Yesterday, in my evening class, I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: lend one of my better fountain pens to a student so she could try it. I then watched as she passed it to another student to try.
Oddly, and I’m as surprised as everybody else, I didn’t hurt anyone.
This all started with a discussion of notebooks. I pointed out that, with a few exceptions, I prefer Japanese notebooks. The student was impressed, especially when I mentioned Tomoe River paper and how good it was for fountain pens.
That prompted one of my younger students to ask why I carried so many pens and I was like “because”. She then asked to see one and, because she will eventually fill out evaluations about me, I thought I should lend her one. The problem is, I didn’t have any crap ones to lend her and she wanted only the best.
At first I had to show her how to hold it. She started to use it with the feed up and I had to explain to put the pretty side up. I also explained, perhaps a bit to vehemently “don’t press, don’t press, for Goodness’ sake don’t press. Just let the weight of the pen do the work.” She wrote her name and passed it to another student. We repeated the same ritual and, out of the blue, another student began giving advice. Once he got the hang of writing with it, he couldn’t stop writing stuff.
I think he was especially impressed by the writing style from the stub nib. This led to the revelation that the student who’d offered advice was also a fountain pen fan, or at least familiar with them.
We then had a discussion about pens, including the Pilot Hi-Tec-C and a few others.
I hope to cultivate this interest in pens and fountain pens among my students. I’ll just have to remember to bring some pens I don’t mind lending out.
The problem is, I don’t actually have any of those.
(Note: Yesterday’s version of this post was written as my netbook battery was letting me know it was about to take a break. I rushed through just to get it out. Now that I have more time, I’ve gone back and added some detail.)
A year ago, I received the goods from the second Kickstarter project I backed. They were six months late but very much worth the wait.
I received the Karas Kustoms Ink Fountain Pen and Roller ball. I ordered the fountain pen in green anodized aluminum with a copper section and the Roller ball in black anodized aluminum with a copper section. The fountain pen quickly became one of the five pens I use regularly. However, as much as I like the roller ball, it’s no longer part of my regular pen rotation and may be up for sale soon (more on that in another post).
The Ink Roller ball (top) and the Ink fountain pen (bottom). The roller ball still shows how good the new copper looked.
It’s about 5.4 inches (13.8ish cm) long with the cap. Without the cap it’s just under five inches (12.6ish cm) and fits my hand comfortably. The cap threads look sharp but are small enough they don’t bother me at all. The shape of the copper section is well done and easy to grip.
Uncapped and inked the pen weighs a little over one ounce (33ish grams) which is just enough heft to let the pen do all the work without being too heavy.
The copper section looked great right out of the box but has since tarnished (aka “developed character”). I could polish it, but can’t be bothered.
Karas Kustoms, which started out making hot rod parts and metal iPhone cases, and a handful of ballpoint pens, does an excellent job machining the pen parts. The threads on all the parts are smooth despite them being metal rubbing against metal.
The Schmidt M nib has been excellent and is part of what made this one of my favorite pens. It writes smoothly and seems made for Diamine Sherwood Green ink. I’ve tried other inks in it, but always go back to Sherwood Green. The nib does look oddly small compared to the rest of the pen, though.
The Scmhidt M Nib and Sherwood Green ink on a Field Notes Two Rivers.
My only real gripe was that my pen came with a small chip in the anodizing along the bottom finial. It wasn’t a big deal, but it’s kind of like getting a new book with a ding on the cover: it will look like that soon enough, I don’t need the manufacturer to do it for me. (Note: Karas Kustoms warns that such dings are possible and not considered a manufacturing defect.)
Because it’s made of metal, the cap doesn’t post. This doesn’t bother me much. The clip is a gorgeous piece of design and machine work. Mine doesn’t touch the pen–which I’ve heard is the result of over-zealous polishing–but it still locks securely in my pocket, at least if I’m wearing a heavier shirt.
Since these pens were produced, Karas Kustoms has expanded its fountain pen line up and streamlined some of its manufacturing. Their line up is worth checking out for someone looking to move up from a cheap fountain pen or looking to support US manufacturing.
I have too many good ideas vying for time before I go to bad. That’s especially true this month.
