Fountain Pen Day 2014

I believe I've mentioned this before, but you can't do this with a ballpoint.

Put the fount (and the ain) back into your life and pick up a fountain pen. Heck, a disposable one will do - they're really very good and zero maintenance. Look for Pilot V-Pens (or Varsities, if you're in 'Murrica).

Right, I'm away to drool over some inks and try not to give in and buy any. Good luck with that, I hear you perspicaciously remark...

Monday Stinks #15

In celebration of Friday's Fountain Pen Day, a brief return for Monday Stinkage. (Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the inkwell...) Evidently I still haven't got to grips with the best way to capture ink colour. Ah well.

J Herbin Café des Îles is not a remarkable ink, but a pleasant one, and it looks great on cream paper. It seems to go well in a Bedrock Flake Edison Beaumont, currently sporting a fine nib reground by moi to be a little italicised.

Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black has pretty much taken the post of everyday ink at the moment; you just don't have to worry about it, and it has a soupçon of water resistance which can be handy. Currently living in the M200 Pelikan, which boasts being one of the few pens I haven't butchered customised.

Diamine Ancient Copper does not photograph well, which is a crime. So much better in the flesh, and possibly just a bit too wet to bing out its best coming from the Indian Gama Airborne with substitute Onoto flex nib.

Diamine Bilberry I really didn't take to at first, but once you get used to more lubricated inks and sheen effects, it comes into its own. Arguably a Pilot extra-fine nib in a Kakuno is not the best way to show it off, but as writing experiences go with such a fine point, it's hard to beat.

Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki seems to be pretty much the Iroshizuku everyone ends up with (if they end up with one at all), and it's nice enough. I'm not sure that the considerably cheaper Sailor range of inks aren't just as smooth flowing and well-behaved though, just not always so widely available. The restored cobalt blue and bronze button filler of unknown parentage is currently enjoying this particular tipple, because naturally the no-name battered old thing should get the premium ink...

Finally Pelikan Edelstein Garnet, an ink I dismissed as utterly without upsides (apart from being a free gift), until it caught my eye as I was chucking out a finished scribble notebook. What gorgeous glowing red is this? I exclaimed. Deduction lead to Garnet being the only possible answer, so I gave it another chance. Once you get your head into the idea that, where Pelikan is concerned, red will aways tend towards orange, it's better. (Their 4001 "Brilliant Red" is basically a day-glo orange with a hint of red that will sear off your retinas if looked at for more than 1.03 of a second. I'd ink something up with it and show you, except Fountain Pen Day is about encouraging FP use...) But it is not a great ink, despite its fancy perfume-bottle-like presentation. Currently dwelling in a battered Parker "New" Duofold (c.1953-61) whose nib was so worn to the previous owner's hand that drastic measures had to be taken to make it usable. Purists would, probably justifiably, frown. Purists may go away and stick their heads in a bucket. Probably by Montblanc.

Anyway, there we go. So yes, the pens are still getting a workout; zibaldones are getting finished at regular three month intervals, plus I'm attempting to learn/relearn/stop-mis-remembering some French, and there's nothing like writing it down to get it sticking in the memory, non? (Je dis oui.)

Bugs, Aliens, and Daleks

You know your blog posting is sporadic when the layout of the post composition page seems to have changed every time you log in...

I should put that on a t-shirt. By necessity, it'll have to be quite a large t-shirt.

