Cimorene

I've started reading this murder mystery because it was on Standard Ebooks and looked interesting.

This is about the murder of a well-known collector of antique firearms in the middle of his collection and the investigation by another collector. Many other collector characters appear, with facts about the hobby.

I love reading fiction that gives us a window into a scene of nerdy highly-specialized knowledge like this.

Long-time readers will know that I have dabbled in fountain pen collecting, but I was collecting them more with an eye to ordinary usage and functionality, not the kind of breadth or historical focus that the fictional gun collectors, and many other much more dedicated fountain pen collectors, bring to it. I have too many art and craft hobbies to focus that kind of time and money on fountain pens and a temperament that doesn't really like keeping ones around that I don't realistically intend to use. In fact, I have some more that I would probably give away except I don't have appropriate recipients (enthusiasts who would want them) and I don't have the time to spend figuring out how to resell them.

However, I've read enough about the hobby to have a mental outline of how this mystery could be about a collector with a collection of antique pens worth tens of thousands of dollars murdered with pen equipment (I'm thinking a hypodermic syringe - you need these for some cleaning and filling tasks; equipment stores sell them with the tips blunted so you can't hurt yourself easily, but obviously you could more cheaply file it down yourself, and that's what a frequent tinkerer or nib grinder would do). They could be killed by intravenous injection of an air bubble, like in Sayers's Unnatural Death, which is one of my favorite classics.

Of course that would look like natural death, so maybe something silly and showy like tracheotomy by sharpened nib would be better. I'm probably not going to write this because I don't know enough about that level of collecting. But I would like to read it.

Wax and I both tend to kind of ignore presents, for the most part. We share the quality of being able to buy most of the stuff we actually want, which tends to be like things for our hobbies. We also don't attach much sentimentality to them, I guess.

(I like getting presents that are surprises, but not enough to care that much, and also I'm hard to pick things out for, so my sister - the person I talk to about my hobbies and interests the most, because she shares most of them - is the only person who's very well equipped to give me that kind of present, something you like or want enough to be pleased with but not enough to have got it yourself even though it is related to your hobby.)

I'm thinking about this because in Finland, birthdays that are a multiple of 10 are a big deal. My MIL, who was both sweet and thoughtful AND good at organizing and planning, always gave slightly fancier presents for them - in fact she gave me one of my favorite necklaces when I turned 25 and one when I turned 30. The one I got when I turned 35 was even better because it was an heirloom. But on our own, Wax and I tend to consider birthdays just another day. My SIL is just a couple of weeks younger than me, so we've always both just had a birthday when we have a Christmas reunion, and she asked me if Wax got me anything special this time and was a bit shocked that I said no. She asked for a kayak and got one. There's a good spot for it near their house, and they've already been multiple times with rented ones. That's adorable!

This year at Christmas Wax and I bought ourselves:

1. Wax and I get more enjoyment miles, or minutes as it were, out of pajamas than anything else, and we decided a few years ago to get them for each Christmas. But we didn't want to wait to open them at Christmas, so we didn't. (We got two different colors of what we agree is the perfect nightdress: Ristomatti Ratia Adina. )

2. I spent about 75€ on fountain pen stuff (a nice sturdy Twsbi Eco that I could take to work worrying able damaging it, like with my beloved Pelikans which have softer, springy nibs, and a glass dip pen, but I chipped the tip right away), and ordered about the same amount of cake baking stuff for Wax (a mousse ring and a set of piping tips and the plastic reusable foil that you use to line the mousse ring when making mousse cake, all from the delightful posh kitchen store whose invoices tragically DON'T look like wedding invitations anymore, but they sent us a free spongecloth in the last one). But obviously we didn't wrap those things.

3. I was saying we should get something we could stand to wait and open at Christmas, and I happily remembered our Rörstrand Mon Amie mugs - we had two, so I bought us two more, and then when they arrived I reminded Wax that the reason I ordered them was to have something to open on Christmas Eve but she looked at me like that was ridiculous, which, like, it was, so we just used them right away.

