Black clothes roost in my closet, in their solidarity of darkness. This penchant for black has somehow stretched into other cabinets, that hold ink bottles. Why do I have so many different kinds of black ink? Why do I have 10 pairs of black pants? Why is the sky black? Noodler’s Dark Matter has a …
Collateral shopping damage, that’s what this is. I went to National Bookstore to buy envelopes (I owe several of you artwork, you know who you are) and drifted towards the notebook section. I picked up a Venzi Copelle dot-grid notebook for P289. It has a hard cover, an exaggeratedly wide elastic band and smooth dot-grid …
Sennelier shellac ink with folded pen. 6.0mm Parallel Pen, 3B Pelikan. Retipped Parker Duofold stub, Noodler’s Golden Brown. Moore safety pen, De Atramentis Patina Green. All on Daler-Rowney Calligraphy Paper.
Modern fountain pens that fill with a cartridge or converter are quite a bore compared to the choices people had in the early 20th century. Aside from the immediacy of the eyedropper, there were matchstick fillers, coin fillers, blow fillers and crescent fillers. Much like today’s fashion houses raid their archives for ideas to update, …
Not bad for a five-year old pen that’s seen me through several beaches, countries, relationships. Scuffed, oxidized, patinated, beautiful. I have always liked dragons. Phoenixes come close. I think it’s only when you’re on the other side of young that you can say, yes, things do look better with age. I love new and shiny, …
If it’s not pens, it’s pencils. What can I say? I’m a sucker for packaging. And bananas. Who couldn’t live without a towel and bananas? Inside the tube is a pencil sleeve, a mechanical pencil, eraser refills and lead refills. The lead is 1.15 mm, which makes Retro 51 the only manufacturer I know of …
“I wish that I believed in fate, I wish I didn’t sleep so late. I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders.” “Hey blue, there is a song for you, ink on a pin. Underneath the skin, an empty space to fill in.” “You put a big bird in a small cage, it’ll …
In my mind there are two kinds of safety pens: the Moore kind, and the Waterman kind. Like eyedroppers, they are designed to hold ink in the barrel; unlike eyedroppers, they have a mechanism (usually a built-in seal and a retractable nib) that ensures ink doesn’t leak when the pen is in any position other …
I didn’t really want one, but I saw Caloy’s. Damn. The M101N in brown tortoiseshell is a replica of a Pelikan model from 1937. I want to lick the tortoiseshell celluloid. All right, I won’t. Like mother-of-pearl blended with Bakelite, the surface has a subtle shimmer over pesto and pistachio green, with streaks of dark …
This is me blathering on about my agency’s new logo in an AdoboLive! segment. 1) I can’t believe my hair was that long 6 months ago. 2) My hands look like they have Saint Vitus Dance. 3) My dress is of legal age.