Pens, drawing and flowers

 Recently for my birthday a friend gifted me a journal and a pen. I have loved these pens from the first time I saw them, she didn't know that, and I doubt I would have gotten one for myself; but now I am the happy owner of this one, The Wren from Tom's Studio.

I promised to bring the journal and pens with me and try some ideas in the journal. I am notoriously bad at using journals, but I liked its already worked into look and figured I could work with that rather than simply blank pages.

The pen uses these nibs that you can replace depending on what colour ink you are using; as well as these soak-it-up cylinders which draw the ink from the bottle and can be changed in and out. Quite a fun way of doing pens! I  will have to see what other colour inks I have here and try them out.

And so in line with my commitment to use the pen in the journal I did some blind contour drawings o f a jug of daffodils.

I like blind contour drawing because there is no pressure - you just look at the object and draw the contours and don't lift your pen and who knows what will happen. I was chuffed that she could see daffodils when I showed her!

In typically trepidatious fashion I started with the card that had been in an envelope fold on one of the pages thinking I could throw it away if needed (why oh why do we censor ourselves so much???) and then overcame myself and drew another version straight on the page. Well done me. First actual page in the journal committed to!

I am going to try and do something in the journal with the pen each week, and see where I go.

And just because daffodils...

The late varieties are so different!

A single tulip contemplating will it open further, or retreat? It retreated when it started to hail yesterday, but today is pondering emerging once again...

Days of progress

The weekend has really been a time of consolidation. Of finishing some projects, of pushing others along and of making preparations for others.  It was a very satisfying time all round and I feel good about all the bits and pieces I achieved.

At the workshop last weekend, Helen I reminded me of some pen-holders that Carol Du Bosch makes and which were featured in Bound and Lettered.  They are simple to make and feel good in the hand. I was quite conscious of how much penholders cost as I recently bought some - but couldn't afford as many as I would have liked so this seemed like a great opportunity.  I went a little bit over board...

A pencil sharpener chamfered the ends nicely.

Ta - da! I have since transferred several orphan nibs into their new holders and it makes me happy to look at them.

I am selling my calligraphy pebbles down at Caloundra Regional Gallery and had a phone call that more were needed!  A rather nice problem to face, so I am head down ink out and writing both upper and lower case letters on pebbles, and will deliver a new batch this week I hope.

I made a slip case for a book I had swapped with Caren Florence. She mentioned she referenced my A Subversive Stitch often when she taught and would love a copy of her own - I found one in my studio and we swapped - her offering was Learning Absences a book based on a poem by Rosemary Dobson and made as part of Book Art Object.  I treasure this book and wanted it to be safe.  I made a light slip case for it and wrote in ultramarine watercolour on black - nice result!

I found time to finish my homework from the workshop - two wee books with covers using the techniques we learnt.

Barry's work is selling well at Maleny Additions, a beautiful homewares shop in town, and I had to do more labels for him. This is the second batch of 10 in two weeks so that's great news.

I am anticipating a small job coming up soon and have prepared pages and some covers just to be ready...

And I had a play with a nice long, thin strip of paper writing words about peace.  Still waiting to complete it, but am edging closer.

The biggest chunk of time on the weekend went towards finishing my burning book - part of my collaboration with Susan.  We have until the end of the month to complete it so I really had to push it along this weekend.  It is now nearly there; I think I have done the hardest of the yards and hope the next phase is simpler.  I sat down to write notes on everything I had done for it so far (for future reference) and was amazed at the many stages and details involved - made me tired just looking back over it! Lucky it has been spaced out over several months.  Soon it will be done.

It has been productive time in the studio and I have been really enjoying myself - life is good.

Travel Treasures

Barry and I often laugh at the sort of tourists we are.  When we travel, many of our favourite moments come from trawling through flea markets, junk stores and hardware stores.  We love a good hardware store!

Yes, we visit galleries and museums and walk for miles across cobbled streets, but we exclaim "oh happy day" when we pick up a flea market or hardware bargain. The only fun thing about unpacking when you get home is unwrapping all these little parcels and re-discovering them.

