Post Dr. Steve Pampering

• Posted on August 30, 2006 at 2:39 pm

I’ve started a ritual of stopping at Barnes & Noble on the way home from appointments with Dr. Steve. I picked up these lovelies at the beginning of August and forgot to post the photo once I finally took it.

For starters, you have to understand that since I was a small girl, I have had a fascination, dare I say obsession, with writing instruments. Pens, pencils, erasers. All shapes and sizes. As a pre-teen, I discovered the art of calligraphy via a set of specialty Crayola markers that were at my grandmother’s house. I loved to play with them and reproduce the fonts using the instruction book that was included. Fast forward to 1999 when we were preparing for our wedding. At that time, I had purchased several sets of calligraphy pens, from the traditional dip kind to cartridge-fed pens by both Shaeffer and Osmiroid. I owned nearly every color of ink on the planet, plus an embossing ink calligraphy marker that I could use with the rubber stamping/embossing projects. I hand-wrote and addressed every envelope (inner and outer) for every wedding invitation that we sent. I also stamped, hand-wrote and embossed placecards for every attendee for the reception.

All this, and yet the perfect writing instrument has alluded me. With my renewed interest in journaling and my discovery of those perfect suede covered, gilt edged journals, came a renewed interest in finding a high-quality writing instrument. I started with my cartridge-fed Osmiroid pen and quickly rediscovered how difficult ink cartridges can be to work with. While I had the perfect nib, I could not get the ink cartridge to deliver consistent results, having to try very hard to restart the flow of ink at the start of each new writing session. And while I had been drawn to the ease of the cartridge-fed systems in my earlier years, I now longed for the elegance, simplicity and antiquity of the traditional pen that you dip into a well of ink. So began a new search for a writing instrument. I found and ordered a lovely hand-blown, bordeaux-colored, glass fountain pen that looked like it would fit the bill. It is an incredible piece of work, but the tip produces lettering too large to be useful for my journaling purposes.

Enter my visits to Barnes & Noble for some much needed soul-soothing. When I went at the beginning of August, I went with the intent to find the August issue of Britain’s Cross Stitcher magazine (you know, the one with the Margaret Sherry booklet; I have utterly failed in this endeavor and have given up). When I was unable to procure said magazine, I wandered back into the journaling section to browse and found a small section of calligraphy pens and inks. Upon flipping through packages of pen after pen after pen, I finally found this slender calligraphy pen made out of brass. But it couldn’t possibly be brass, I thought. Yet, when I picked up the package, I found that it was quite weighty and must indeed be actual brass. After pondering the other selections which were clearly inferior to me now, I selected the brass pen and decided to bring it home with me. While I was flipping through the pens, I also found packages of nibs, so I grabbed one of those, as well. Finally, I was going to deny myself any more bottles of ink, since I had several at home, but then I decided to pamper myself and came home with a delicious aubergine ink.

I was even more pleased once I had everything home and teased the brass pen out of its packaging. It is truly weighted very nicely and yet slender, not bulky at all in my hand. Yum! Now I just have to allow myself to use all of these new pretties I bought.

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