So October was fairly disastrous; technology failed me, and me failed me. As always seems to be the case, despite having a social diary to rival an Olympic-grade hermit, I succumbed to that well-known ailment "There's a lot of that going about". Well it was going about, but then it decided it liked the amenities, so stayed around, moved in all its DVDs and toothbrush, and pretty much hasn't gone anywhere. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, my friendly neighbourhood aliens, BT Open Reach, have been playing silly bu- bothersome telephone engineer games and have left me to bask in such download speeds as 70kpbs and the like. Yes, that's Kbps. That's... slow. I can't recall if I've previously shared my theory about Open Reach engineers and the protective ring that is put about them so you can never actually speak to them directly? My assumption is that they are, in fact, all members of a telecommunicationally-gifted race of aliens who crashed landed on Earth, can't fix the spaceship (but their 'phone line to home is crystal clear), and have had to make their way in the world as best they can while they wait for spares to be delivered from the planet Lucas15. Alas, they can't actually converse in any way acceptable in public, so while BT were happy to hire some reasonable engineers on the cheap (even if their driving skills are clearly a bit iffy), they do have to ensure the general public never actually has a chance to speak to them and discover the hideous truth. I suspect further hideous truth involves entirely scheduled disruption to our contracted service, but as long as they don't actually tell us that they don't have to make any recompense. But then I'm a wee bit cynical that way.

While all that was going on I was fighting a desperate, and ultimately unsuccessful, rearguard action trying to save my 'puter from imminent death. I finally gave up the fight when the video display simply ceased to display and yet I could still hear the hard drive, which was the part that was claimed to be breathing its last, still merrily clunking away behind the blank black screen. Ah, technology, gotta hate its guts, haven't you? Still, now I truly know I am Old; instead of doing the happy New Computer Dance like all the cool kids, I have been steeped in misery whilst learning the new quirks and foibles. Friends, such is my advanced state of carpet slipper wearing, I would rather things just bally well worked and continued to so do until the end of time or when I've finished with them, whichever is later. Sigh.

On the plus side, I've now ascertained that the front screen of a late 2009 iMac may be readily removed with the aid of the common sink plunger, so now we know why the Daleks carry them...

Okay, that was October. Next Friday sees the first Friday in November, and thus Fountain Pen Day is upon us, so dust off those nibs and decant that ink in readiness. And the day after that the blog will reach its 10th birthday. Zoicks.

Focused

Hey, amazing news! I bought a tool.

I know what you're thinking. Swarovski crystal handle, hand-hewn from the crystal mines of... No? You weren't thinking that? Oh. You were thinking "What have you gone and done now, Alf"? Ah. Well, yes, fair enough. As it happens this elegant example of the screwdriver manufacturers' art was not the primary goal.

It was the 30-odd pieces of black plastic and an assortment of screws and springs.

Oh, and some instructions. In Chinese. Not Chinglish, for which I have an inexplicable fondness, but actual hanzi. Thank goodness for the interweb, where I could find not only the instructions in English but also several articles on and additional photos of the building process. The end result is this:

A 35mm Twin Lens Reflex camera. (Stick "Recesky" or "Garraflex" (or both) in Google and you can learn all about it.) It's something between an Airfix kit and an Ikea flatpack, both of which I have some experience with. Such as checking you have all the parts and counting the screws before you start; I had a couple of spare washer head screws at the finish, which could have caused worry had I not known they were extras. A couple of very similar parts were transposed in their tray locations too, which held me up a little. So no, I didn't make it within the suggested hour, but it was less than two.

And it actually works. I put a test roll of film through it and got it developed yesterday in my local independent camera shop (Pause for a moment and dwell on the excitement that there is a local independent camera shop. Actually there are two. Amazing.) They all came out, all in focus, and no light leakage. Really pretty impressive, and bags of character. (That's code for "tiny area actually in focus" and "dark corners/vignetting") My previous camera use has been purely means to an end stuff; this is more "Have camera, what can I photograph?" Different experience entirely, and seeing the familiar through the reverse image viewfinder adds a Through The Looking-Glass aspect too. All in all a fascinating thing. Ridiculously satisfying too, especially making the shutter work. click click click click click

 

 

The scanner elected to make them a little redder than they should be, but you get the gist. The double exposure was unintended - although I did plan to try one anyway, albeit not quite like that... You know those Easter Island heads? Look at that sundial and tell me you don't see their extremely flat-headed cousins.

