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Sometimes you’ll find some really great deals on the high street.

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I saw these in Manchester’s Trafford Centre.

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This morning I noticed that there’s a new pencil blog: https://polarpencilpusher.home.blog

They also have a Twitter account at
https://twitter.com/PolarPencilPush and the Bleistift.Blog Twitter account is the first and so far only follower.

Have a look if you like pencils.

Print your own mechanical pencil, thanks to this recipe https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3509004

Neither magnetic, nor paper: Graphite is King on the Magnetic Notes (subtitle: Paper That Clings To Anything) from the Hobonichi store.

I bought mine when I ordered my Hobonichi Techo for 2019 and paid ¥626 (~$5.50; £4.40; €4.90) plus import fees etc. This is for 100 sheets, so the price per sheet is substantially more expensive than  what you might be used to from Post-its.

The back of the pack shows that the Magnetic Notes are made in Finland. You also get some advice on how to handle these ‘notes’.

You’ll find a detailed description of the ‘magnetic’ notes in my video.

Despite the name they are basically some sort of foil. Writing on them with pencil is good, but using ballpoint pens or fountain pens is, in my opinion, not that advisable.

If you want to try them out you don’t need to order them from Japan. Amazon US and Amazon UK sell them, too.

Price: September 2018

Exachange rates: December 2018

The big stationery topic this week is the Insights X trade fair. I really hope that Gunther will publish another one of his fantastic trade fair reports on Lexikaliker.de.

If, like me, you cannot be in Nuremberg for the trade fair then CultPens might have the next best thing for you. They are currently giving away a free pencil pack with every copy of the Secret Life of the Pencil book. ^[1]They also still offer a big discount on the Cult Pencil, with a further 10% off when using the discount code CULTMP10

The book itself is great. Much better than I expected. William Boyd’s ^[2]I think his internationally best known work might be his James Bond novel ‘Solo’, which I didn’t read, but listened to when it was Radio 4’s book of the week. foreword is more than fitting. I loved to learn about his pencil journey ^[3]..by the way, in my opinion graphite lasts much longer than ink – Sean could go into much more detail on this topic than I could and enjoyed looking at all the pencils while figuring out the make, model and approximate age.

Many pencils seem ‘real’ and straight from the desk, many seem prepared for the photos, e.g. Sculptor Bill Woodrow made his pencil into a sculpture, polymath Stephen Fry seems to have pretend knife-sharpened a sharpener-sharpened pencil ^[4]Best of both – the perfect compromise: sharpener-sharpened makes more sense, knife-sharpened is more fitting..

Whether straight from the desk or prepared for the book, they all are enjoyable.