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.
Sound like you got some nice gifts.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a problem with smudging, now that you use softer pencils? That's one thing (the other one being that the point doesn't last long) that always held me back from using softer pencils.
Thanks Matthias
ReplyDeleteFor general-purpose writing I tend to use the old HB pencils, so no smudging there. I find the softer pencils work better for music and odd notes (like shopping lists). There is a bit of smudging but it's not a problem for ephemera.