Kerb Kerve

For years I've admired a kerbstone in the city of Truro. I can't honestly say that's normal, but there it is. Yesterday, I finally managed to get myself, the kerbstone, the camera, and some sunshine all in the same place at once.

Look at that shape. (I dunno, would we call that an ovolo with quirk?)  It's granite, for the love of Mike. How ever long did it take some unknown artisan to shape that thing so cleanly? And, more to the point, why? But 'tis a thing of beauty, and thus I share it with the interweb.

A little way down the road, a view of the cathedral ended up, quite by chance, with a rather apposite shop sign in shot. Made me chuckle anyway.

Confession

Lack of blogging confession? Ack, take that as read. (Hello to anyone still out there, by the way. Clearly I still aten't dead.)

No, this is something that's been weighing on my mind since November, and now that September is nearly here, I feel the need to unburden. It's simple really, and goes something like this:

Old catalogue covers make great fodder for homemade custom made notebook covers.

The emphasis being on old. No longer current. Not, say, from September 2013 - 2014 inclusive. To my horror, I went to grab an old copy of the LV catalogue in order to liberate its gorgeous cover for a notebook and somehow, I know not how, I only realised it was the current one after I'd sliced the cover off. Nearly a whole year as a naked catalogue. I hardly know how to look it in the index. I'm sorry, Lee Valley catalogue, really I am. Forgive me. But you do make a very lovely notebook...

And while we're talking of mistakes, an aberration in Photoshop yielded this result, which I couldn't quite bear to discard. I think I want all my maps in white on black now, please...

Monday Stinks #14

No, it's not Monday. I do know that. However, as I left them out in the Big Ink Up before, I thought I'd toss in a one-off:

Wednesday Quinks!

I can hear your little hearts going pitty-patter in sheer excitement. Try and contain yourselves.

I should add the Vector is of UK manufacture and for some reason it's giving me more trouble getting comfortable with its italic nib than any other calligraphy pen I've ever tried. I believe it may be traced to its slim and somewhat slippery metal section; my grip allows the pen to swivel and all is then destined for disaster. Very early days yet though, so with luck I'll overcome it. The Soyuz, meanwhile, tends to make me write such things as The Superior Red Bear Jumps Over The Lazy Capitalist Dogs. Even my mother, when she tried it, ended up writing Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as Russian snow, and everywhere that Mary went the KGB was sure to go. Not sure we'll ever overcome that. 

Oh, and the other colour is my Pelikan Turquiose/Blue-Black mix.

Crusty the Clown

So I knew all about Ancient Copper's reported occasional forays into crustiness, but my first experience of The Thing From Beyond The Inkwell is, in fact, Rohrer and Klingner's lovely golden Helianthus.

Eeek! It's Alive!

Well, no. Despite appearances I don't think it's actually eating the pen; it wipes off readily enough. But then this is the advantage of the Cheap Pen; it's not a disaster if it does get ate. Most likely this is actually as a result of one of the disadvantages of the Cheap Pen - many of them dry out frustratingly readily, and orange dyes in particular seem to like to grow crystals as a result. I was actually deliberately leaving them all unused for a few days to ascertain which were the worst culprits, and already had a strong suspicion that these Oliver Exam piston fillers were habitual offenders. It's a shame, because they're really not bad little pens, but along with the drying out is the hideous truth that they have the most pungent example of "pong-y pen syndrome" I've yet come across. Seriously; seventeen-babies-have-all-thrown-up-simultaneously-into-my-pen-cup whiff-o-rama. Not good.

Still, this is kinda fun in a strange, twisted, mild pen-suffering way. Sort of like growing your own cheesy Wotsits.

Bleached Whale

Fairly sure, as I splashed on the bleach, that this poor piece of paper (Clairefontaine 90gsm) was starting to wonder what it ever did to make me hate it so...