My usual after-supper routine involves finishing my daily log and readying the book for the next day; entering my food journal in the forum at Vic Magary’s site; wracking my brain to think of a blog topic; rejecting several topics; choosing a topic; starting to write the topic; rejecting the topic; playing a game to “free up my mind a bit”; deciding on a new blog topic; writing the blog topic.
Depending on the timing of supper and the time it takes me to finish that routine, I will also wash dishes if She Who Must Be Obeyed hasn’t snuck in and done them already.
What complicates this month is my goal to complete 50,000 words of a novel in National Novel Writing Month. I spent a good portion of today catching up, but I also spent part of my after supper routine finishing the last of the quota. That pushes everything else back, including sleep.
Now, I could plan ahead and do the blog post early but, well, yeah. Probably no. I could also write with more focus but, well, yeah, there are games to be played, too. (Oh, and kids to speak to and feed.)
I did manage to finish the first book of my NaNoWriMo novel and move on to the second, which puts me, by my official formula, at 12,025 words in seven days. That seems impressive, but it means I’m actually 925 words (or five handwritten pages) behind my personal quota.
Out with the old, in with the next.
Tomorrow my goal is to catch up to my personal quota by hammering out 15 handwritten pages. If I were smart, I’d keep going since next week will be a busy week at work but, well, yeah.
I am pleased to say that after 12,025 words the book is finally starting to find a plot. I’ll probably abandon it or forget it, but at least I have it for now. Also, as tends to happen with seat-of-the-pants writing, certain characters are starting to take over the book and that generates new ideas.
Eventually I’ll have to decide to follow the characters or kill them off. But first I have a routine to follow, for better and for worse.
Like many things, National Novel Writing Month seems like a good idea when you start. After a week it suddenly doesn’t seem so good. Since I’ve chosen to write by hand, I’m beginning to question my sanity.
For this event I’ve decided to do a few things differently than I’ve done before. 1) I am starting a new work completely from scratch; 2) I am writing by hand using one, well, actually three of my fountain pens; and 3) I’m starting a new evening job.
For the pens, as I’ve mentioned before, I chose my workhorse TWSBI 580 as the main pen. I’m also using my Sunset from Levenger and my Titanium Nexus from Namisu. I chose the latter two because they are inked with Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa and Salix. These are old school iron gall inks that dry quickly and are also waterproof and “I set my arm across it and now look like I have a tattoo” proof. Scabiosa is a purple ink (not a disease) I use to indicate asides and changes to things that have gone before and Salix is a blue ink (and not a sci fi character) that I use for random exposition and deep thoughts, which I am counting in my daily word count.
The three pens on Scabiosa and Salix samples, which don’t look good in bad lighting.
I also chose those pens because they write well on the DIM (Did it Myself) notepads I’m using mostly to use them up. It’s also interesting because they are three different nib types: steel, gold and titanium. (Note: in the picture the gold nib is rose gold plated steel, the silver nib is rhodium plated gold and gray nib is titanium.)
The main advantage of writing by hand is I can do it anywhere without having to dig things out and I don’t have to worry about batteries, cords or outlets. My arm may give out eventually, in which case I’ll start typing again. Oh, and I also have to read my own handwriting some day. (Which may be the hardest part of all this.)
On day five I’m at 9,250 words, which is actually slightly ahead of the usual 1,667 words per day. I will continue working during breaks and when my students are writing (hypothetically of course).
Next week, though, is a full week of work and that’s when things usually fall apart.
I can’t decide if I’m thinking too much or not enough.
Once again, against my better judgement, I’ve decided to do another National Novel Writing Month. I almost didn’t, but then I did. To make matters worse, because I found I did better when I wrote by hand last year–more or less–I’ve decided to write this year’s novel by hand. This has its advantages and disadvantages.
The biggest disadvantage is that I eventually, if I wan’t to make the novel work, have to learn to read my own handwriting. This is more annoying than difficult but it’s still annoying.
There’s also the problem of word count. NaNoWriMo allows participants to use the Lorem Ipsum random text to validate novels, but that requires actually counting handwritten words. I’ve decided to use the DIY notebooks I made several years ago, mostly to clean them out and free up the space. For several days over the past months I counted the words in my morning pages and reached a rough average of words per page. One page equals about 190 words, although I’m going to count them as 185 just to be safe. This means, because each pad is 65 pages, one pad is around 12,025 words. I’ll need to use a little over four pads to finish the 50,000 words.
