Come on, what’s going on with British newspapers this morning‽ No need to sell stories in such a sensationalistic way.
Since we’re talking about surprising things anyway: I was also surprised to find out that 3D pens are very cheap now. You can now get one for under £30 / under $45. I think they started out costing more than three times that. Of course the more expensive ones might be better, but I wouldn’t know – I haven’t tried any.
Earlier this month I went to Fred Aldous, an art/craft/stationery store in Manchester that has bee around for more than 100 years.
Visiting this store is a great step up from visiting the usual chain stationery shops that all tend to offer the same items. Instead of finding what you can find everywhere you’ll find items that are usually only available in online shops or from abroad.
Ground floor
On the ground floor you will find imported, novelty and quirky stationery. This includes Field Notes, the first time I’ve seen them in a brick and mortar shop.
Field Notes
Less of a rarity: Rhodia …but I have never seen so much choice in one shop.
I was also able to stock up on Leuchtturm loops and saw pencils ‘live’ that I had to mail order in the past, like the Perfetto pencils mentioned previously.
Basement
The basement did remind me of a Hobby Craft store (an arts and craft chain in the UK). Lots of pencils, inks, etc, but of the less exotic kind. It’s still exciting to see so much choice in one place.
Parking isn’t easy in the centre of Manchester, but one of the side streets just next to Fred Aldous didn’t have double yellow lines all the way through, so I was able to park free of charge in a convenient location.
I also managed to buy a few exciting items.
You can find review of the Field Notes Shelterwood at The Writing Arsenal and at The Gentleman Stationer. The Field Notes I bought is the Cherry Graph, which is nearly identical.
Explosive Ltd, the company behind the Blacking Limited Edition video and running the Wood & Graphite blog, has a video review of the Cedar Pointe, bought in the same store.
I like a bargain. That means I do sometimes buy things if they are cheap, even if I don’t need them.
In this case I’m talking about erasers. You never know when a good eraser might come in handy [1]A variation of a sentence from the computer game Leisure Suit Larry.
Thanks to Lexikaliker whetting my my appetite and with some help from Shangching I got my hands on a Pentel Orenz. I have been using it for a few weeks now and like it very much. A blog post will follow, hopefully, once my time permits.
One of the nice features of the Orenz is the sliding sleeve. You don’t have to keep manually forwarding the lead to be able to keep writing. Instead the sleeve will slide back while you write until there’s no sleeve left. Only then do you have to forward the lead – and the sleeve will slide out again.
You start writing like this…
Retractable vs sliding sleeve
Just to clarify, when I write about a sliding sleeve I mean a one that slowly slides back while you write. The other type, a sleeve that is either completely out (for writing) or completely in (for transport) is the type I call a retractable sleeve. I hope these labels are correct, I’m not sure, but this helps to avoid confusing both types. Please let me know if the names I use for the sleeves are wrong.
In the past
The sliding sleeve is nothing new. The Staedtler Microfix [1]Available from 1977 until 1988. I used in school could do that. At that time Staedtler sold mechanical pencils with three different types of sleeves: fixed (F models), half slide (HS models) and full slide (S / SL models), but as far as I know the sliding sleeves have disappeared in the late 1980s.
…after a while it looks like that
Why are they gone?
Unfortunately these types of mechanical pencils are quite rare. I can see the advantage of a fixed sleeve for an engineer who needs his or her pencil to create precise drawings, but these days that kind of work is done on a computer – so why did the sliding sleeve not come back? In my opinion it provides a much better writing experience than a fixed sleeve mechanical pencil.
You can still get mechanical pencils with sliding sleeves. One example is Caran d’Ache’s 844 pencil, mentioned previously, but the 844’s sleeve is quite wide meaning it will prevent full contact of the lead with the paper – the sleeve is in the way when you are writing.
