This year I have been watching season 2 of LEGO Masters.

Tonight was a competition to build a castle hanging off of a wall.

The brothers from my county made it into the finale which will be next week. I will definitely be looking forward to it.

Each week the show has me thinking of one of my hobbies.

Building with Ankerstein is one of my hobbies, and is something that I have done a lot of while staying home during the pandemic.

I discovered Ankerstein about 16 years ago during a trip to Jena, Germany. They had an exhibition at a shopping mall.

Tonight I was reminded of a castle that I built with the same set that is shown above. It is not hanging off a wall like in the Lego Masters episode tonight, but it is quite large.

The Ankerstein system is pretty cool. You start with a Basic Box and then add Extension Boxes to build progressively larger structures.

As you add additional sets the variety of stones increase and new stones are introduced. The complexity of the buildings increase with each box.

The boxes come with layer plans for building different structures, but many builders come up with their own designs.

The stones can be used over and over again as they are simply stacked on top of each other. Sometimes it takes a really steady hand to place the blocks, and I have also had a few collapses when I have bumped the building or table.

There is no big Ankerstein Masters competition, but there is a worldwide club of Ankerstein builders. See: Mededelingenblad

I will be looking forward to next Tuesday nights to see who wins the Lego Masters championship, but I will stick to my stones for my own buildings

Steven