Look who made it into Amazon’s “screensaver” for the latest Kindle. Fittingly, the advertising shows the Kindle with a pencil next to it, the colour of the case is “graphite” and most screensaver images look like pencil drawings.
I would like to thank Sean for the Blackwing 602 used in this photo.
You can find more information about John Steinbeck and his relation to the Blackwing at the Blackwing pages and at Palimpsest.
Graphite screensaver Read More »
David O. just posted two comments with links over at pencil talk’s. They are linking to great [1]great because they are about the pencil industry, I am not sure what to think about the content articles and it would be a shame to miss them because are hidden in the comments, so I thought I post them here.
One article is from the economist, focussing on Faber-Castell and our favourite nobleman.
The other one is from the Wall Street Journal and is looking at the rivalry between Staedtler and Faber-Castell. To be honest I always thought they get along perfectly fine: selling name rights to each other, having joint press statements, … but the article portraits a much darker image. I am not sure whether they exaggerated a bit to make the article more catchy.
Thank you David O. for posting the links at pencil talk.
References
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Graphite has already been used 6000 years ago. Back then it was used to paint pottery. Then there was of course the famous deposit of graphite in Cumbria, discovered in the 16th century…
…but did you know that there is graphite on the moon?
Some of the samples brought back from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 contained graphite!
The Moon festival is just over. Good to know that Chang’e and YuTu, her rabbit, won’t get bored up there. They can build themselves a pencil and doodle.
I found this information while trying to find out more about the Apollo L mechanical pencil.
Graphite from the moon Read More »
One of the blog posts I plan to do in the next few days (or weeks) is about my favourite eraser. I have no doubt about which eraser is my absolute favourite, but there are a few other erasers that are very nice to use, too. One of these is the Sanford Design Artgum art eraser/cleaner, model number 73030, an eraser I already mentioned in a previous post that could easily be my favourite if it would smear a little bit less and erase a bit better. Although this last statement did not sound very good, the eraser is not as bad as this sounds. I admit that it will smear first when you start to erase, but if you keep erasing the smeared lead will be removed, as will be any traces of the writings or drawings you tried to erase in the first place. Why do I like it? …because it is very soft and crumbly. From all the erasers I know it is the one with the most comfortable feel to it.
This eraser was originally called the Eberhard Faber Design Artgum eraser/cleaner. Its name changed when Faber-Castell bought EF and it changed again when Sanford took over.
The Artgum eraser is available in two sizes and I bought mine, the bigger one, from Granthams, a local shop that is also selling stationery over the Internet. Their current price is £1.22(~$1.92, ~€1.43), which is a good price for Europe. Manufactum sells them for more than three times this price. On the other hand £1.22 is expensive compared to the price you pay in America. I have seen a pack of two fo these erasers from a US web site for 69¢.
Links:
Sanford Artgum eraser Read More »
If you want to make sure you don’t lose your pen when you walk around with your notebook there are several ways of attaching a pen or pencil to a notebook :
You might already have a notebook. In this case products like Leuchtturm’s PenLoop or this pen holder from Lexikaliker‘s blog (Google translation of this link) might be the right thing for you.There is also a slightly different version of the metal pen holder (Google translation of this link). For a designer look have a look at the pen clip by Stefan Diez.
You might prefer DIY solutions. Lexikaliker has the right solution, depending on your skills: There’s the easy version (Google translation of this link) and the more complicated version (Google translation of this link).
You could of course buy a notebook with a built-in pen loop, like Brunnen’s Kompagnon, or you could buy SUCK UK’s notebook that can store your pen inside the notebook.
Links:
Notebook and pencil Read More »