4. I also bought the hilariously minimalist Swedish midmod design candleholder Stumpastaken, which holds 9 tealights by default so I've been coveting one to use as a menorah for years. I laugh whenever I look at it - it reminds me of the Bauhaus nativity. For Hanukka, obviously, not birthday or Christmas.

5. Last fall we discussed me ordering a KitchenAid mixer after my first few paychecks, but I kinda rethought it. We have a Kenwood which is, yes, inferior. It's lighter, the body is plastic that's already yellowing, and it's got places you can't clean bread dough out of without taking it apart. It's got attachments that are not stainless or enameled so they can't be washed in the dishwasher. But we use it comparatively little. Wax has gotten really into making cakes and she bakes much more than me these days, but usually with the hand mixer. Since all the Korean and Japanese pastry chefs on YouTube that we follow primarily use hand mixers too, I now feel that this is a legitimate choice. Also if we got one we'd probably have to drive to Turku just to donate the Kenwood.

And I don't really want any more expensive fountain pens right now! I've found my ideal pen in the Pelikan 200/400 series, and I like them so much that I don't want any more pens that aren't piston-fillers, except the Twsbi (for its sturdy hard nib that I'm not afraid of damaging) and a handful of Kaweco Sports, which not only have hard nibs but which I prefer to load with cartridges because they're so small. They're handy to have in the pocket, but I don't want a whole collection of them; if you have a pen inked up and don't use it for a few weeks it'll dry up, which is bad for them.

I would like an endless collection of sweaters, but there's a limit to how fast we can knit, so buying more wool in advance would be silly.

This is what I did while we were rewatching, by the way. I should probably have been knitting instead, but I'm in love with the limited edition olive Sport and matching Herbin Empire Green [a review because product listings never have adequate photos] ink cartridges I got myself last holiday season. Anyway, here they all are!

Since Hanukka starts so early this year, actually before Thanksgiving, it's already too late for my yearly winter box of Finnish chocolate to get to my parents before it starts, and we might have time to knit another hat for my dad to stick in there. I've made him a lot of hats over time, but he wears them constantly and apparently they are also unusually vulnerable to getting lost, getting holes worn in them, and getting ruined by attendants putting them in the washing machine. My sister was just saying she has only seen him wearing ones with holes in them in the last week, so presumably he has lost the nicer ones I made more recently. It's just a question of spending one's time knitting instead of reading, which is what I've been mostly doing lately.

I have a small collection of perfectly functional so-called "entry level" fountain pens that use cartridges or converters: two Lamy Safaris (I gave a third one to my BIL a few weeks ago), a Platinum Plaisir (F, green), a Pilot Metropolitan (M, pop turquoise), and a Pilot Kakuno (F).

The problem is, I got two piston-fill fountain pens a couple of months ago: a TWSBI 500AL (F) and a Pelikan M205 (M), which was my most expensive pen (around 120€). And since then I haven't wanted to use any of the others. They're both very nice to use, and the TWSBI could beat all the above pens for writing experience except the Metro because it's heavier and more comfortable to write with, and the piston-filling is so much more convenient that it beats the Metro too. The Pelikan 200 combines comfort and convenience with also having the springiest nib of any of my pens except a specialty flex nib Noodler's Konrad that I bought for calligraphy. I read about this, and apparently the Pelikan 200 steel nibs are known for being exceptionally nice, as good as or better than the typical experience of entry level gold nibs, and have their devoted fans and collectors.

In addition to that, leaving too many fountain pens inked at a time risks the ink drying out in them, which is bad for the pen and a huge pain to clean, so it requires using all of them regularly, which means switching pens frequently when writing or drawing, and doing so every few days. This is perfectly reasonable if you're going to spend a significant time drawing with fountain pens - which has sometimes been true, but not in the last few months. So I think I'm actually going to end up getting rid of most or all of those. Maybe I'll just keep the limited edition Safari.