Waaaaay, too saturated. Seriously, I have no idea why it looks so dark once it's been uploaded; most aggravating. Anyway... Both Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black and Rohrer & Klingner Salix have kissed goodbye to what remained of their blueness, Diamine Sapphire Blue still defies all the odds by turning into yet another (slightly paler) shade of blue. I am never putting that stuff in a demonstrator ever. Amazingly Waterman Serenity Blue and J Herbin Violette Penseé still haven't been utterly obliterated either. Ignore the Deep Dark Brown; it's not nearly as legible as the scan suggests.

The clear winner, utterly unmoved, is Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa. Slightly surprising, but maybe because it always looks like it's already been washed out the difference is less noticeable?

But what of Noodler's Prime of the Commons? Still there, albeit not nearly as saturated as it was (or as the scan suggests). But for me it's a disappointing failure. Let us take at look at the claim for it:

"If bleach is added to the ink when dried, it will turn a bright blue colour to show that a forgery has been attempted."

Now, personally, I consider that's about as bright blue as the original colour is blue-black. Pish and tush; no fun at all.

Also pish and tush because I have no idea why I persistently miss out the "The" in its name. Somehow I got it into what passes for my brain that it didn't have one. Ah well. Do I care? No. If the ink lived up to its blurb, maybe. As it is I shall happily embrace the much more readily acquired European inks with easily-remembered names such as Fernambuk, Rouille d'Ancre, and... Hypnotic Turquoise. (Huh? "Watch the bottle of ink. Round and round it goes. Watch the ink. You are feeling sleepy...")

Can't think of any more ways to torture this paper now, so will retire it to keep as a salutary lesson on transient nature of most inks and to remind myself to take care about the ones that aren't going to readily go away. i.e. Do not write New Year's resolutions in Scabiosa...

Washing Day

So I have a page with an example of all my inks on, right?

Does this, or does this not, appear to be an unrivalled opportunity to find out which ones are water resistant and which are not? I believe it does.

Behold! The Catastrophic Beverage Spillage Reenactment Experiment:

And in the Water? What Water? Category, the winner is...

Well, a totally unsurprising four-way split between:
Noodler's Prime of Commons. Well, duh - it's advertised as waterproof, and will also change colour if you try to tamper with it using bleach. (Oh, bleach test. Might have to try that too...) Mind you, it's also claimed as a blue-black, when it's clearly green-black, so take nothing on trust.
Rohrer & Klingner Salix and Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa. Both iron gall-based inks, like wot woz used in Days Of Yore, only less acidic these days. (i.e. We suffer less from the troublesome results of the ink surviving but eating the paper around it. And possibly the pen. Iron gall is why gold nibs were the desired thing; a bias that survives to this day, even though in actual writing terms the basic metal of the nib is irrelevant.)
Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black. The One That Might Be Iron Gall. If it looks like a pelican duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... But Pelikan are not helpful; people ask them "Does it have iron gall in it?" and sometimes Pelikan say "Ja, it has a little" and sometimes Pelikan say "Nein, it does not". Possibly it depends on the day of the week or phase of the moon. Or whether you speak to Gerta or to Heinrich. I feel compelled to note that both Lamy and Montblanc have altered their blue-black inks so they no longer contain IG, and they're still, as far as I'm aware, available in the USA. Pelikan have not altered their recipe, and it's not available in the USA any more. You may, perhaps, draw conclusions from this; I really don't know.

In the You Can Read Me Easily, But I'm Feeling Off-Colour Category we find:

Diamine Sapphire Blue An intensely annoying ink, because it goes down as a gorgeous rich purply blue, and then dries to just...blue. And then it gets wet and goes to... another blue. Which does explain why it's a bane to clean; it will not die. I love it not, however legible under water.
J Herbin Violette Penseé How an ink with such a pale presence and low saturation still survives so legibly, if more bluely, I do not know. Remarkable. I only have cartridges of this and didn't like it at first, but I'm warming to it. Maybe not enough for a bottle though.
Diamine Syrah Bath night brings out its purple side, it seems. Now it looks more like Violette Penseé looks pre-bath, which is oddly disturbing. A Liverpudlian Franco-phile?