Most of these are gone now ,but I hope to get rid of the rest this November.
This doesn’t clean out much, now that I think about it.
The advantage of the pads is that I can write anywhere with them, including on the train and, hypothetically of course, in class while my students are working. (Not that I would ever do that. No. Of course not. Of course I wouldn’t…) I won’t have to worry about batteries dying or software crashing or start up times.
I’ve also decided to use my TWSBI Diamond 580 as my “official” pen. It’s already my workhorse pen; it holds a lot of ink; and I usually fill it with a “bulletproof” ink that dries quickly and doesn’t smear when it gets wet.
The business end of the TWSBI 580 in front of bourbon: the generator of bad ideas that seem like really good ideas
If I run out of ink, well, I can probably find a couple other pens lying around somewhere.
When I first got my hands on the Eighty Pages Volume 7 notebook the first thing I did was rub my hands across the paper. I was immediately impressed.
The manufacturer had responded to requests by fountain pen users by switching to a smoother paper called, according to their website, “Plain Medium Super Smooth” paper. The deep blue cover and red binding stitching looked great. I also noticed, as I compared it to other notebooks, that it had shrunk a bit. Volume 2 had been about the size of a Field Notes notebook, but Volume 7 was passport sized. This meant it fit perfectly in my passport sized Midori Traveler’s Notebook.
The Eighty Pages notebook next to an MD paper insert in my Traveler’s passport sized cover.
The passport sized Traveler’s cover from the top with the Eighty Pages Volume 7 fitting quite well.
V7 on top of V2. The cover on V2 has cracked despite only being on my desk. V7 has been in my pocket for two months.
My biggest concern, of course, was how the “Plain Medium Super Smooth” paper would handle fountain pens. I broke out my pens with the wettest nibs and runniest inks and put it to the test.
Once again, I was impressed. I started using it as my food diary, which let me test it with every pen I own.
In general, it handled all the inks extremely well. There was a mild bit of feathering, especially with the wettest inks, but there was almost no bleed through or ghosting. The only bleed through came when I had to cross something out or when I tried to make it bleed. For example, Noodler’s Apache Sunset when put down by a flex nib in full flex both feathered and soaked through.
The front side showing the feathering when I applied a lot of flex.
The back side of the same page showing bleed through only where I tried to make it bleed.
The Eighty Pages Volume 7 is now one of my favorite notebooks. The size is perfect as is the number of pages. I hope they put out more notebooks with the same kind of paper.
If they don’t, I face the dilemma of how to properly use the two I have left. (And yes, I really do worry about such things.)
Today I took our youngest out on a Daddy/Daughter Date (whilst our oldest stayed home and “studied” for her mid-term exams tomorrow). By request, we saw the movie Bakuman, which is based on the manga of the same name.
I was struck by three things in the movie: 1) how reliant it was on sound even though it was a movie about visual images; 2) how it may be the most effective example of native advertising I’ve ever seen; and 3) how much of a pen nerd I am to try and figure out what pens and pencils were being used.
Bakuman is the story of two high school students who come together to create a manga worthy of being included in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. The movie tracks their trials and tribulations and although you’ve probably seen this movie before in other forms and know what’s going to happen, the way it happens is often done surprisingly well.
For the uninitiated, Jump and its publisher Shueisha are the grandfathers/grandmasters of all manga magazines in Japan (and probably the world). Jump‘s history includes Mazinger-Z (which came to the USA as Tranzor Z and spawned the Shogun Warriors toys), City Hunter, Dragon Ball, Hunter x Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece and Death Note, and those are just the ones people in the West might know.
(Note: If you recognize none of these you are either completely normal and/or don’t have young kids or relatives.)
Jump‘s earlier incarnation also spawned MahaGoGoGo, which came to the USA as Speed Racer, and one of its affiliates spawned All You Need is Kill, which begat the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. (At one point, in the closing credits, the camera spends two minutes scanning over a bookshelf full of Weekly Shōnen Jump titles.)