Fountain pens are not popular in Finland - not as a hobby, anyway; there isn't a single shop in the country that carries any selection. The closest source is a (still rather limited fountain pen selection, as that's not its principal focus) pen shop in Göteborg (Sweden) which has a Finnish version of their site [penstore.fi] and ships about as promptly and cheaply as a domestic shop. Even my artist friend who primarily works in ink isn't interested in them! My brother-in-law is interested in fountain pens for drawing, but he already declared the Safari I gave him last time was his favorite of my pens he tried (including the expensive ones and the flex nib, lol).

Actually, my youngest niece also took to the Safari on her visit. It was adorable, and her dad suggested I could give her a pen if I want to, which is good to know (from a potential parental anger about the messiness of liquid ink perspective with seven-year-olds I mean), but I think she's too little for most of these! I can give her the Kakuno, I guess. And I don't think a fountain pen is a good gift for a kid who hasn't already shown interest, unless they're an avid stationery- and art-supply user, so that excludes her sister and her cousins (11, 14, 16). I guess I can always send extras to my sister. She has other potential users around if she doesn't like a fountain pen herself...

...but if I have any pals who want a turquoise Pilot Metropolitan (that looks like this), a green Lamy Safari (that looks like this), or a green Plaisir (that looks like this), I'd be happy to mail them to you to know they had a home with someone who wanted them!

I guess I underestimated how burnt out - or just physically tired? - I was after the last work practice because I'm still sleeping extra and I couldn't really face putting on Face to go inquire after managers who might accept my CV in person. One of the stores is a 2 minute walk from home, but it's like two hours' work to present myself in social interactions like that. I did take Tristana to be vaccinated yesterday, her second set. She barely complained on the trip and was fearless at the vet. We were in there for 17 minutes, counting paying and waiting, versus 30 minutes on the bus each way and probably another 20 outdoors of walking and waiting in the sunshine (it was about 7° C/45 F, but with bright sun at this season it was definitely a beautiful day even if it was a little chilly for my taste).

In addition to sleeping, I've done a bunch of reading and lettering - not really calligraphy - this week after I was glancing through my old sketchbook and found some letter studies and notes about how much I loved the lettering of Welsh poet and artist David Jones, who died in the 1970s. To quote Wikipedia, "He is also much admired for a genre that he invented later in life, which he termed "painted inscriptions". These drew on phrases and extracts from Welsh and Latin texts, and exert a continuing influence on calligraphers.[5]" These inscriptions, inspired by Roman British stonecarving and medieval lettering, are unquestionably my favorite lettering style I've ever seen:



I also admired the work of modern calligraphers whose work the Pinterest algorithm thought was 'related' to David Jones. Here are some of the things I've doodled... with weird shadows, because I can't get the networked printer-scanner to work again:

We were clearing some MIL junk out of the bedroom so Wax can work there starting Tuesday and a pen rolled out from under a random Christmas ornament, and I picked it up, and it turned out to be a Pelikan fountain pen! It looks like a piece under the hooded nib is missing.

It's definitely the 1960 Pelikano (a student pen) in black; in 1965 the cap design was changed. If it were in good condition it would look like this (just imagine a bunch of scratches and dings and you get the idea for the one I found):



There is a modern version of the Pelikano, but I've never considered buying it because the modern idea of a student pen looks like... this:



(Not that I don't like childish things... I definitely want to buy a Pelikan Twist at some point.) The cap is just too clunky and ugly. It's more original, which is probably why they at Pelikan decided originally to upgrade from a straight-up cartridge-carrying clone of the All-Time Iconic Parker 51, and it's probably more ergonomic and anti-slip, but that's no excuse for the cap to look like THAT.

Also vintage is just cooler obviously. But I'll have to soak it because it had dried up with an ink cartridge that must have been last changed no later than 1985, when Wax's paternal grandfather died, and her mom had just carried it around in a box of his coins and keepsakes since then.

Possibly because the supply of new Good Omens fanfic has slowed down considerably since July-August's high point (like, don't get me wrong, it's still pretty fast, but I'm no longer guaranteed to find something bookmarkable as often as every 2 days even if I keep up), over the past few weeks my typical counterphobic coping mechanism of constant compulsive reading has given way quite a bit to drawing.

