Yearly Archives: 2013

Another one bites the dust…

 in Uncategorised by

Another one bites the dust – well, kind of.

A while ago I wrote about the local pen shop in Preston. Platts closed down its shop on the high street but continues to trade online. The stationery shop Schreibwaren Jäcklein / Hiller Bürobedarf in my old home town, Volkach, suffers a similar fate now. They will close down at the end of this year, but will keep trading online. There’s a closing down sale, all items are 50% off.

I wish them the best of luck for their future.

Jaecklein Volkach

Closing down…

Merry Christmas 5

 in Graf von Faber-Castell  tagged Christmas / Graf von Faber-Castell / Lindauer by

Merry Christmas! I hope that over the holidays you’ll find the time to enjoy some of your favourite pens and pencils.

I was lucky enough to get some pencils for Christmas from my wife (including a Lamy plus pencil, which isn’t easy to get in the UK and some less common Staedtler pencils), but I also got two non-pencil items for Christmas: a bottle of Graf von Faber-Castell’s new ink and a Lindauer fountain pen. In Papier Pfeiffer I was told that Faber-Castell is currently only shipping Hazelnut Brown,  Stone Grey and Garnet Red – I assume this is only true for Germany though. Shops in other countries seem to  stock different ink colours. Graf von Lindauer

Goodone’s belted notebook

 in Paper & Notebooks  tagged Goodone / Kickstarter by

The good folk from Goodone have contacted me to tell me about their product on Kickstarter: belted notebooks. What I read did sound quite interesting so I thought I mention it in a blog post.

It’s basically a leather notebook that comes with a strap so that you can wear it like a bag. Two of the points I liked most: The leather used is from upholstery left overs and the strap you use to hang it over your shoulders comes with a pen loop.

I was told that any loose sheets of papers you might insert into the belted notebook, called YOU, will be held firmly in place thanks to the notebook’s elastic band.

Goodone You notebook (image © Goodone)

Goodone You notebook (image © Goodone)

I wish them good luck and hope they’ll reach their goal on Kickstarter.

Pelikan Wall Calendar

 in Pelikan  tagged calendar / Pelikan by

What a nice surprise when I came home yesterday: I got Pelikan’s huge wall calender for 2014.

October's pen and the calendar sheet on the left (image © Pelikan)

October’s pen and the calendar sheet on the left (image © Pelikan)

You get one for posting a photo on Pelikan’s Facebook page (for more details follow the link at the end of this blog post). I think there are still lots of calendars left. They have 500 to give away, but when I had a look at the submitted pictures this morning there were less than 100. If you want1 one of these calendars go to this page.

  1. You don’t need a Facebook account to take part, my wife took part and she doesn’t have a Facebook account – but you might need someone with a Facebook account to access the page, I’m not sure about that. [↩]

The Spincil

 in Ortie Design / Pencils  tagged Ortie Design / spincil by

After the bullet pencil Ortie Design has released a new pencil: the spincil. I first came across it on Gizmodo, but I have now received an email from Ortie Design with further details.

The spincil (image © Ortie Design)

The spincil (image © Ortie Design)

You’ll find more information on the official web site, but here’s a quick summary:
The spincil is a spinning top with a pencil as its centre. It features a 2B lead. Manufacturing is, as you might have expected, quite complex: the pencil is made from two huge pencil slats1 before being turned to produce the finished spincil. The shorter the pencil gets the easier it should be to get the gyroscopic effect going, but I assume you can also get some sort of spinning action out of an unsharpened spincil. There used to be a video of the spincil in action, but unfortunately the video seems to be offline at the moment. The video is working again.

Originally only available in Le Bon Marché in 2012, the spincil is now being sold in a handful of chains and shops in France, Italy and Luxemburg, but I noticed that one of the shop even has a spincil offer going on at the moment.

I wonder what pencil Ortie Design will come up with next…

  1. If pencil slat is still the right term in this case [↩]