Uncategorised

Soapy graphite

6 Comments / Uncategorised / / , ,

Produced in Poland for PZ Cussons, a manufacturer of soap and personal hygiene products from North West England, this shaving cream is very interesting for pencileers, molyvophiles [1]Someone passionate about pencils and molyvologues [2]A student of pencils – mainly because of its name. Disappointment is however unavoidable after a quick look at the list of ingredients: there is no graphite in this cream. This is possibly a precaution to spare modern office workers the chimney sweeper look when they go to the office after having used a graphite based shaving cream. Graphite lovers will have to make do with pencils and graphite pots, but they can be satisfied with the knowledge that there are personal hygiene products with them in mind, even though they don’t contain graphite…


A big thank you to Sean from The Blackwing Pages for making the world a happier place by inventing the word pencileer and to Lito from Palimpsest for enriching our vocabulary with the word molyvologue.

I bought the razor, seen in the photo, many years ago. It’s Merkur’s 34C, which has been on the market for 80 years. I was very surprised when I recently noticed that the 34C won About’s Reader Choice razor of the year 2011 award. What a good choice. This razor is really great.

References

References
↑1 Someone passionate about pencils
↑2 A student of pencils

Soapy graphite Read More »

And now for something completely different

8 Comments / Uncategorised / / ,

Lexikaliker’s banana ginger cake looked so tempting, how could I resist?

While I was preparing the dough I realised that some of the ingredients link to the pencil friends I got to know during the last one or two years. The butter was from Denmark (Hej Henrik) and I even used a cake tin that came from the same Danish company. Most of the ingredients were obviously British (Hello Bruce) and the recipe was from Germany (Hallo Gunther). I thought the ginger was bought from a US-American company (Hi Sean), but it turns out this chain isn’t American at all. I do have honey from New Zealand (Kia Ora David) and some very strong Canadian bread flour in the cupboard (Hi Stephen), but both were not needed for this recipe. What a shame I couldn’t include the countries from all my pencil friends.

Not easy to recognise: that's suppossed to be Lexikaliker's logo on the cake

 

Lexikaliker’s recipe has been slightly adjusted to fit the ingredients I could get:

  • 125 g butter
  • 150 g sugar
  • one pack of vanilla sugar (occasionally available from Lidl UK)
  • 2 eggs
  • 50 g starch
  • 200 g self-rising flour
  • 2 bananas
  • 50 g candied ginger

Icing:

  • 150 g icing sugar
  • 2 – 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Our gas oven is very difficult to use, it tends to be either too hot or too cold, but one thing you can be sure of: it delivers inconsistent results. Lexikaliker’s baking time of 45 minutes at 180 °C was nowhere near enough in our oven..

And now for something completely different Read More »

Writing slates

8 Comments / Uncategorised / / , , , , , , ,

When I started school and we learned how to write we were using writing slates, probably because you can practise again and again without wasting paper. They were not really made of slate, instead they were a bit like a laminated piece of paper, just that the plastic used is much harder and that the surface was not smooth. A few months ago I found my old writing slate again, together with the sponge to clean it and the pencil to write on it.

The sponge came in a container that could be closed – nice when you want to transport it, but not nice if you do not let the sponge dry out from time to time, as the old water will get smelly. The pencil was a “Heft und Tafel” (exercise book and chalkboard) pencil from A.W. Faber-Castell. As the name suggests they can be used on slate and on paper. You can still get the “Heft and Tafel” pencils today. I bought the white Goldfaber pencil you can see in the photo in April 2010 from Bürobedarf Jäcklein in Volkach for € 1 (~$ 1.38; ~85p). Even the writing slate Scolaflex is still available from Brunnen. Mine is from the late Seventies, just like the blue pencil. It has lines on one side to help getting the cap height and baseline right and is plain dark green on the other side.

Writing slates from proper slate are still available for a reasonable price. I just bought this school writing slate (see photo) from Inigo Jones for £ 3.25 (~$ 5.25; ~€ 3.80). It even comes with a slate pencil. Unfortunately I was not able to find out whether the slate is real Welsh slate.

Price: April 2010, Exchange rates: November 2010

Lexikaliker has a nice photo of a writing slate (Google translation) .

Writing slates Read More »