Pipes Rattling

Well, I was indeed away last week, and without a hint of communication. The otherworldly horror of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Annual General Meeting was just too much to deal with.

I think I make up for it with this lucky find from TV history, though. It’s a sort of successor to Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast.

Speaking of Welles… why don’t we toss that in from the same source?

Also, as a final treat, I’ve just posted something over on my other site, a free goodie for the season called The Centennial Legacy. Happy Hallowe’en to all, and make sure to touch each of your children with an iron nail when they come back with their loot, just to make sure they are who they claim to be.

Today’s pen: Faber-Castell e-motion (an eerie cylinder of bone-white material, etched with an eldritch pattern)
Today’s ink: Herbin Éclat de Saphir (the colour of the water around the upper edge of a ‘blue hole’, into which divers may vanish without trace)

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Pen Delight

The usual Friday frivolity:  I have here a link to a BBC Radio4 item called The Stationery Cupboard which revels in all the aspects of handwriting and its appliances.  Funnily enough, the Writing Equipment Society is referred to as “promiscuous”, but as we discover that its president collects ball-points, it’s hard to argue..

There is a companion piece in The Guardian, by the BBC’s presenter; it takes rather less than a half-hour to read, but is slightly less satisfying.

Today’s pen: Lamy 2000
Today’s ink: Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown

Bits and Pieces

The winner (of the moment) in the Replace Quink in My Desk sweepstakes is Pelikan Royal Blue.  Its triumph arises from it being relatively well-behaved, inexpensive, and locally available.  I think that if it hadn’t been undercut by that last qualification, I’d have gone with Waterman’s Florida Blue as being a little less fey (consider the sad land where bottled Waterman ink can’t be found in a store).  I’m giving the current stuff a week to prove itself, after which I may begin a slow campaign of adulteration with the same company’s black.

A programme I recommend listening to, if the mad return to the working world leave one any time, is a BBC 4 show called In Our Time, the current series of which entitled “The Written World” is about how writing (even absent a fountain pen!) has amended every culture which has stumbled against it.  It gains a small advantage from being presented in the wonderfully mellow accents the BBC is so well known for, and which many of us North American find so compelling.

I have just sent a package off to the land of Auntie Beeb, and looking at the address I wrote upon it makes me think I’ll discontinue the use of today’s pen/ink combination when I get home.  Today’s ink is just too darn feathery for me to deal with; it looks altogether too much like the marker marks I was barking about last week.  I used it only because it will definitely remain legible during the trip.

Finally, and the reason for this oddly disjointed entry; it appears that the Christmas press at the post office has been replaced by the glut of people waiting until the end of the Christmas press to post their packages.

Today’s pen (quite satisfactory): Sheaffer Sovereign
Today’s ink (less so): Noodler’s Polar Blue

Silent Night

…and a relatively quiet day, it being a short-entry Friday.  I leave you the choice of a BBC item somewhat too short for real satisfaction on the topic of why Christmas colours are what they are, or a rerun of the silly seasonal thing I wrote a year less a day ago (if Charlie Brown can do it, so can I).

Today’s pens: The pens of the previous two days plus a TWSBI Diamond 540 with a broad point mounted
Today’s inks:  ″ inks ″ ″ ″ ″ ″ and Herbin’s Anniversary Rouge Hematite.  With a wet enough pen and some slightly resistant paper, there’s points where light is selectively absorbed rather than reflected, so it comes across as a red ink with green shading.  Festive!