requires even more delicacy getting everything back in place again. But I admit, creating cylinders of any sort is definitely a hack with Legos, so I suppose the Lego engineer who created this design did the best they could. For now I've got my dome sitting up on this shelf, and I don't plan to touch it again until the final building assembly, where pieces are undoubtedly going to try and pop off yet again...

I can now check some items off my Woggy To-do list:

X complete the four tower spires (this one's from the last update)
X complete the center dome structure
X complete the main part of the central building

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• complete the roof of the central building
• put all pieces together
  
• revel in my construction triumph!

Woggy #13: Building the Taj Mahal

Well, yes, ok, it's not the actual Taj Mahal of course, as that building was built by many other people quite some time ago, and would require Tardean spatial distortion in order to fit it inside my apartment. However, the cost of said undertaking might be said to be somewhat proportional to that of the real one, albeit in micro scale. After many months of long looks in the Lego catalog, I finally decided this weekend to invest in the undertaking. Sunday evening was filled with much sorting of construction equipment, and actual construction began yesterday...
While I have in fact made progress since the above photo, I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me.

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• complete the four tower spires
• complete the center dome structure
• complete the main part of the central building
• complete the roof of the central building
• put all pieces together
  
• revel in my construction triumph!
  

Update: Woggy #13 Complete!

After many, many hours of enjoyable work, I'm happy to say that this miniaturely giant woggy has finally been finished! Whatever Lego fan actually posted somewhere that he completed this feat in a mere 10 hours either has a faulty sense of timing, superhuman building power, or must have employed a large army of miniature robots to complete his task.

My final hours of project completion were assisted greatly not only by my small Lego workmen supervisors (see three of them helping to the left), but also by my Velvet Underground-seeded Pandora station, which I feel helped especially pulling me through all the delicate, frustrating, and slightly nerve-wracking moments connecting all the large component parts to one another.

And baby it was allright
And it was alright
Hey it was allright

Unexpectedly, the worst moments came not from placing the large central dome, which unlike all my previous attempts at handling it, did not fall apart or lose any tiles in the process, but from the plugging in of all the exterior building pieces to one another. As soon as I would get two plugged into each other and attempted a third, I'd find the second and third pieces come together only at the expense of the first two pieces coming apart. After an of absurd series of together-together-apart, together-together-aparts, I did finally succeed at getting them all together into one comprehensive whole, and only a few minor and non-lethal break and repairs.

In the end, the final result was pretty impressive. Hugely impressive in fact, and now I am beginning to consider the question my husband first asked me when I brought the Taj Mahal set home, and that is "Where exactly are you going to put that thing in our place?" I had decided not to worry about that trivial detail until after it was finished. For now, this Ottoman looks like a good place, though obviously not a permanent one. Anyway it sure looks great, especially when I put a light inside and the fountain from my city set in front of it. Who needs airfare? In that perspective the cost of this project now seems downright economical!