The others are much of a squint-and-you-can-just-make-it-out muchness, although I'm surprised how much Waterman Serenity Blue still remains, but then we get to the real losers. The scan is generous, so you can at least make out a haze where Rohrer & Klingner Helianthus and Diamine Blaze Orange once were (Oh, they may be aqua-phobes, but such lovely colours). Diamine Denim is virtually a no-show and the idea of actually trying to read Rohrer & Klingner Fernambuk, Diamine Bilberry or Waterman Absolute Brown (which is apparently only absolute if laid on with a trowel, it seems) is laughable, however the

Dr Richard Kimble Prize for Most Fugitive Ink goes to: Diamine Kelly Green

Unfortunately it couldn't be here to receive its award... Truly, a lovely spring-like green with super shading, but it comes as no surprise it vanishes at the sight of a rain cloud on the horizon because it's the easiest ink to clean out of a pen ever. People caution you against the staining properties of purples and greens in clear demonstrators and white pens. but I would but DKG in any of them without a moments qualm. Just don't commit your life's work to paper in Kelly Green if you like to write in a coffee shop. pub, tea room, during meal times, in the shower, anywhere outside the Atacama Desert, etc...

Conclusion? This is right up there in scientific analysis terms with, oh, a Fine Woodworking Tool Test. But I had fun. Now where's that bottle of bleach....

Monday Stinks #12b

It's Bank Holiday Monday and it's raining. Must the weather be so clichéd? Ah well, can't mow grass in the rain (Yay!), so instead I bring you a cautionary example of what happens when a) You have way too many different inks, and b) You have a crazy fondness for insanely cheap pens. Yes, you get an idea to put every ink into as many cheap, not-the-end-of-the-world-if-it-dies pens as you can. The end result is this:

If you're feeling competitive, you can play Guess The Most Expensive (in the pot) - careful though, remember I do love to hunt down a bargain and all that glitters is frequently tat... Three of the pens listed below aren't Pot of Inky Doom dwellers; the iron gall inks Salix and Scabiosa are pretty much permanent in their pens anyway, and Serenity Blue is generally inked up in something old (such as the Parker 45 currently), so no point in duplicating. Besides, the pot can only hold so many...

Oh, and I confess I have failed to have a Quink Blue cartridge on the go (Because, well, bleurgh) or the elderly pot of Quink Black (Because it's, well, also pretty bleurgh. It's only claim of distinction in the modern world is it being old enough to be avec Solv-X)

Colours are fairly accurate on my monitor in terms of how they relate to each other, but they're way too saturated. And is it actually possible to ever do Syrah justice in pixel form? Apparently not. Shame. Although on the flip side of the coin it's been very generous to Garnet.

Now excuse me while I go away and write "No more pens and positively no more ink" one thousand times in the hopes it might actually stick . And hey, it'll use up some ink... 

Problematic Pistons

On Monday I shared a pic of a piston filler suffering a little seepage where it should not, and given the resulting flood of interest...

Er, yes. Anyway, I thought I'd give the interweb the benefit of my experience in the fixing of Indian-made "Serwex" brand piston fillers. The interweb doesn't want it? Too bad. It's a saga, I warn you.

So I fairly recently took delivery from India of a "new" model of pen from the Fountain Pen Revolution line of pens - the "Guru". In truth it's a slightly tweaked Serwex 162, but with a clear demonstrator model available I was an easy mark for it. FPR make Indian brands of fountain pen available outside the domestic market, and commission models of their own, and this is the latest (and cheapest) entry. They're big draw is a modern, affordable flex nib, which is really not half bad for the coinage. Add in the fact that they set up the nib for you and the darn thing flows beautifully even at full flex, and it's a steal quite honestly. So anyway, I order one clear flex Guru and about a week later it drops on the doormat. And it writes like an angel. Happy days.

