#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.

 

Saying Good-Bye to World Mail Panel Postal Surveys

Tags

leuchtturm, world mail panel

Back in March of 2014 I started processing postal surveys for World-Mail-Panel.com. I received letters from all over the world and recorded details about them on the website. I returned electronic transponders to their offices in Germany. I filled two Leuchtturm jottbooks (one small, one large) with the details and the stamps from all over the world.

The small purple jottbook that started it all.

In February of 2015 I finished the first notebook and moved into an A5 jottbook.

And then in November of 2015 they asked me to start sending letters as well as continuing to receive them. I agreed and a new notebook was needed.

Once again I turned to a Leuchtturm but an actual notebook this time, with the elastic closure and pocket in the back. However I quickly found that it wasn’t needed; for Letters Sent I only had to keep records for a week, whereas for the Letters Received I had to keep those for three months.

The really fun part was looking at all the stamps from around the world.

***

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And I made some money doing all this! They paid me around $15 Cdn per month to receive the letters and that increased to around $20 when I started sending letters. Since I joined I have redeemed just under $500 in gift certificates for Amazon and credits for my PayPal account. They also offer occasional bonuses based on participation.

All of this coming to an end soon. 😦 I notified them in April that I would be moving to a new province, and unfortunately they do not require surveys to be conducted in this demographic. I still receive the occasional letter but it has slowed down to a trickle. I am very close to having enough points to redeem $100 in gift certificates. I am sad because this was alot of fun and very interesting. If any of you are interested check them out at world-mail-panel.com.

Maybe someday they will need my services again, and I’ll be ready!

One Night in Portland

Tags

aurora, cartier, cross, edelberg, filofax, harmonious green, j. herbin, leuchtturm, lierre sauvage, montblanc, oberon, online switch, paradise blue, paradise pen company, portland, rhodia, schmidt converter, scully, vineyard burgundy, vintage trouble, visconti, waterman, wonder ballroom

As a birthday present to ourselves David and I flew to Portland, Oregon to catch Vintage Trouble at the Wonder Ballroom last week. It was a magical 24 hours which included staying at a fabulous hotel (the Crowne Plaza Portland), grooving with the band (we got to meet them!), eating amazing food and shopping. We crammed three days into 24 hours and just one of the many highlights was visiting the Paradise Pen Company, a retailer of “high-end writing instruments offering fountain pens, leather goods and accessories.” And when they say high-end they aren’t kidding.

The Paradise Pen Company is located in Pioneer Place, alongside Kate Spade, J Crew, Louis Vuitton and Michael Kors, just to name a few. Very swish. According to their website they have 15 locations across the US. We had great fun looking at the Montblanc, Aurora and Visconti offerings, as well as Cartier and Edelberg. I had never seen a Cartier and their fountain pens do not disappoint. But like their jewelry they have a considerable price tag ($1,000+). Lovely to dream and drool over though.

They had an impressive selection of notebooks and planners, such as Filofax and Rhodia. I got to fondle an Oberon journal for the first time and I’m so glad I did, because I have been considering purchasing one. Although the leather craftsmanship is breathtaking I am not a fan of the paper in their notebooks. And they don’t lie flat, which is disappointing. But at least now I know.

I was introduced to Scully notebooks and promptly fell in love. This beautiful “Old Atlas” journal has wonderful paper and lies flat as a pancake. But the price ($113) was just a little beyond my budget (especially when you consider the exchange rate these days). At least I am familiar with the product and can order one from their online site if I save my pennies.

Stephanie was very friendly and interested in our very quick trip and the reason for it. She was very touched that we took some time to visit their store in our whirlwind tour of her city. I had done some research on their site before arriving so I had an idea of what I wanted.

The pen is from ONLINE and is the Switch model. Designed for students, it has a medium fountain pen nib at one end and a stylus at the other. I thought it a wonderful metaphor for modern but elegant note-taking: casually surfing the net, finding something interesting, flipping your stylus round and writing it in your notebook with a fountain pen. And it was on sale! So I picked a green one. And amazingly Stephanie offered me a converter to go in it, a Schmidt. I did not know that brand of converter fit the ONLINE pens so that was a real bonus. I also found a Cross notebook in a size I have never seen before, so I chose one to match the pen. And finally I chose two bottles of ink: Vineyard Burgundy and Paradise Blue, made exclusively for the Paradise Pen Company.

It occurs to me now I should have purchased a bottle of green ink to match the pen but I thought two bottles were enough. I really love these two colours. I also enjoyed the label although Stephanie told me they had a new label, with some new colours just released (Vineyard Burgundy being one of them). I like the old label, shown below on the blue bottle; what do you think?

I haven’t inked up any pens with these inks yet. As for the new green ONLINE Switch I inked it up with Waterman Harmonious Green. I was thinking J. Herbin’s Lierre Sauvage would be nice too.

