Our friends at Jet Pen recently started carrying calligraphy nibs by Brause, another member of the Exaclair family. I’ve long admired the calligraphy that I see through blogging friends, so I used it as an excuse to pick up some books at Barnes & Noble (Margaret Shepherd’s Calligraphy Made Easy and Don Marsh’s First Steps guide) and give it a go for myself.
I’ve got some nibs and paper with me here in Westport, so hopefully I’ll find it as easy as Clem says it is!
Do you practice calligraphy?
Looking for some end-of-summer reading material? Check out our latest Writers’ Project interview, where bestselling author JT Ellison talks about her research, her writing routines, and her new book, The Immortals.
You’ll also find plenty of food for thought in our archives, where we’ve stored our previous interviews with Jeff Abbott and Damon Young.
I’ve written about my Rose of Sharon bush before, but it’s blossoming again and I just had to share a picture… It’s a beautiful plant — a type of hibiscus, apparently — but what’s even more lovely, to my mind, is the transformation from how it looked when we moved in: a leafless, spindly shrub. (Granted, it was the end of November, but given the way the yard looked at that time I assumed there was no way it could be living.)
The name is from the Song of Solomon, one of the Old Testament’s most lyrical books. It’s typically interpreted by Christians as an allegory of Jesus’s love; in the Jewish tradition, it’s about God’s love for Israel. As a nonreligious person, I find the classic medieval interpretation more meaningful: an “ecstatic union of the human soul with God,” in the words of scholar Debora Schwartz.
At any rate, here’s the King James Version:
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.
Ooh, this looks interesting: the Sharpie liquid pencil. Made from “liquid graphite” and introduced on the company blog earlier this month, it’s been making its way through the Internet at a fairly rapid clip.
The idea, one gathers, is that it’s initially erasable, then becomes permanent with time. How much time is unclear; some sources are saying 24 hours, others give you up to three days. (“But unlike a Sharpie permanent marker, you will always be able to erase it to some degree,” according to a company update.)
The liquid pencil will be available in the US in September, though there’ve already been a couple of sightings at Office Depot. Have you tried it?
When it comes to crafting, I really never got beyond elementary school. (Though I’m still determined to make a quill pen, once I get my hands on the right knife!)
I defend myself with the assertion that most elementary school projects are actually pretty fun. To wit: making paper snowflakes, which I did earlier this week while playing with my new shredder scissors. No, it’s not seasonal — though I certainly wouldn’t mind if New York temperatures were a bit cooler — and it’s not really age appropriate. But it was nonetheless a nice break from an otherwise adult day…
Handwriting is influenced by a number of different factors: age, patience, personality, where and how you learned to write… And although it’s a bit trivial, I love thinking about how handwriting habits evolve. I learned to write in the US, for example, but my father’s family is German, and I remember, at some point, deciding that I liked the way he wrote his K’s — something like a lopsided V with a stick angled off to one side, rather than the perpendicular line with sideways V we were taught in school. I’d now be pretty hard-pressed to write them any other way.
In junior high, I saw how my friend Elsie wrote her F’s starting from the base of the letter rather than the upper curve. After a bit of experimentation, I got used to writing them that way, too, and still do to this day. Ditto for the number 9, which I start and the base and curve, like my Russian friend Katya. I got used to using European 1′s back when I lived there, but I don’t do that anymore so as, first of all, to avoid confusion with American 7′s, but also because I suspect it might be a little pretentious. (I have, however, happily written my 7′s with a little slash through them since I was a child.)
In that sense, handwriting is like many other seemingly straightforward, insignificant habits: poke around for a bit and you can learn a lot about a person’s aspirations and affectations and patterns of thought.
I remember admiring the way an Austrian friend wrote her R’s back when I lived in Vienna, but by then it was too late to change.
Browsing the counters at Fahrney’s Pens in Washington, DC, I noticed some beautiful hand-lettered signs. They were made by one of the employees. She was kind enough to demo her skill, creating small, perfect letters effortlessly. I was amazed. I told her she ought to create a font from her hand-writing.
A few days later, I was busy cleaning out a closet and came upon an old Remington Rand typewriter. I decided I wanted to start using it again–for something, maybe thank you notes. I missed the feel of the keys, and I also missed the font. (For those of you who don’t have an old typewriter handy in the closet(!), you can go to Vintage Type for a typewriter-look to your writing.
I have terrible, horrible hand-writing, but its me. That’s one of the reasons I like to write with fountain pens is that I automatically express my individuality. Writing on the computer makes it easier to read, but much less personal.
But there is an alternative: YourFonts.com allows you to create your own OpenType fonts from your handwriting. They even show some samples here. 
It will take me more than the “few minutes” they promise to carefully prepare each letter and number, follow their instructions, locate the downloaded file on my computer and then install it successfully. More like a few hours. But I’ll have time on vacation and I would like to try. I’ll share my results in a future post on Quo Vadis Blog. If anyone has done this and would like to show us your font, please send us a screenshot.
Special treat this Monday morning: guest blogger Art Decker shares some fascinating research into the neurological benefits of writing things down.
Image via qisur
There is no substitute for a pen and paper. But the pen has to be a good pen, one that is a pleasure to write with. For some people a good pen is a plain ball point pen from the local drugstore. For others, it is a $1,000 fountain pen that comes in its own case and gives its user the feeling of painting on paper. The paper, too, must be good. If your pen scratches the paper, writing things down will not be a pleasure — and you won’t do it.
I can hear the naysayers already. Why not just use an electronic gadget? You can find to-do list and productivity software, much of which can be downloaded free, that is geared to any productivity system you like — GTD (David Allen’s Getting Things Done), ZTD (Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done), Sally McGhee’s Take Back Your Life, or Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits. Why use caveman tactics like pen and paper when you can wholeheartedly embrace the 21st century?
Because pen and paper are better for your brain, that’s why. The heart of the GTD system and other productivity systems is to get ideas out of your brain and into containers or buckets, or at least onto to-do lists and calendars. The system takes over so you don’t have to think.
Here’s the problem with that notion, though: personally, I am in favor of thinking. I LIKE keeping information in my brain. I regard information residing in my head as a GOOD thing.
Here’s some food for thought for those of you who want more space for notes in your planners… reader Massimo Camocardi, an Italian schoolteacher who has used Quo Vadis planners for years (here’s a picture of his first one from 1980), recently sent us two prototypes he devised for his President.
We don’t do product design here in the US, though we’re always happy to forward your suggestions on to France. But Karen and I still figured it’d be fun to share these designs on the blog in a sort of DIY spirit.
Whoa, this is pretty incredible: the Telegraph has a new picture gallery of Brazilian-born carpenter Dalton Ghetti’s remarkable pencil sculptures. From a boot, a button, and a saw to an entire miniature alphabet, the sculptures themselves are mind blowing. Even more amazing, according to the accompanying text:
Dalton uses three basic tools to make his incredible creations – a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife. He even refuses to use a magnifying glass and has never sold any of his work, only given it away to friends.
Dalton, if you’re reading this — any chance we can be friends? I’ll ply you with Rhodia pencils, and send you all the notebooks you want…
Via BoingBoing.