About two or three weeks later, I take the thing apart to clean it thoroughly (a drawback to clear demonstrators is, of course, they can look cruddy pretty quickly if you don't stay on top of the pen hygiene), and find to my unhappiness that the piston seal has split in two. No seal, no suck. No suck, no ink. No ink, no write. Well, darn.

Now as it happens, back when I made my first order with FPR, they threw in a Serwex 162 free, gratis and for nothing. Which wrote very nicely, but had a tendency to dry out quickly, so I rather consigned it to the Box of The Damned. Or rather the Box of The I'll Do Something About That Sometime, The Gods Know When. But hey, the Guru is just a 162 in Emperor's Clothing, right? I'll swipe the piston seal from that and away I go.

Well, double darn. The piston seal on that had split as well!

Okay, maybe this is not such a good buy...

But undeterred, I look speculatively at the piston and think "Self, might not an O-ring or two go on there and maybe, just maybe, work?" Well, I'm a fairly recent convert to the all-round usefulness of O-rings, but it seemed Self might be onto something. And so it proved. A couple of O-rings a piece later and I have a functioning pair of piston fillers again. Huzzah.

But I was worried. I'd found no anecdotal evidence on the face of the interweb that the Sewex piston seals were prone to this. Was it something I was doing wrong? Was I...  a fountain pen killer?! So, just to be on the safe side, I emailed Kevin at FPR to check. His verdict? He's seen it a couple of times but I'm incredibly unlucky to have two in two.

Oh, that figures.

Anyway, he reassured me that I'm not a pen killer and kindly sent a replacement Guru, even though, as I said, I'd fixed it. Which is pretty decent service when it's got to come all the way from the sub-continent and even in the low-ticket world of Indian pens it's right down in the bargain basement section. But a week or so later, it dropped on the doormat. With another flex nib (which wasn't strictly necessary). So that was cool.

Except, er, you know that "incredibly unlucky" thing? Um... the barrel of the replacement had a crack along its length. Well, darn again. Okay, that's fine; really it's only the piston I need anyway and everything else is just icing. But, well, you can't just leave a pen to die like that, can you? I can rebuild it; I have the technology.

So it won't have bionic capabilities as a result, but also it doesn't cost six million bucks. Most importantly it won't leak. Happy days are here again. Up until this point, where we came in:

Sighing just a little (at this point I feel a little sigh was forgivable) I decided I'd cut to the chase and replace the thing straight away with the O-rings. So I went to remove it.

And then I became a fountain pen killer.

That darn thing would not shift. I resorted to dunking it in hot water for a while to make it more pliable and then attempted to twist it off.

And twisted off the entire end of the piston.

Well, darnation with a cherry on top. What a muppet. I was, and am, mortified.

Pausing only for an hour or so to berate myself for being a heavy-handed fool, I looked at what I had left. A piston shaft, but instead of a stop on the end, a gap about two O-rings wide, and then another stop, I had a shortened piston shaft with a stop on the end and nothing to keep any O-rings in place.

Am I going to let this thing die now? Like heck I am; I'm invested in its continued good health and working ability. We'd been through solvent welding together, dammit. All I needed was a new stop to put the O-rings between. So, not for the first time, I dug out the bag of parts salvaged from my old VHS tapes, and selected one of the plastic guide spindles. Turns out a Japanese saw does a good job of splitting these things in two, and with a liberal application of a two part epoxy, I have... a bodge.

Top is the pen barrel and piston knob; next is the full length piston with O-rings; then the split original seal; finally the truncated piston with a new stop and a spacer to stop it going too far into the piston knob and failing to advance again.

Close-up you can see a) It's not pretty (but then neither is the unmolested one), and b) The built-up bead of epoxy just to give the O-rings a little more to bear on.

The reassembled pens, and honestly, it's a lot better than I deserve. Of course you wouldn't do such a bodge on a Pelikan or the like, but with the normal appearance of these pens prizing function over aesthetics anyway, I think I got away with it okay in this case.