Here’s a writing sample on Leuchtturm paper. The slight shading in the ink comes through. The nib is a little hooked, much like my Waterman Junior, and is very smooth. The Switch is part of the Youth line and indeed, it feels very sturdy and puts down a solid line. It wrote right out of the sleeve with no skips or hard starts. It’s a fun pen to use.

I’m very happy with my purchases and will write more about the trip in my Journal Writing Wednesday post. Thank you so much Stephanie and the Paradise Pen Company for a wonderful experience. Check out their online shop and if you are in Portland include this little shop in your travels; you won’t be disappointed.

 

World Mail Panel Journal Update

Tags

amazon, andrews + blaine ltd., doctors without borders, jottbook, leuchtturm, paypal, postage stamps, world mail panel

In my post of April 7, 2014 I discussed my involvement with World Mail Panel Postal Surveys. I am still processing surveys for them and I’ve had to start a new journal. So I thought I would share some pages from the old journal and introduce you to the new one.

Both the old and new journals are Leuchtturm Jottbooks in purple. The first one was a lined jottbook, approximately 5.8″ (15 cm) x 3.5″ (9 cm), and lasted from March 2014 to the first week of Jan 2015. The second one is grid, approximately 8.25″ (20.75 cm) x 5.75″ (14.5 cm) in size. Because of the bigger size I’m thinking the second one will last a good long time.

One of the great things about this program is, obviously, receiving mail from all over the world. And of course said mail have stamps from their countries of origin. I really enjoy the variety of stamps I’ve received so far and I started putting them into the journal, once the suggested retaining time for each survey has expired.

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Countries so far: USA, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Japan, France, Hungary, China, Spain, Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and, most recently, South Africa and New Zealand. I was delighted to see on the New Zealand postal stamp: From Middle Earth New Zealand. 🙂

In the new journal I’m putting the stamps at the back, with the intention of working my way backward. Eventually I will meet the recording pages and have to start a new notebook.

These are the recording pages. As each retaining time expires I cross out the entry, stick the stamp in my journal if it’s new, and throw the survey out. As each survey comes in, I record info on their website and then I record the number, id code, when it was received, how long I have to keep it, the transponder number, and the date of the postmark in my journal. Since I don’t keep the stamp with the entry I should probably start recording the country of origin as well. Most of the surveys come from the US.

So far I’ve never been contacted about a past survey. And I am not required to record the info in a notebook but sometimes when a bunch of suveys come in I like to have a paper record so I can keep track of those I have entered on the website and those I have not. And if a transponder goes missing (which hasn’t happened with mine as far as I know) I will have a record of when I sent it back to them.

This is where I keep the envelopes for returning the transponders, and on the left is a transponder awaiting a mate for its return trip.

I keep each survey in this expanding folder from Andrews and Blaine. I attached tabs for each month.

World Mail Panel pays me $15 a month to process their surveys. There are a variety of gift cards to choose from (I like Amazon), or you can choose to have a payment made to your PayPal account (I’ve done that too). You can also donate the money to Doctors Without Borders. It’s fun, easy and quick. You can read more about the program and register if you like at this link.

One final note: World Mail Panel sends me return envelopes with the postage already attached. I had not seen a $5 Canadian stamp before – isn’t it cool?? The owls are cute too but I LOVE the moose! 🙂

 

Crafty Monday

Tags

arc notebooks, fauxdori, midori, midori-style, my life all in one place, ray blake, raydori

I was fooling around with my ARC hole punch today and made a custom notebook for a game I’m playing at the moment. It involves the care and feeding of dragons and there is a lot of information to remember. I didn’t want to use one of my many empty journals as I don’t know how long I will be interested in this game and I would hate to “waste” a journal on my notes for a game I no longer play. My ARC rings, some scrapbooking paper and my ARC hole punch solved that problem.

Here’s a close up of the cover. I found the old dragon map online and the egg sticker I already had in my collection.

It is an unusual size; it was dictated by the size of scrapbooking paper I wanted to use. I put purple lined paper and blank, brown craft paper in it, cut to size.

I also used different scrapbooking paper for the dividers, with tabs at the top.

The rings are probably too big but they are the smallest ones I have.

When I finished this notebook I started putting together Ray Blake’s Monthly PlanPack. Ray Blake is a wonderful artist who has many, many free printables on his website, My Life All in One Place. He also makes Midori-style notebooks for sale. I bought one and wrote about it in this post in October of last year. This PlanPack was super easy to print and trim.

Here is the cover I created for the insert. I didn’t cut the edges properly so some of them stick out, but it doesn’t bother me. And it’s brand new so it doesn’t lay flat yet.

The printable produces two booklets. It starts with a blank month.

Followed by 6 blank weekly layouts.

And then the rest of the booklet is devoted to lists for whatever you choose.