I always have a sketchbook somewhere, but it's not my primary hobby and I don't typically use it every day, just sort of go through phases. The past 3 years I've been doing Inktober with my mom and my sister, and daily drawing does tend to add some extra frequency (this year my dad is participating as well by writing a poem for each prompt, a fun family chat activity that is also just adorable), but nothing close to this year, where I started a new sketchbook on October 10 and have used 62 pages (and about half the sheets) already. In contrast, my last two sketchbooks this size took 16 and 10 months to use up respectively, while at the present rate this one should be gone in less than a month in total (drawing in ink uses almost twice as much paper as pencil, because I almost never want to draw on the backs; and the earlier sketchbooks had at least some pages in pencil, though probably <10% for these more recent ones).

When I was a teenager I used drawing to ameliorate stress quite intensively, though. I tried to schedule an art class each semester my last 2 years of high school (a quarter of my day because the school was on the incredibly stupid 'block system', four 98-minute classes per day) because I'd discovered accidentally that flow was more quickly and easily accessible in art than in my other hobbies...

... I bought a Uniball Signo white gel pen recently along with my last three Tombow brush pens (they're way too expensive to buy in sets) from a recommendation at Cult Pens, my go-to UK pen/pencil/marker/paper megastore that stocks nearly everything and includes the most comprehensive shop filtering and information pages (and the only one I've found that not only clearly labels refill compatibility on every refillable pen and pencil, but also has a link from writing instrument product pages to the compatible refill category and from refill product pages to the compatible writing instrument category. I often refer to JetPens in the US for their fountain pen information, but their refill labelling is far inferior). Their comment was that the Signo is more effective than many white out pens. It certainly smells better, though it's way less opaque than whiteout tape; but I've recently started incorporating it into ink drawings both for corrections and coloring, and it's pretty addictive. Maybe not as much as Tombow pens, though, which besides being far superior to other brush pens for calligraphy, as mentioned by virtually every review and article on the internet, are also really, really nice for coloring.

Contrary to expectation when I first bought most of the markers I have, it seems the more markers I have, the more markers I realize I need, because each expansion of the collection lets you do more, and then as you play with them you realize how useful two more kinds of black markers (Sakura Pigma Microns in every size and a water-based brush pen) and a spectrum of gray brush pens and an entire set of flesh color and pastel felt-tip fineliners would be... and on and on.

Possibly I should go back to colored pencils.

Since parcel delivery has been unreliable since the outsourcing of delivery to our local K-Citymarket supermarket, I've been trying to use parcel-pick-up shipping methods instead. There are 2 corner groceries within a 10-minute walk of home, each next to its own bus stop, and between them they get at least 4 of these (including the infamous Smartpost automats, whose mishap from the previous link has now been rendered impossible because the websites now display the private automats in the dropdown list when you order from them, hallelujah). A lot of websites from within Finland offer more than one of these, because not every corner grocery has all of them.

So that means that I try harder to find online shops inside Finland to order from now, where in the past I often ordered from the UK or Germany by default because they're so big & hence have a wider range of well-designed large English-language webstores (the difference in shipping cost is usually not extreme, although UK ones are less likely to offer international shipping at all)*.

But today was the first time I started to order something from a domestic shop and then changed my mind because they didn't have any pickup-point options. This is... unheard of. It's bizarre. It's not like it's a tiny little shop, either. It's quite large! I feel like I've time traveled to 2005 with their webshop! I'll have to find more Spøt from one of my other 8 Finnish yarn shop bookmarks...



