Uncategorised Archives - Page 21 of 30

Affordable pencils

2 Comments / Uncategorised / 20 October 2015 / Coccoina, glue, price, price increase

Gourmet Pens latest blog post gave me a shock. £5.25 (~$8.15; €7.15) for Coccoina glue? Did Coccoina glue get that expensive? Looking at the price development of wood cased pencils in last week’s blog post was probably really boring as pencils seem to be one of the most price stable items in the world of stationery.

From my twitter feed. Each horizontal line represents a pencil that kept it's price over the last few years. — From my twitter feed. Each horizontal line represents a pencil that kept it’s price over the last few years.

I had a look in my old emails and found Coccoina orders from 2008 and 2009 where I paid £2.50 (in today’s exchange rate: $3.90; €3.40) each. I think at the time another shop sold them cheaper, but postage wise I could combine the glue order with other items so I ordered it for £2.50. According to Measuring Worth £2.50 in 2008 is still less than £3 in 2015.

Well, I guess the message here is pencils are (still) great value for money.

PS: Regarding the shelf life of Coccoina, being mentioned at Gourmet Pens: I always had luck reviving dried out Coccoina with a few drops of water.

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A Noris at the Cricket

2 Comments / Uncategorised / 7 October 2015

John the Monkey told me about a Noris that can be seen on ECB.tv and their Instagram feed.

He wrote:

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s “ECB.tv” interviews fast bowler Mark Wood after the team’s match against Pakistan A. The reporter has tucked an end dipped Noris HB (by the looks of the dip’s colour) behind his ear.

I couldn’t resist and have added this to the Noris in the wild page.

The screen grab in this blog post has been taken from ECB’s Instagram feed. I believe that the use of the screen grab shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

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Wopex vs Noris

8 Comments / Deli, Pencils, Sharpeners, Staedtler, Uncategorised / 29 September 2015 / Deli, Made in China, Made in Germany, Noris, Staedtler, Wopex

Facebook

After a bit more than three years and many posts later the Bleistift Facebook page reached 100 likes this week. Well, I have to confess that I cheated and invited some of my friends to like the page, anyway: next aim: 200 likes by 2018, but that will be more difficult, as I have already invited some friends plus some people will probably unlike the page over the next three years. We will see…

Wopex vs Noris

Anyway, onto the real blog post:

You might remember the blog post about the Staedtler 501 180 sharpener. Staedtler’s rotary sharpeners start with 501 and their Wopex pencils are associated with the number 180. Despite this sharpener being officially available in the UK I didn’t come across it yet, so I keep using my Deli to make a great Wopex point. Here’s a comparison of a Wopex, sharpened in a Deli 0635 and a Noris, sharpened in the same Deli.

If you like this you might also like Sharpening a Wopex.

Tasty Cedar

Leave a Comment / Uncategorised / 24 September 2015 / cedar wood

There are quite a few cedar wood related blog posts by now, so I have created a page where I link to them all.

I made a recent non-pencil relates sighting of cedar wood on the Finland episode of
the TV programme The Hairy Bikers’ Northern Exposure. Our two favourite bikers were preparing salmon on cedar wood planks in front of a fire …looked really tasty.

The screenshots in this blog post has been taken from Episode Four of The Hairy Bikers’ Northern Exposure. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

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A pencil anniversary

9 Comments / Uncategorised / 12 August 2015 / Block, Fred Aldous, Manchester

Pencils as anniversary gifts

According to the Chicago Public Library pencils are among the suggested gifts for the 7th wedding anniversary, so I couldn’t resist including a trip to a stationery store on my wife and my 7th anniversary.

The chosen stationery store was Fred Aldous, mentioned in a previous blog post. It’s an independent stationery store in Manchester with a lots of choice.

Photo Booth

While we were there we also used their photo booth, an ‘analogue’ Photo-Me booth from 1968. Nice. I loved how the photos were still wet from the processing chemicals when they came out.

Pencil-wise we bought a pack of Field Notes pencils as our anniversary pencils.

Block printing kit

I also got a block printing kit. I’m really looking forward to trying this out. It includes a pencil which looks suspiciously similar to the Field Notes pencil. Since Field Notes pencils are ‘just’ promotional pencils with the Field Notes logo etc printed on (see Erasable episode 28) I was wondering whether both pencils might be from the same factory, but the Fred Aldous pencil’s ferrule is clamped in a very different way, so there’s a good chance it’s from a different factory.

fredaldous-pencil — The Fred Aldous pencil in the block printing kit

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