TannieSpace (Posts about pens)

external brain

Tanja — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 21:49:00 GMT

My brain doesn’t really retain much info lately. I get easily overwhelmed and lose track of pretty much everything. A while back I rediscovered the bulletjournal and after some initial try-outs in my Hobonichi Cousin I found that the A5-size currently doesn’t work for me. Too big or too heavy, not sure which one(probably both), but my hands and wrist start hurting a lot when I use it. The Cousin now lives on my desk and I don’t spend time at my desk anymore. I purchased a pocket Leuchtturm1917 notebook (in ‘Berry’, a nice warm pink) and luckily, my previous experience with a (several years old) Leuchtturm notebook proved non-standard. That notebook feathered and bled through like crazy! Several people told me (and showed photos) of their current notebooks, and those didn’t bleed much if at all, and no noticeable feathering. So I took the plunge and it paid off.

The pocket size (close to A6) fits my pocket (any pocket!) and bags easily and feels very light. After using it for a month I added a small Quiver to it, even though I had also stuck a penloop on it already. The penloop proved a bit tight for my favourite pens, I needed something better and I love the Quiver on my A5 notebook. I inked up the Pelikan M205 Amethyst with Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa and the Pelikan M205 transparant blue with Rohrer & Klingner Salix. I love these ink, but, as most iron-gall-inks, they write a bit on the dry side (or should I say, a lot.). At first I had an F-nib on the Amethyst, and that worked great! The transparant blue had an M-nib and Salix gushed out of that one. I don’t know what happened but I found it hard to write with. I swapped the nibs, and Scabiosa still wrote great. Salix, however, decided it did not like the F-nib and decided to go back to non-gusher-very-dry. I swapped nibs with my other Pelikan (never hurts to have more, right?) and this time, it seemed more tame. Not sure if the first M-nib has a slightly bigger feed, or I did something weird with cleaning. Both of them now write very nicely with the M-nibs.

I inked up the Parker Vector with Pelikan Blue Black (vintage, no idea if it contains iron-gall, it behaves like it) a while back because I read somewhere that the vector plays nice with dry/iron-gall inks. It did play nice! After a while I dumped some leftover Shaeffer Turquoise in the cartridge to bring the blue back into blueblack and it turned into a lovely teal and still writes like a dream.

I have a thing for iron-gall inks. I also have a thing for blueblacks, apparently. How many could one person possible need… (let me count: Pelikan, ESSRI, Diamine Registrar’s, Salix, and I still want Platinum Blueblack…)

For extra fun, I inked up the Lamy 2000 BB with J.Herbin Emerald Chivor and even that doesn’t bleed through.

I’ve used the bulletjournal nearly everyday this year. I keep it simply, I write down a few to-do’s for the day (not too many to prevent overwhelmedness) and I keep track of Nano’s food. I need the defrost it in time, and to aid proper timing I keep a list of what I have in the fridge (= ready to eat) and what I have in the freezer. In the evening I glance at the list and I’ll see instantly if I need to transfer something so the poor dog doesn’t starve due to poor planning on my side. I also keep a list of things I want to buy (to prevent mindless (over)spending) and a waiting-for list for whatever should come in the mail (usually dogfood and vitamins). So far it has worked well, I feel less lost and like having something to - sometimes literally - hold on to. I like the A6 a lot, it can go anywhere with me.

Tilburg Penshow

Tanja — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 18:28:00 GMT

Today I went to the Tilburg Penshow and had a blast. I hung out and tried pens with a bunch of great people, always a pleasant experience.

Before I went, I decided I had to keep a tight budget. Nano’s surgery certainly put a dent in my pen-budget (or any of my budgets, really) and my idea of finding a nice Lamy 2000 for maybe €120 (new, retail, €200) went down the drain quickly. I figured I could squeeze out enough money to buy a cheaper pen and maybe some ink.

I looked around (no ink), browsed, picked up a few pens and then it happened. The heavens opened, angels sang, light shone down on a table, and there I saw it. A Lamy 2000! ¹

After checking it out with other people and asking the price, it seemed like a very good deal, too good to pass up, even. So I paid, and will eat nothing but ramen the next few months, obviously.

We inked it up MacGuyver-style: unscrewing the section and dripping ink from my Pelikan into the barrel. When I wrote with it, the angels started singing again ²

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Footnotes

[]: http://tannie.nl/photos/pens/2014-09-27_162055.jpg

Two, actually, but I only wanted one. For now. ↩
Or maybe I had low bloodsugar and started hallucinating again. It happens. ↩

Ink rainbow!

Tanja — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 09:43:37 GMT

Inked up a few pens for happy writing. I like these colours separately and the combination also works well.

Drawing with the Inkling

Tanja — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:54:25 GMT

I've played around with the Inkling a bit today. It requires a little bit getting used to (I tend to hold my pens low, it appears, and this interferes with the Inkling-signal).

These images show the difference between the drawing on paper (first image) and the vector-image that came from the Inkling device. It looked slightly wobbly, so I simplified the paths, resulting in the third image.

I normally don't draw with ballpoint pens so that required some adaptation on my side. I tried some handwriting and that seemed to go well (image 4). I did notice a slight misalignment every once in a while, usually if I removed the pen from the paper too far. I dotted the flower roughly at the same distance everywhere but it looks off in the Inkling-export. All in all it works pretty well, but I will have to get a hang of the quirks.

Drawings from my trip

Tanja — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:50:41 GMT

I recently went on a trip to the UK and made a few drawings. This first one I made while we waited for the ferry to cross over with. As a kid I got sea-sick a lot so this trip gave me the opportunity to see if I'd still get sea-sick. See how I try to give it a positive twist?

Yeah, it didn't go so well...

We had some afternoon tea and some food at Tiny Tim's Tearoom where I made a drawing of a chair and a birth-bath. Halfway through my drawing things got moved.

Another time we had tea and food at Cafe 22. I loved the little teapot/cup set and we searched around for them at the shops, but couldn't find them. I ended up ordering a set over the internet, ah well.

We also visited Mike and his husband and played around in the pottery. I messed up a few times and still ended up with a cute little bowl. Hurray!

We went to London for a bit too and I tried drawing St. Paul's Cathedral from Tate Modern. Lots of wind, so my pens rolled of the table and my pages flipped over. That, and I misguessed the amount of space I needed. Ah, well :)

Total sucker for art supplies

Tanja — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 23:03:23 GMT

[gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Other people ~~suffer from~~ enjoy it too, right? An abundance of art supplies? I could do without of course, but I so very much like them....

I got a few more Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens. I like them a lot. I think I need a lighter brown though. Not sure yet, have to try all of these out first, hehe.

In other news, I made a new little website over at http://inkblobchronicles.com (and a matching twitter-account on ( @inkblobs). I will post my dailies there mostly. Some still here, but I like to have a dedicated space for those dailes. I will keep the site as low-text as possible.