As I prize function over appearance too, the important bit was whether it would work. A careful first run of soapy water to test for leaks was successful, and it's now been inked-up for nearly a week and no trouble yet.

Writes really nicely, actually. On this experience I couldn't honestly say they're a great pen, but they have a naive charm that I find irresistible. Actually I've yet to try an Indian pen that hasn't made me smile. And unfortunately, in many cases, swear a little. But that's half the fun.

Allegedly.

Monday Stinks #12

So neat and symmetrical is the date today, I felt compelled to Stink. Terribly sober colours here, and nothing finer than a medium. What the dickens...? All four have been interfered with too; Alf Towers is no place to be a fountain pen if you want to remain factory-fresh.

On the other hand if you arrive on the doorstep and start letting your piston seal widdle ink all over the place, you've come to the right place. People don't always like the clear demonstrator pens, but in this case I'm happy I can see what's going to happen before it actually does...

Version One Misery

So I may have been neglecting the blogging shamefully, and rather neglecting the proper handwriting practice too (also shameful), but I have been plugging away at the Zibaldone and - horrors - have come to the end of another notebook. Zoicks!

But no worries; I came across a spiffing deal on Rhodia goodies early in the new year and scooped up, among other things, a couple of (unfortunately orange) lined Webnotebooks. Not ideal, but really cheap. So away I go, in an orange haze.

Except, er, no I don't. I'm actually off in a turquoise mist - a rather smarter "Rhodiarama" webnotebook has to be unexpectedly plucked from the "gifts for others" pile and pressed into use.

Why? Because the Orange Peril is, unhappily, a "Version 1" Webbie, which does not have fountain pen friendly paper. It bleeds, it feathers, it does many things that might as well make it a blasted Moleskine. I was slow off the mark on this one, and only started to realise all was not well when I opened it up and saw the logo on every page.

Uh-oh - that's either a V.1 or V.2. V.2's binding isn't great, but the paper is okay; it could still be all right. Fingers crossed... Oh, blast. It's the 80gsm V.1 which is just no good at all for my purposes.

Their 90gsm is the stuff that suits fountain pens. Sigh. Of course it used to be that all paper was fountain pen okay, but we all end up writing on toilet paper most of the time now. Given that the only reason for stumping up the exorbitant costs of things like Rhodia is because it's reliably FP-friendly, this is not conducive to happiness.

The only thing in V.1's favour is the length of the marker ribbon. Look at that luscious length; isn't it lovely? The stump on the current models is frankly pathetic.

Anyway, there's a lesson. You'd have thought five or so years after the last 80gsm version ones were made, it'd be a pretty safe bet you wouldn't be able to find one even if you wanted to. I'd actually go back to the seller and inquire 'What the H***, dude?", except they went out of business about five minutes after I'd received the order. Which, clearly, was because they weren't shifting very, very old stock.

Apart from the financial pain (and let's face it - it could have been much worse), I'm not actually that unhappy that I'm down two Webbies when it comes to actual use. I've really not warmed to it; you wouldn't know I'd used the thing at all if I hadn't Washi-taped the page edges. The cover is unmarked and the whole thing looks so un-lived-in it's almost sterile. Now that resistance to wear would be a plus to most people, I know, but meh. Where's the character? So in about three months I shall probably be off on the hunt for the "perfect" notebook again. That'll be fun...

Update: Would you Adam and Eve it?! This darn thing bled-through! After all that. I threw up my hands, threw the notebook to the wall, and picked up a weird notebook made in India which is all the wrong format but does have glorious paper. Except, it turns out (several pages in), not for every page. You can probably hear me grinding my teeth from over there. But it's just feathering, and I can cope with feathering, I suppose. So I will carry on with it to the bitter end and just gnash my teeth periodically. Ack. This would not be a problem if I was still devoted to nothing but fine points. Or gel pens. Sigh.