I am not planning to jump into this format right away; I’m happy with my Flex Planner. But I have a lot of fun putting these type of things together and it might come in useful if I move into a smaller purse (which I dream about but never actually happens). Check out Ray’s selection; he makes truly professional-looking and incredibly useful printables for your Midori or Midori-style notebook covers, in a variety of sizes.

 

The Phenomenon of Bullet Journaling

Tags

bullet journal, doug lane, livescribe, modern stationer, ryder carroll

How many of you keep a Bullet Journal? I don’t currently but the concept appeals to me. I first heard about Bullet Journaling on Youtube; can’t remember which of the many journalers I follow mentioned it. I just did a search on Youtube for “bullet journal” and it returned over 38,000 videos. And if you google the same you get over 34,000,000 hits. Quite the phenomenon.

It seems that Bullet Journaling is the brainchild of Ryder Carroll, and he has an excellent website describing his system. I’m not going to repeat it here, you can visit his website or Youtube or the millions of other blog posts about it. What I like about the system is the index, which I sometimes long for in my many journals, and the flexibility of the system, where some days you can write five pages and other days nothing at all. And it still all works.

Livescribe published an interview with Ryder Carroll in April of this year in which he discusses the system and the feedback he’s received. His system has had an especially positive effect on persons with learning disabilities and psychological disorders. At the heart, people respond to the method or they don’t; and he’s always open to people modifying his system to suit their unique needs.

At the end of the day, the big thing about the Bullet Journal is that it’s a series of methods so if a method doesn’t work for people, then I always advise not to use them. If they do work for them, great. And if there’s something they need the book to do, that it doesn’t, then they should go ahead and invent it. – Ryder Carroll

Doug Lane at Modern Stationer wrote a great article on how he learned to love paper again through this system.

…I find sitting down with my pen and notebook very relaxing. When I combine it with some music and perhaps even a Guinness, it is even better. It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like me getting my shit together. – Doug Lane

I would love to hear from you how you use this system, if you do, or if, like me, you would like to and are thinking about starting yet another journal to organize thoughts and dreams and tasks. Whatever system you use, have fun journaling the night away.

The Fading Art

Tags

handwriting, incowrimo, letter writers alliance, letters, new york times, postcrossing

Loved this article by Catherine Field in the New York Times. I share the author’s fears of what this generation’s legacy will be. Handwriting is no longer taught in schools. Young people claim they cannot read cursive. So I share the fears but I’m also optimistic. With websites such as Letter Writing Alliance, InCoWriMo and PostCrossing more and more people are turning to “old-fashioned” methods of communicating. I searched for “penpals” on Google and over 1.5 million results were returned.

A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping.

Our souls crave human connections, not wifi connections. I have faith in humans so handwriting will be around long after I’m gone. At least I hope so.

Paint If Empty or Tired

Tags

brainpickings.org, handwriting, joan didion, journal, maria popova, mary gordon, new york times, notebooks, writers, writing

I started out tonight with an entirely different post in mind. Last week I received a notebook at work as a token of appreciation for Administrative Assistants Day. I am not what you might think of as an Administrative Assistant; I frequently refer to myself as an editor and that is how I am known in my group at work. My official title is Report Production Coordinator which involves quite a bit of word processing. Anyway however you want to describe it we editors were invited to join in on the Administrative Assistants Day fun, with a lunch and the presenting of a present; the afore-mentioned notebook. This is the fifth notebook I have received while working for my company; the others were presented as thank-yous or gifts for something or other. So I wanted to show you pictures of these notebooks but then I realized I forgot one of them at work (I actually do use one or two of them, at work). So that’s a post for another day.

In my despair at it being almost bedtime and my topic thwarted, I started reading this post from brainpickings.org. called Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers. That was over an hour ago. So many great jumping off points in this article: Mary Gordon on the Joy of Notebooks and How Writing By Hand Catalyzes Creativity (omg was there ever a more perfect article for me?!?), Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook, and The Daily Routines of Famous Writers, just to name a few. This hopscotching through articles could go on for some time. I want to write everything down in my journal but that would take weeks. Months maybe. And my apologies if I’ve already touched on some of these articles previously on here. There are over 600 posts now and I find my memory failing. I seem to recognize certain quotes but not others. So be indulgent with me if I repeat myself.

I hope you have as much fun as I did reading these amazing and inspiring articles. And then go write in your journal and just see what comes. You’ll be happily surprised, I guarantee it.

[T]he point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess. – Joan Didion

 

 

Kristen Stewart Pen Collector?

Tags

tibaldi

Apparently this happened this time last year but I only heard about it recently: Robert Pattinson bought Kristen Stewart a $46,000 Bentley Crewe pen by Tibaldi for her birthday last year, when they were still together. I’ve googled and there are dozens of news reports about it, all saying that Stewart is an “avid collector” with a “substantial collection.” Who knew? Makes her more interesting to me that’s for sure. Him too actually.

Click here for some great pics of the pen. Excellent taste Robert!