We have been ordering books from our local indie book shop and picking them up. At the beginning of the pandemic, the shop owner would actually deliver my purchases as they live nearby but now that things are waffling back and forth between pre- and post-pandemic times, we had the privilege of actually browsing the shelves in the shop. Our book haul includes:

• Rosie the Bug Zapper by Geri Bachman (Illustrated by Isabel Dory)
• Half Dead by Brandon Graham
• The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
• Knit the Sky by Lea Redmond
• The 99% Invisble City by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

Rosie the Bug Zapper is a children’s picture book illustrated by the teenage daughter of a good friend of mine. I’ve known Isabel since she was in grade school and I’m so happy to see how far she has come. If I didn’t tell you the illustrations were done by someone who hadn’t been to college yet you wouldn’t have guessed. They are adorable and I think Isabel is going to be a great illustrator.

Half Dead is the new book by a good friend of ours. We have been privvy to his writing process and the subsequent editing so its exciting to finally have his book in our hands.

Being an avid listener of Dear Hank & John, The Anthopocene Reviewed and 99% Invisible, I had to purchase the books that have grown out of the podcasts. Over the past few months John green has discussed the process of signing every copy of the first edition of The Anthropocene Reviewed so it’s also a delight to be in possession of one of the thousand of books he signed.

Finally, Knit the Sky is a book from the talented and charming Lea Redmond known best for her World’s Smallest Post Service which created a Kickstarter project that was eventually turned into a Chronicle Books kit. With Knit the Sky, Lea inspires knitting everyday events like the Sky Scarf that is a row a day to mark the weather for a whole year.

What are you reading right now? Do you document what you read in a notebook or by some other means?

The post Currently Reading: New Zine Alert & More appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

This aesthetic also appeared in Knoll catalogs in the mid-century. The designer responsible? Herbert Matter.

Matter used this technique in some of the photography work that he did for Conde Nast as well.

Tom Sachs, a former employee of Frank Gehry, also uses knolling in his studio for tidy, organized workspaces.

Today, we see knolling everywhere but many people call it “flat lays“. Instagram is awash in knolling. Catalogs, product photography, even we use knolling here on this blog.

All this kept me looking through other vintage designers (more rabbit holes) who have inspired me like Alvin Lustig, Giovanni Pintori, Irving Harper, and Ray and Charles Eames.

Pintori used knolling for Olivetti typewriters paired with his graphic illustration style. His sense of color!

Ray & Charles were human knolling.

Once again, I’ve gone a little off-topic this week but I used to do a design blog called Pica + Pixel (my friend Kirsten and I did it together but the site seems to be gone now) where a lot of things like this would have existed, and my post last week about Flickr. While I don’t imagine I will do this type of thing regularly, I hope you’ll forgive my occasional off-topic posts.

*My rabbit hole had a rabbit hole. I discovered Kanopy, a digital media streaming service that links into

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I have collected so many ink samples and many have been used and the bottles refilled with inks to share with friends but some have still yet to be sampled or reviewed so where to keep them? I had a large glass jar that made a perfect display and forces me to keep the number down to what fit in the jar. I try to use them up now or  either pass them along now.

It is certainly not the most organized method but its definitely eye candy!

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I use an old military green metal box with divided compartments that keep leads in a section, point protectors in another section, erasers in another and so on.  It’s not exactly efficient organization at the moment but at least I can see where everything is. Sharpeners still live in a divided section in a drawer because they take up a ton of space. There is a small lead point in the case as it goes along with the leads more than regular wood-and-graphite sharpeners.

My favorite lead refill is this vintage Mikado red lead refill. RED!  So, for all the ink refills I have… I have an equal number of pencil refills should my reputation for being ill-prepared ever come into question.

Girl Scout ’til I die.

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The plexiglass cover is magnetic so its easy to lift off to remove your pens and pens are held in place with black elastics on a black velvet  background.

The box is wide enough that it can be set on its end so it can be a “picture” so to speak rather than to occupy a flat space on your desk too.