Monday Stinks #11

Yesterday was my birthday. One of those ones people insist on being "landmark" and then spending the time remarking how old you are. It had a zero in it. Alcoholic bubbles was really the only sensible way to manage the day...

The vibrancy of the colours is a bit lost in this pic; haven't got to time to try again. The first photo is much more representative; that orange is intense.

Let's Rock

Had some interesting pre-owned finds in the last few weeks, the most gloatable of which (to my mind) is this solid brass rocker blotter.

Hey, that's totally a tool, isn't it? Plus probably also an offensive weapon, owing to its 1lb 11oz weight.

You know me, though. A new old tool through the door, and I'm hitting the interwebs to find out more about it before you can say "History Nerd". Which I duly did. No maker's marks to go on, but despite the more ornate (and frankly, rather nicer) knob and lighter weight, it seemed to me to bear all the hallmarks of these. In particular, the standard size model.

So I cheekily sent off some pics and asked Desk Accessories if it was, indeed, one of theirs. Impressively, I got a reply back in mere hours, and yep, an earlier incarnation of same. Nice. A lot more recent that I had expected when I bought it, but that's not a matter of any concern to us users anyway.

Thus I'm now blotting in high style, with added muscle building courtesy of the sheer weight of brass. Plus it does double duty as a desk toy - reaching out to give it a little nudge to set it rocking every so often is strangely satisfactory.

All rather a relief, as it happens, as I can now quietly retire the wooden knocked-together-in-twenty-minutes "proof of concept" version I had been using. The best that can be said about it is it's a good example of why you want sharp blades in your bandsaw...

Monday Is Odourless

No Monday Stinks, 'cos currently I have every single bottled ink I own (bar one) inked up in a pen and it'd be ridiculous. Well, yes, granted it's already ridiculous, but writing them all up would be even more so. Mind you, doing that hammers home two fundamental truths in quick succession.

Firstly, I have way too much ink.
Secondly - and this realisation is an inevitable consequence of the first - I have way too many pens.

Yep, this blog is all about stating the obvious today...

Chromascriptology

The practice of matching ink to pen colour is, I'm thankful to say, widespread. I'm thankful because I seem to be a slave to it, and misery loves company... As far as I'm aware there is no scientific term for it, and my classical education is not so much lacking as fossilised in the ruins of Herculaneum, but you might come over with an affectation and perhaps call it something like chromascriptophilia. Except we won't; we'll not call it the name to suggest affliction, but rather one to conjure up science - chromascriptology - because science causes fewer people to feel uncomfortable. At least when they're talking about it; actual science causes no end of discomfort and scientists may be some of the most dangerous people not yet locked up...

Anyway, let the following be a lesson to the budding chromascriptologist; there's danger in them thar' ink bottles. Viz:

The last ink, I should warn you, is represented two ways upon the face of the interweb. In one case it is a mild-mannered, almost retiring pale pink. In others it's a more vibrant colour with subtle tones of red and orange. A pink, in short, you would not be entirely ashamed to be seen with. I took a punt and hoped the truth of the ink was in the latter representations. O, fateful day.

This pink - and in the spirit of protecting my fellow man and woman, I shall name and shame it as Diamine Cerise - is no more or less than a bottle of pink highlighter ink. Which is just dandy if you want a bottle of pink highlighter ink; I, alas, have had a (gifted) pink highlighter these twenty years and still have four fifths of the ink remaining, so... no, not terribly dandy.

Worse, this ink is so damn pink as to make even me, the least "girly" person you can imagine, lapse into drawing small hearts over lower case Is and Js in lieu of sensible dots. I can't help myself; it just happens. It's appalling. I fear lengthy exposure to this fiendish pigment can only result in long term speculation on the nature of rainbows, unicorns and whether the stars are, in point of fact, God's daisy chain.

Lessons to be learnt? Oh, so many. But the main one is probably not to take up chromascriptology...