Comments on: Writing Fetishes

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:42:32 +0000

i understand what you are talking about, bloglily. i have an obsession with fountain pens and journals with paper that doesn’t bleed. five years of calligraphy classes at college and i turned my back on regular pens. part of it is the actual act of writing and doing it well takes time and thought. i still hand write letters to friends and family. it forces me to slow my brain down. my favorite pens are shaeffer and parker…can’t afford some of the other ones. it’s nice to know i’m not crazy like my kids say i am! ther are kindred spirits “out there”. i refill my cartridges using a hypo. needle and pen ink. really works.

By: John

John — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:57:33 +0000

If you’re into fine writing instruments at a discounted price, Cross is having a huge Summer Sale. All of the items are at least 50% off with many up to 70% off. They have some great pens at huge discounts. I purchased a few of the mini Ion pens along with the Morph.

The URL is:
http://www.cross.com/catalog/productcategory.aspx?cat_name=Special+Offers

By: Jayness

Jayness — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:42:49 +0000

i was searching ‘smiggle like stationery’ and this came up…

and oh what on omen. it’s incredibly, i think that ic oudl seriously contest as the biggest stationary obsessive in australia. no joke. I have enrite drawers piled with smiggle stationery , un opened. I just like the feel of new, empty stationery, so untainted in all its prettyness. it is incredible… and oh so expensive, because i have so much of it, and, i must confess, i am a huge stationary addict…

some one help me =S!

~Jess

PS. theres this awesome shop in bondi called ‘Kikki.K’… look it up, its http://www.kikki-k.com.au… but its very veyr very expensive, so it stops me from buying it. woot exp prices, haha…

By: mandarine

mandarine — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:58:43 +0000

I like my laptop, but its battery only just lasts the duration of my bi-weekly return trip. Every time the train is delayed or cancelled, I have to turn to old-fashioned analog pen-and-paper technology. I’ve been looking for plain recycled paper notebooks with simple lines (or no lines at all) for ages. They do not sell them in France – at all – it’s the high of stationery at the moment with the school starting again in September, and all I can find is these ‘SEYES’ gridded-to-death fancy schoolkid notebooks. Nothing plain.
If you have some, I’d be a serious candidate (if you can mail them over to Europe for less than I could buy them from the web). Or alternatively, if you know the address of a good online stationery store where I could find those, I’d be very grateful.

By: bloglily

bloglily — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 23:42:15 +0000

I did — and it is! I like that fat 30s look. Thanks for the tip, John.

By: John

John — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:30:35 +0000

Hey BlogLily,

I love pens…started with all the cool pens my dad used to get for his business.

My favorites are the A.T. Cross Apogee & Verve, I seem to be more creative when I write with them.

P.S. Cross has a new “way kool” pen called the Autocross. I recently purchased one and it is the best pen I have ever owned. Check it out:

http://www.cross.com/Catalog/PenDetail.aspx?cat_name=Autocross+Pens

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:26:23 +0000

What a cool website http://www.smiggle.com.au is! I liked the glob exercise books. I feel the magnetic pull of Myer, calling me from the other side of the globe…

By: sputnki

sputnki — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:19:35 +0000

Ok, even though I’m a photographer, I admit to indulging in the occasional well-built notebook and really fine-tipped pen. Especially the Staedtler pens that are so fine they could be used for drafting. There is also a fountain pen in my life I pull out for special occasions… and a box of Sharpies I use when I need to mark something other than paper…..

But my Moleskins are my special vice. Those little leather covered notebooks that have the wrap-around elastic and you can stuff in your pocket, or the outside pocket of the camera bag…. mmmm mm.

No thanks Bloglily, I’ve got my own addiction to get under control! This thread is starting to sound like “Stationery Anonymous”.

“Hi, my name is Doug and it’s been 2 month, 3 days since I bought my last notebook”….

Doug

By: Kerryn

Kerryn — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 22:44:26 +0000

I wasn’t trying to tempt anyone off the wagon; I was just trying to share my pain. Honest.

I’m partial to the leather notebooks, the lime and the orange.

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 22:19:13 +0000

Smiggle! I googled it, which seemed the right thing to do with a word like that. http://www.smiggle.com.au I know I shouldn’t be enabling this kind of thing, but I really liked the felt notebooks.

By: Helen

Helen — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 18:11:26 +0000

Oh! I saw Smiggle in Myer the other day! As I was being drawn towards the display, eyes wide and glazed over, a noisy hungry baby brought me back to my senses. He is a good cure for a stationery addiction.

I wore the letters out on my old keyboard too. The new one is holding up better… but it doesn’t feel quite so familiar.

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 16:34:47 +0000

asd and e are gone. so is n. l is looking like a punctuation mark. I understand there is an entire group of people in Denmark (could be Holland…) upset about this problem with the ibook G4. They’ve got a site on wordpress called something like Cupertino tales — apple sucks, that kind of thing. I sort of like the way the letters are fading. I know where they are by the way they feel, and it keeps people (aka small children) off my computer because they can’t figure out how to use it.

By: smokey

smokey — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 05:17:18 +0000

And thank you. Perhaps you could occasionally put a paragraph or two of your novel in here. Maybe that’s not a good idea for a variety of reasons (it’s not finished, it’s proprietary, etc.) but maybe there is something that could occasionally be leaked. If not, the descriptions of some of the things going on and your thoughts about some characters are wonderful to hear about. Do you know if writers once shared parts of their works in progress with special friends through letters (as opposed to the current method of workshopping)? Sharing on the web would be a mega-leap in that process and maybe too scary.
In any case, onward to 100,000 words by September. You may not have any letters left on your keypad at that rate. Smokey

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 05:01:23 +0000

Oh my. That is a truly wonderful poem. Thank you.

By: smokey

smokey — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:49:19 +0000

Hi Lily,
I like your confessions about having too many unused things for writing. It will surely inspire (as it already has, judging by all of the wonderful comments) sharing, charity, and landfill by the rest of us. Here is an account of my own recent crisis with folders–when I didn’t have enough of my own, I used my mother’s after she died, only having to change some of her labels to suit my own fleeting encounters with life. Folders can be Hermit Crabs, too. Smokey

BURIED CIVILIZATION

I finally had to throw away my mother’s papers,
but kept the folders for reuse—
holders of a hundred-year life-struggle of a teacher, sports fan, mother
replaced by the mid-life striving of a scientist, sports fan, son.

Covered her labels with my own:
Archeology with Astronomy,
Bridge with Poker,
Baseball with Baseball,
Education with Earthquake,
Ethics with Euphemisms,
Friends with Fractals,
Grammar with Goat Cheese,
Guaranties with Guaranties,
Health with Humor,
Morals with Politics,
Operations with Old Bills,
Politics with Puns,
Savings Account with Stock Tips,
Sentence Fragments with String Theory,
Social Security with Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

In one afternoon I had stickered over
the index of her attempts to make the world a better place—
the roads of a century-long civilization
renamed by the presumptions of another ephemeral culture.

My labels will be covered someday by my daughter,
perhaps with a peek at the underlying belief system
of her grandmother.
How will a social worker, artist, daughter
be affected by the uncovering,
by the discovering, by the recovering?

And given the previous layers of unsuccess
at spreading sufficient truth to right the earth,
how will she cover for us all?