Pens and Paper

Stationery fans: You must visit Paper Things!

I went to Toronto yesterday to visit Paper Things, a wonderful store in Yorkville. Not only does it carry all sorts of beautiful paper and journals, and prints stationery and invites (some of the work is done in-house), but all proceeds from the store's sales go to help fund the National Ballet of Canada.

I'll be writing about this store in a future issue of Pen World magazine, so stay tuned!

(And I can hear you saying, "Did you buy anything while you were there?" Well, what do you think?!)

A Montblanc arrived yesterday ...

I fly a lot for my job, and so I had a fair number of frequent-flyer points saved up. I was browsing the merchandise available and discovered that yes, there is something for a pen fan in there!

So I got this Montblanc Starwalker Fineline. I'm always a little torn on Montblancs: I love the way they write, but they are pricey, and I find that there's always something more exotic that I'd rather have for the money. But the "price was right" on this one, and it really is nice.

And while not all Montblancs appeal to me, the new Tribute to the Mont Blanc has been calling my name. Must resist...must resist...there was one in the last pen store I visited, and I wouldn't let the salesperson put one in my hand, because I just knew it wouldn't end well. (I ended up taking home a Pelikan instead.)

Now this is cool: Typewriter fonts!

I love typewriters. I originally kept every one I'd ever owned, but my husband finally implored me to clean out the substantial "typewriter museum" going mouldy in the cellar. I did, but kept this Underwood Standard, my very first, which my grandfather bought for me from a relative's office when I was a child. (It was an old typewriter at the time, thank you very much!)

Anyway, I've often wasted far too much time at the Classic Typewriter Page, and now there's even more reason: go down to "Typewriter Fun," and there's a link to typewriter fonts for computers. How cool is that? I downloaded and installed Reiner Graphika and Olympia Congress, and they look great. Now I just have to keep reminding myself not to hit the carriage return at the end of each sentence.

My new pen boxes!

Like many collectors, I have too many pens. I was storing them in "proper" pen boxes, buying new ones as each one filled up. Of course I wanted the 100-pen glass-topped wooden one, but those boxes are dreadfully expensive. And since there aren't many pen stores around here that sell the smaller ones, I had a hodgepodge of boxes, and many of my pens weren't easy to find.

So when I was browsing the Lee Valley catalogue, I discovered that the company sells toolbox trays, meant for woodworkers to turn into small tool chests. And the gears in my head started turning, especially since I could get shallow trays that would be perfect for pens.

I bought several of them, and my neighbor, who is a carpenter, built the boxes to hold them. I then lined them with felt.

These things are great. They don't have dividers (which I suppose could be made to go into them), but then, I'm not yanking the drawers out hard. In return for taking more care when opening each drawer, I can fit the pens in however I like, and I'm not restricted to the pen sizes I can store. I also put in a couple of larger drawers, which I use to store ink and pens in cases. And it all came out to less than what I paid for a 20-pen box from the store.

Pelikan M400 in Tortoise-shell

I was on vacation in Germany, but of course "vacation" is a very fluid concept when you make your living as a writer - everything is fair game for a story. I'd already picked up an assignment on writing instruments and was prowling the pen stores (like I wouldn't anyway) when this caught my eye. I couldn't leave it there, could I? I just love the way Pelikans write, and the facets of the tortoise shell combined with the white accents makes for one extremely beautiful pen.

What's for Christmas? A Porsche pen!

I'm all about pens and paper over here, but in another life, I spend the majority of my time as an auto writer.

Each year, the Toronto Star asks its auto writers to come up with lists of Christmas gifts, with one of them being a no-limit. Of course, while the rest of my list is more about cars themselves, there is always a pen.

And this year? See for yourself ...

Porsche still likes pencils

Auto design is all high-tech these days, and those creating the cars work with sophisticated software. Well, almost all of them ... Michael Mauer, chief designer with Porsche, still likes to use a pencil. That's a sketch he made while I was interviewing him on the phone. Read about it in my Toronto Star story on how a pencil ultimately determined the final shape of the Porsche 911.

Visconti's new Smartouch nib

I wrote a story for Pen World on Visconti's new Smartouch nib and filler system - read it here - so of course I had to look at the pen in person. And looking at a pen in person ... well, that usually means it comes home with me.

Of course I got the demonstrator. The Smartouch nib wraps around the feed to keep it from drying out, and that syringe below it is how you fill it. I haven't done that yet, but I've seen a video of how it's done, and it's a fascinating pen. Look for this innovative new nib to show up in some of the company's other products in the future.

Lady Sheaffer: A lovely pen that's back at work

Ellen DeGeneres rightfully picked on BIC for introducing a "For Her" pen, but the reality is that pen companies frequently brought out pens specifically aimed at women in the past. One was the Lady Sheaffer, and this is a lovely example that a good friend of mine gave me recently. I cleaned it up, filled it, and put it to paper, and it writes just as it did back in the 1970s when it was new. I just love it when an old pen can get back in the saddle again!

A pen just for women? Watch Ellen rightfully shred it ...