#3 of 52: Flickr, Handwriting and Lost Letters

Tags

canada post, flickr, goulet pens, kyo maclear, lamy 2000, national handwriting day, wonder pens

Hello there. Sorry this is late; after uploading last week’s post I got a message saying no more posts until I freed up some space. Hopefully this one will upload.

I am making headway on the space issue, and thanks are due for that to Paul Godden, who commented on last week’s post and pointed me in the direction of Flickr. I’m now hosting my photos there and linking to them from here. Genius! And they have a LOT of space at Flickr. Thanks again Paul. The photos are slowly being moved.

I wanted to write today because it is National Handwriting Day! Today we celebrate the practice of handwriting with a pen or pencil, on John Hancock’s birthday. And on the 41st anniversary it looks like the US congress is supporting their efforts. Let’s hope this signals a shift in thinking in regards to bringing back the teaching of cursive in schools. Goulet Pens is giving away a Lamy 2000 gift set to celebrate. Fun stuff!

More along the handwriting vein: a review of Kyo Maclear’s book The Letter Opener by Liz over at the Wonder Pens blog. My local library does not have a copy but I have flagged it on Goodreads as one I want to read. It is 1989 and Naiko is working in the Undeliverable Mail Office, looking through the contents of letters and parcels for clues as to the address to which the items belong. When her friend and coworker vanishes Naiko tries to piece together what might have happened. There actually is such an office at Canada Post; I was contacted by them many years ago when a box of personal items was undeliverable. When opened there were quite a few letters bearing my name and address. They belonged to a dear friend of mine. When they phoned I was deeply touched he had kept them and equally sorry I could not help them find him, as we had lost touch many years before. I offered to take the items off their hands and do further research but they, rightly, rejected that idea. The box was not mine to claim. I hope somehow the box found its way back to him, along with my letters.

I hope you wrote something by hand today, and that you enjoyed the pen, the paper and the fluid joy of it. I know I did.

#2 of 52: Space, Spells, Sisters and Systems

Tags

austin kleon, bookblock.com, bullet journal, eccolo, jackie morris, leuchtturm, robert macfarlane, ryder carroll, the lost words

So I’m running out of space on this website. In fact, my dashboard tells me I have already done so. I don’t have a premium package anymore, as I downgraded my services last year when I really wasn’t sure what would happen to this blog. That means no new pictures until I can delete some old posts, which I am slowly doing. I’d like to keep the posts I actually wrote, and delete the links to books I enjoyed, or the Friday cartoons. Re-read them if you want, because some posts from June of 2012 will be disappearing soon.

I promised I would talk about notebooks this week, but before I do that I want to talk about a beautiful book my sister sent me for Christmas: The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris. This heavy and huge book is a picture book, a self-proclaimed spell book, of magical words that have vanished from the language of children. Essentially it is a collection of poems about certain words, like acorn, heather, raven, and wren, to name a few. The poems are glorious and definitely meant to be read aloud. But the real wonder of this book are the illustrations. Jackie Morris brings the natural world to life , interspersed with beautiful floating alphabets in whimsical fonts. I hadn’t heard about it at all but my sister is much more in tune with new titles and the latest publishing marvels. So it was the perfect surprise on Christmas day. It is very special, as is the sister who gave it to me. She continues to surprise and delight and support me, and I only hope I do the same for her.

Okay so let’s talk about notebooks! It’s pretty much the same system, with a planner and a journal or three. 🙂

My most used journal is the Eccolo World Traveller discussed in this post. It is almost filled up and I have loved writing in it and pasting things into it. I will probably start another one when it is filled (there are three blank ones on my shelf!)

I am also using one of my custom Bookblock Original notebooks to organize my blog posts. I jot down ideas for each week as I think of them, with my overall aim to have some sort of coherent plan for the year.

As for my planner, I have HUGE news!!! In December of 2016 you may recall I wrote a blog post about my plans for 2017, to use a Leuchtturm 1917 Jottbook as a bullet journal planner. And I used it all through 2017! And I’m still using it! I can’t believe I actually stuck with a planner for over a year. Very proud of myself. I don’t have a lot of appointments/tasks to keep track of, but it works for me. Who knew the simplest system would work the best? I still love my Filofax binders but just can’t bear to carry them around with me. My bullet journal weighs nothing and I don’t feel bad if I don’t look at it for a couple of days, because there are no wasted pages. Ryder Carroll is a brilliant man. I’ve heard he has introduced a Bullet Journal app to support the analog journal but I haven’t tried it out yet.

And here’s another piece of huge news (lowercase huge): I have added a log book to my journal system. I got the idea from Austin Kleon from his post On Keeping a Logbook. My writing is long-winded (bless you reader if you’ve made it this far!) and often I find myself running out of time for my long journal pieces. Right now I’m still trying to write a coherent journal entry about Christmas – the joys of getting together with friends and family, tempered by the power being unable to stay on – and then something amazing will happen in my day that I just have to write about (saw David Letterman’s new show for NetFlix, My Next Guest. The guest was Barack Obama and what he said about voter apathy really got my cylinders firing). In the past I would tear into a new journal or have two, three or four journals on the go. But I may have solved this with a logbook: I can at least write down a brief description of what I want to write about later. This has the obvious benefit of prompting me to remember it and empties my brain so I can focus on other things. I love Austin Kleon’s newsletter; I almost always have something to copy into my journal, or to send to David, as Austin has an eclectic taste in music. If you haven’t already done so, check him out. Oh I almost forgot – the notebook I am using as my logbook is the Colouring Notebook. Today is January 14 and I haven’t missed a day. They say it takes two weeks to form a habit so this bodes well!

Hope you all had a great week. Happy journaling.

 

#1 of 52: Detachment, Gratitude and Light

First let me say this is not the blog post I thought I was going to write. I had planned on writing about the notebooks I’m using now, some pens and inks I’ve discovered, and a new way of journaling I’m trying. I’ll save that for next Sunday’s post because a) I’m exhausted by the week’s events and b) every writer knows that what comes out when the fingers start typing is usually better than what one planned anyway.

I find myself thinking about generators and propane of late, as we’ve had two power outages in the last two weeks, once on Christmas Day and once on Jan 4. Both outages lasted 24 hours and even though we were much better prepared for the second one, there is still that feeling of detachment, of disconnect, that being “off the grid” creates. The modern world is so dependent on electricity – and it is good to be reminded to be grateful for it. So many do not have it, or only have it for a few hours a week. First world problems to be sure, but it is frightening all the same. One comes to rely on one’s friends during such times, and we have amazing people around us, who sent messages to check on us and welcomed us into their home, cats and all, when we didn’t know when the power might come back on and in the face of plummeting temperatures. Hats off to the amazing ground crews of NS Power, who got the power restored for 130,000 customers in less than ideal conditions.

Thursday night the 140 km/h winds kept me up until 5 am, when I was finally sure the roof was going to stay on. I held our cat Halley to try to calm her down, and listened to the wind batter the house. The windows rattled with each gust. I could just make out the tops of the trees, against the backdrop of stars and moonlight, in their furious dance. We spent Friday night with friends and it was the perfect antidote to the stress of the night before, a kind of peace that comes with old friends, good, simple food, and laughter.

We believe the power came back on Friday night, and we were back at home early on Saturday afternoon, just in time to prepare for some friends coming over that evening. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, that the lights were on, my oven worked and my tap responded with fresh, clear water when I turned it. Little things that are so easily taken for granted, until they can’t be.

So here’s to friendship, neighbours, and sharing food and drink; and here’s to light in the darkness, may it always find us.

Happy journaling.