Jump and its offices are major stars in the movie, but the other stars are the pens they use. After the protagonists have decided to collaborate on the manga, Mashiro Moritaka, played by Takeru Satoh, picks up a dip pen that used to belong to his manga artist uncle–the uncle’s death years before is a major plot point in the movie–and begins to draw with it. He’s immediately impressed by how much more expressive it is than a ball-point pen or a pencil. (The pen geek in me was going “damn straight, brother, damn straight” and trying to figure out a way to bring She Who Must Be Obeyed to the movie, if only for that part.)
The best part about that scene is the excellent sound design as the pen scratches across the paper. It was enough to bring chills to the spine of this pen addict. In fact, one of the movie’s best accomplishments is the different sounds of the different pens and pencils on paper. At one point, the scratch of the nib serves as the snare drum part in a music video sequence where the anime they are drawing is projection-mapped onto the paper and the room around them. (You can see bits of it in the trailer here. Note: it’s all in Japanese.)
Of course, the whole time any pens were on screen I was doing a Rainman monologue: “I think it’s a Copic, I don’t think it’s a Pigma Micron. I think it’s a Copic. It’s definitely not an Ohto. I think it’s a Copic.” Given that there were no complaints from other viewers, including our youngest, I’m pretty sure I kept that internal monologue internal.
The movie’s weakness is that it relies too much on its Sakanaction soundtrack. The music is excellent, but it’s often overwhelming as if the director were saying “Listen! This is awesome!” as it stops moving forward for a short (with one exception) music video.
It also suffers from a noticeable lack of women. Weekly Shōnen Jump is apparently staffed completely by men and the only woman to get a speaking part disappears early. Nana Komatsu plays Miho Azuki, Moritaka’s love interest and muse. In the few scene’s she’s actually around, Komatsu does a good job, but she’s mostly there to smile and look radiantly beautiful. As such, she is always shot in glowing, angelic soft focus (which you can even notice in the trailer). There were comic moments where she is in angelic soft focus and the person she is talking to is shot in regular light. At first I thought she might be imaginary, but she was apparently real.
The rest of the actors are well cast. However, because they are based off a manga, they walk the line between wacky and good. One manga artist has a brass knuckles phone case and gets his accurate fight depictions by having his friends take pictures of him being kicked and punched. However, when his work is accepted by Jump, he giddily announces his acceptance over the pachinko parlor loudspeaker. Another strips down to work while another drinks lots of sake and acts depressed.
For no particular reason other than soundtrack filler, there is a manga style fight between Moritaka and his collaborator Akito Takagi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) and their rival Eiji Niizuma, played by Shota Sometani. They fight with ink and pens to excellent music and at first it’s kind of funny, but it goes on way too long.
The most impressive acting happens near the end when Niizuma and Moritaka come together over the latter’s drawing table. I won’t spoil it too much, so let’s just ask “what would you do if your rival was scribbling on your true love’s face?” Satoh’s reaction is brilliant–and proves he can act–and it was not even close what I was fearing was about to happen.
I was glad our youngest dragged me to it and I would happily take our oldest and/or She Who Must Be Obeyed to see it. I think it’s also worth seeing, even if you don’t like manga. (Also, pen and stationery addicts should definitely stay for the closing credits. There’s a taste at the end of the trailer.)
I ought to do a commercial, in the spirit of this one, to sell televisions right now. I can imagine me saying “my hair is brown, my eyes are blue and my skin is well tanned.”
The problem is my hair is turning white, my eyes change between green, blue and gray depending on what I’m wearing and right now my hands are blue and my fingertips are orange and black. (If that doesn’t send people running for higher definition televisions, then nothing will. I could also wear a green shirt and say it’s blue, although that wouldn’t work in Japan. (More on that in another post.)
This technicolor finger painting happened today when I was refilling a couple fountain pens and, well, things got weird.
I had no problems with the black ink at first, but then managed to grab a piece of blotter paper in the wrong way and blackened my finger tips.
The same thing happened with the dark blue ink I used for the second pen.
Then, I refilled a third pen with a more turquoise shade of blue. In this case, I tested the wetness and dryness of a spot on my cleaning towel and discovered it was, in fact wet, and my fingers were suddenly blue.
