As the title says: Merry Christmas!
I never intended to leave it this long to post, so apologies for six months' radio silence. I have no excuses really, I simply needed to get on with other stuff such as work, then the Olympics were on and I spent a fortnight watching telly, then this and that happened.
But now it's Christmas and I have some spare time to blog again.
Hopefully readers all got what they wanted from Santa Claus. I received a few, carefully-chosen goodies from Cult Pens - a couple of Caran d'Ache pencils (a Technograph 777 and a Bicolor 999), a new KUM sharpener, a Caran d'Ache pencil holder for those pesky stubs, and a brace of Hi-Unis, in HB and 4B. Cult Pens also threw in a mini ball-point designed to be held on a lanyard. I am delighted, and will feature them on the blog at some point. I had never expected to be able to buy the Hi-Unis here in the UK. My children think I am insane for my "obsession" (their word, not mine) with fine pencils and fountain pens. As I always say, it took me years to learn how to write, so why should I use cheap tools now?
One recent development in my own pencil use is that I am using pencils much more at work for writing notes, and using softer pencils more often as well. I may have mentioned before that one of my hobbies is music; for writing out music or for marking printed sheet music I have found a 4B pencil to be most useful. Where I use a fountain pen, I mostly use Pelikan Blue-Black and Diamine Imperial Purple inks.
More soon - if I can get a turn on the family PC.