The collection in our box is about half mine, half Bob. Can you guess which pens belong to each of us?

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Brad was a sweetheart in making sure that I received #003 as the unofficial third host The Pen Addict. I feel so honored.

I love the red, white and blue end jewel in the same isometric patterns.

Behold, the full Bomb Pop view! One of the coolest aspects (pun intended) is that the pen glows in the dark. I wasn’t able to capture a good photo of the glow-in-the-dark aspect but there is a shot on the sale page on the Pen Addict Shop.

It’s not that I do a lot of writing in the dark but I suspect the glow makes it easier to find in the bottom of a bag.

There are still a few of these little ice bombs left so get one while you still can. If anything, its a souvenir of the ice age we are currently living through.

The post Eye Candy: Retro 51 Pen Addict Ice-O-Metric appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Vanness finally received their shipment on the second batch and there’s already a waiting list for a third shipment. We Franklin-Christoph collectors sure our rabid about these little pocket treasures.

They originally shipped with stock steel nibs but I swapped out the nib with an 18K Masuyama Needlepoint nib that I had in another P45 to make mine extra special.

What took me so long to post about this jewel was finding just the right ink for it. There was much debate about it and testing before I came to a decision. What ink do you think I finally decided to got with? What would you fill yours with?

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A couple weeks ago, I got a wild hair to search on Amazon to see if anyone else was making a pencil like the one I had because everyone’s supply of leads had finally dwindled. I really wanted to buy my friend one for Christmas. I got lucky and found that Morning Glory makes a 1.8mm flat lead mechanical pencil which is available on Amazon with several containers of lead refills. There is also just an option just to stockpile a bunch of the lead refills.

The images below were done in 2008 using the original Foray 0.9mm flat lead mechanical pencil in the class I was taking.

These flat lead pencils are great if you are wanting to simulate an italic edge. Once you get the point filed down at a particular angle, this is a pencil you won’t want to rotate. You’ll want to keep that chisel edge. As a left-handed writer, I found this particularly useful because I could chisel the angle to meet my particular writing angle and still attempt to achieve the correct weights on down strokes.

The Zebra MLP2 is very similar to the original Foray flat lead mechanical pencil that I used for the drawings here.It looks like more of these flat lead mechanical pencils are entering the market as an easy way to fill in standardized tests. Keep an eye out in your local office supply aisles. The leads seems to only be 2B so that the scanning machines can read them but that works for calligraphy practice just fine too.

Mechanical pencils are a minimum investment and there is no upkeep required. If you are wanting to try calligraphy in the new year, this is a great way to try it with very little fuss. All of my instructors over the years recommended practicing with pencil and these flat mechanical pencils give the sense of line weight better than a standard hex pencil.

The folks over on the BYOB Pen Club podcast were talking about methods to practice and improve Spencerian and other calligraphy skills last week with Nik Pang and it got me thinking about the things I’ve learned over the years. I’ve learned different sorts of calligraphy skills (Nik would probably call them “wrong”) but I thought I would pass along the information in case it was useful.

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I had never seen the Aztec Gold color before so I couldn’t resist this set. It’s my first in the “brights” purse pens. Yet another of the Esterbrook rabbit holes. I went for the most beautiful example for my first so it will be hard for any others to live up to it.

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I thought I’d share a few photos of the two purple jewels together so that you can see the color and sparkle differences.

The Purple Lamé is on the left above and the Purple Cosmos is on the right The Lamé is a lighter shade of purple with smaller sparkle flecks. Purple Cosmos is a very deep violet color with a much more noticeable sparkle, similar to Pink Love in that regard.

And I can’t let an Eye Candy post go without taking a wicked close up of the Sailor nib. The detail on a Sailor nib, with the twisting vine, anchor and perfect “1911” type is part of what makes Sailor Pro Gear pens so worth their price.

While the Purple Cosmos color was a limited edition, the Pro Gear Slim models are always readily available and special editions are available throughout the year through various retailers.

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