At that point I decided to wash the towel and, by default, my hands. This involves running it under warm water and squeezing out the ink.
Unfortunately, the ink, despite being water-logged, was still persistent enough to make my hands an interesting shade of blue.
This is one of the risks of using, not only fountain pens, but fountain pens with bottled ink. If you’re not careful, you end up wearing your hobby. You can also end up wearing colors that you weren’t using. The orange comes from an ink I wiped on the towel yesterday.
Now I’m faced with a dilemma: do I wash dishes to help clean off my hands, or do I just go to bed and the let tomorrow morning’s shower take care of the ink.
Because I have a couple new pens on the way, and despite the fact I won’t see them for a couple months, I find myself beginning the slow process of culling my herd of pens to make way for (and pay for) the new ones. This sounds like an easy process but it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
First, i have to look over each pen and decide that it needs to go and why it needs to go: it’s too old, I never use it, there are others I like better, the nib isn’t as good as I thought it would be. I’ve got three others just like it, this one is broken. This results in a list of “this pen must go” candidates.
That part of the process is followed by the hours of justification for why I should keep each pen on the list. These justifications usually start with:
The Sentimental Reasons
It was my first internet pen; it was my first Kickstarter pen; it was my first fountain pen; it was my first Massdrop pen; it looks like a pen that was a gift from my father; my ex-girlfriend gave me a pen by the same manufacturer.
After the sentimental reasons fail, the economic arguments kick in:
The Economic Reasons Sunk Cost Fallacies: It’s still new; I haven’t had it long enough for me to truly know it; I spent a lot for it and need to get my money’s worth out of it; it still has a lot of life; if I just clean it up a bit it will work perfectly and I will like it better.
You Haven’t Sunk Enough Costs Into It Fallacies: If I just spend some money to get it cleaned and tuned it will be better; if I get this fixed up, I could sell it for more. I haven’t reviewed it on my blog yet.
After those fail, the next step is the denial arguments:
The Bitter Denial Reasons
It’s too much work to take pictures of it and post it and that’s totally the sunk cost fallacy. Look at all these flaws; no one will buy this anyway because it’s crap so I should keep it. Cleaning all these will be real pain in the butt, do I really want to do that when they might not sell? What if something goes wrong in the shipping and I have to waste a lot time dealing with it? What if I’m not charging enough and I’m ripping myself off? There are already thousands of these out there so I won’t get much money for it. I should do more research about how much to charge.
After that is all resolved, the next step involves taking and posting the pictures and figuring out how to collect the payments.
But should I post the pictures on a forum or make a page on my blog to sell them? I’ll have to think about that a while. Until I figure it out, I’ll just play with some pens.
A colleague of mine is standing at the edge of the rabbit hole and I find myself with a moral dilemma. Do I do what’s right and hope for the best which is good for my colleague, or do I do what’s wrong and hope for the worst because that’s the best for me?
This colleague, seeing my extensive collection of pens and fountain pens, has decided to stick a toe in the ink, so to speak, of fountain pens. She also implied that I was going to be her adviser in all this.
This is where my moral dilemma enters the situation: do I use Jedi mind tricks (which I totally have) to persuade her to buy a more expensive starter pen in the hope that if she doesn’t like fountain pens, I can pick up the pen on the cheap for myself?
Unfortunately, once she made the decision to try fountain pens and before I could advise her, she did a shocking amount of research in a short amount of time and settled on a Platinum Preppy which was actually a very good choice (for her). It writes well and has a smooth nib. It also comes in fun colors, which is often important to people just starting out with fountain pens. It lets her try fountain pens without spending a small fortune.
She said she’d considered a Pilot Cocoon for a while but had opted against it as it was a bit pricey for a starter pen. I started waving my hand saying “this is totally the pen you’re looking for, this is totally the pen you’re looking for” but she went with the cheaper pen. (My Jedi mind tricks must be a bit rusty.)
The problem with the Preppy is that of the three I’ve owned (in two different nib sizes) I’ve had two caps split lengthwise rendering the caps and the pens useless. (I did convert one in to an ink cartridge holder but more on that in another post.)
I’m now kind of hoping she likes pens as I don’t want another Preppy. Also, if she likes them, it will be nice to have fellow pen addict, especially one who likes to do research.
