{"id":131,"date":"2025-07-26T20:25:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/?p=131"},"modified":"2025-09-14T14:24:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T14:24:03","slug":"lina-eva-and-the-loyal-sea-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/2025\/07\/26\/lina-eva-and-the-loyal-sea-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"Lina, Eva and the Loyal Sea Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was Lina&#8217;s birthday coming up. Giving that <a href=\"\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/tomas-tri-way-deep-skimmer\/\">skimmer<\/a> to her brother had been so heartwarming. Could I do something similar for her? I&#8217;d just helped an old friend&#8217;s kid Eva put her exotic parrot <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lego.com\/en-us\/product\/exotic-parrot-31136\">31136<\/a> together. Could that kit would make a good in-world blauwdraak for sibling stories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2400\" height=\"1688\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-26-at-22.40.32.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-143\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Good things<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Can you swoosh it? Yes you can.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When threatened switches to angry sea horse mode.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Decorate it your way\u2122\ufe0f with tiles left over or your own collection. Try scales or streaming water.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wings lock up for high speed passenger protection.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Legs swing down for landing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mouth opens (roaring not included).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2 seats: pilot (&#8220;steer by ear&#8221;) and passenger. Additional on wing seating available for the budget traveller.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One secret trick releases flowers or eggs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/angry-sea-horse_16.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-136\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bad things<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Legs keep falling off.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Couple of tricky assembly steps. Don&#8217;t be afraid to ask for help, also in life.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mini-figs who don&#8217;t fasten seat belts will get a fright in sea horse mode.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That one secret trick may also release poop.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Head rotates like an owl for confusing upside down flying.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Actually maybe that&#8217;s a good thing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Feathery fronds and wings get in each other&#8217;s way. It&#8217;s a locking mechanism not a bug.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mini-figs also not included.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/vanilla_water_streaming_1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-138\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I now realise the source material meant this was always going to be a scrappier build \ud83c\udfc4. <a href=\"https:\/\/bricknerd.com\/home\/snot-basics-geometry-techniques-and-pitfalls-3-18-2021\">Snot math<\/a> (for the barrel body) doesn&#8217;t come automatically to me so it was a frustrating struggle to build something that didn&#8217;t just explode when you looked at it. I got my 8 sides sturdy in the end and the one secret trick was a wonderful bonus given the lack of play features. I love the nostrils, teeth and moving jaw. After that it was a bit &#8220;what can I do with what&#8217;s left?&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then you look at the things kids make and realise that a mush of colours and shapes is all totally fine, it&#8217;s playability and a good story that counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div data-wp-interactive=\"core\/file\" class=\"wp-block-file\"><object data-wp-bind--hidden=\"!state.hasPdfPreview\" hidden class=\"wp-block-file__embed\" data=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/instructs-v9.pdf\" type=\"application\/pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:600px\" aria-label=\"Embed of instructs v9.\"><\/object><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-a1f4f943-2dc6-434c-8bb0-dbcbea06425d\" href=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/instructs-v9.pdf\">instructs v9<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/instructs-v9.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-a1f4f943-2dc6-434c-8bb0-dbcbea06425d\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yes, I am conscious there&#8217;s a strong dose of &#8216;look what I made&#8217; here (welcome to my blog \ud83d\ude09 ) but I&#8217;m going with it. It was heart warming helping Lina put it together. She&#8217;s is no way short of it but giving the gift of attention is welcome at all ages I guess. And, killing two parrots with one stone, Eva was delighted by the surprise of instructions in the post. Which as a bonus stimulated her Dad to build a sorting system which got his juices going. The joy of creativity ripples out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was Lina\u2019s birthday coming up. Giving that skimmer to her brother had been so heartwarming. Could I do something similar for her?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alt","tag-instructions-included"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}