*Which may slightly reduce the shock if they slide out of the EU soon... though not for me, because I'm deeply attached to three different UK-based fountain pen & ink shops and I've only found one likely EU replacement and their website's not as good. Unsurprisingly the situation is quite different when it comes to yarns, although afaik only Great British Yarns has all the Jamieson's of Shetland and Studio Donegal yarns which I want acres of... Finland is a big knitting and yarn-consuming country, so there's a pretty solid stock of good speckled hand-dyed colors from indie dyers like Hedgehog Fibres (Irish), The Uncommon Thread (UK), Qing Fibre (UK), La Bien Aimee (French), & Finnish Aurinkokehrä, Handu, Kettu Yarns, Louhittaren Luola, Lanitium ex machina, and Silmusolmu. Much more surprisingly, there's a Helsinki salon that carries several great indie nail polish brands of which I am a long-time dedicated fan, even though she's much smaller than the UK shops that do that (so small that she hand-signs every packing slip "Thanks! - Satu").

A few people mentioned interest in seeing more of my calligraphy practice.

I have only practiced calligraphy for a few years and have too many other hobbies to show off beautiful works of art such as calligraphy masters do on YouTube and in the blogosphere; I'm a dabbler only. (I also have a strong preference for insular scripts and the Art Nouveau and Art Deco lettering influenced by them over gothic blackletter, whose fussiness is understandably most popular in the field since it is so justly impressive.)



( + 7 )

💧 I'm still using up the brown ink in the pens I put it in a couple of weeks ago so I still haven't been able to test out the last few shades of brown ink. Clearly I need more cheap disposable pens. And on the plus side, the cheapest fountain pen, the Platinum Preppy, is the one that's the least prone to drying out. ... On the minus side, my pen cup is close to being full of fountain pens now. I've already moved everything that wasn't a fountain pen into a lesser pen cup of shame behind the main one.

🔍 Nib tuning IS going to happen! We walked to Motonet last week when it was cold and windy - haha jk it's STILL cold and windy - to grab the set of three magnifying loupes (aka hand lenses) that I will need to check nib alignment before attempting to grind or smooth away any trouble spots. I've got my info posts and tutorials all queued up and the sheets of smoothing mylar I ordered from my favorite small British fountain pen specialty shop, The Writing Desk, arrived weeks ago. I simply hadn't bought the lenses because it was an errand that had to be done on foot.

📐 Motonet is a huge tool & hardware store that sells car stuff & tool stuff & garden stuff but not, like, lumber. They have about four times the power tools of Clas Ohlson, though, and I like to go and ogle them. (I keep MEANING to buy a corded power drill... .) We stumbled and hit ourselves on the Ryobi display. Ryobi's branding is stellar. Everything is so modern, yet rugged looking, in that beautiful happy neon spring birch bud green. While I was talking about power drills, waxjism found this cordless hand vac and determined that since we have so much dust, actually it would be a savings rather than a waste of money to get a cute-yet-rugged tactical hand vac, so we did. The packaging and the instructions are so serious, I feel like I've bought a very cheap and small 40€ car. Except we were so distracted and enthusiastic - due to being there together, and talking about it - that we forgot to really read the package. So we didn't notice that Ryobi's 18V cordless lithium battery tools come without the battery because the battery is interchangeable, rechargeable and practically everlasting, its design dating to the 90s; and that the cheapest of these batteries is about twice the cost of the vac, and the cheapest of the chargers is about 50€, with the cheapest battery+charger pack being around 100€. So we definitely still have to do some more reading before we can purchase that and actually use it to vacuum anything. I'm not sure what Ah is yet.

🔨 Mece was here months ago and told us the reason our wall-mounted entryway coatrack shelf keeps falling down is that it was not anchored with the right anchors for its weight and the wall material, twice in a row. Like, why did we even call maintenance to do it at all if they were just going to do it wrong?! They're the pros! We could just do it wrong ourselves!! So we went to Clas Ohlson and read all the stuff and bought what seem to be the right sort of wall anchors, only I'm not really sure if we can get them in without a strong power drill anyway. So we might have to either borrow MIL's or call maintenance again. The latter is much easier, but can we trust them? We've just been using this shelf for a year tilted halfway out of the wall with fewer coats hung on the hooks. Probably should not do that. I've been putting off seeking out the proper tutorials for a month now for fear that they'll make it clear that we can't do it ourselves and we have to call someone. We hate calling someone.