Here are some of the treasures we collected along the way...

Some beautiful old postcards and nibs found in Prague.

The most amazing gathering of documents pertaining to the will of an English woman, found in Brugge.

A couple more wooden type lower vowels and numbers from a fabulous shop in Paris - the name of which translates to "fell off the back of a truck".

A bundles of bibs and bobs - some slate pencils from Brugge, some bone folders from Prague and a tracing wheel from Prague. The bone folders were unexpectedly discovered in a hardware store.

One of my calligraphic friends once told me - buy old ruling pens whenever you find them. So I did!  I love that these five are all different and am looking forward to cleaning them and getting to work with them.  The beautiful one in the cylindrical case came from a flea market in Paris; the rest were all Prague finds.

A happy gathering...now all packed up and ready to head to the studio.

From old to renewed

I wrote about the sad state of affairs of my nibs a little while ago.  I had lots of suggestions that really the rusty nibs were beautiful in and of themselves and that perhaps Barry could re-use them; or they might make little sculptures on their own somehow.  All great options!

However, I had a couple of other thoughts in mind to pursue, so with the idea of possibly resurrecting them I set off to discover how to remove rust from metal.  Funny how you can go so far down one rabbit burrow you lose sight of the path you have just been journeying on.  I went this way and that, searched here and there, found some whiz bang brush for car rust and the like and Barry just looked at me quizzically and asked "why don't you just try tea?"

I. Was. Floored.

Of course! I have been using tea to remove rust from chains and the like, transferring the marks to paper for the last few weeks - so why didn't I think of it?  So off I went, to see if it was possible to use the tea to remove the rust.

I made up a strong brew and popped the nibs in. Straight away the rust started to drop off in small bits and into the water - changing it to a lovely dark colour (mixed with some ink I think).  I left them in for a few hours, then dragged them out, painted some paper with the rusty inky water and placed the nibs onto paper to see what marks they might make. Added more tea as I went along.

I popped them into a new brew of tea for a bit longer, and they came out pretty well - the tannic acid did its gentle thing and removed much of the rust.

So far so good.

 Not sure why this middle one below didn't work so well - perhaps it was stuck inside another one.

Then I sat for an hour or so and gently rubbed them all with fine steel wool to remove the last bits I could see.

Barry asked me how much nibs cost.  I said they weren't that expensive, but I get mine from the US or the UK now so there is a transport cost factor as well as a time delay, so I wanted to see if I could retrieve this set and have them as back ups in case of emergency. The likelihood of a calligraphic emergency is probably not all that high, but you know...

I think the tea worked quite well, and am pretty sure these nibs have legs for a bit longer yet.

They are now safely stored, in a box, resting on some absorbent paper. If the whole experiment ends up failing and they go totally rusty again - then it's off to the sculpture, jewellery or assemblage department for them for sure.

Out with the old...

And in with the new.

Being the less than well behaved calligrapher that I am, I have not looked after these nibs. Granted, they are nearly a decade old (I can hear the gasps of horror from around the globe, apologies for distressing you all) and therefore probably well past their due date.  Sure, I wash them after each use and try to dry them off, but sometimes I leave them to finish drying off themselves. Hmm.

But they have been working fine for me, the ink has flowed when needed, and they haven't been scratchy. Actually I think they look worse than they really are... but then I would say that at this point in the game I guess!  I'm also just not the type to toss things out until they really don't work any more.

On close inspection this week I came to the view that the last wet season REALLY took its toll on them and for the first time in my life I found I had seriously rusted nibs. I don't think even I could have attempted anything with them in this state. Probably also shows I haven't sat down to write anything calligraphic for a few months...

So it was time, and I sat down for an hour or so the other afternoon and changed them all over.

Here are the bright shiny new ones. They make me so happy I am almost not game enough to use them!

I am thinking it might be worth my while to buy an ultrasonic cleaner - one that really gets in to the crevices and removes the last smudge of ink.  Then I wondered if I could get an ultrasonic dryer because that would really help me, but I don't think they've been invented yet. Sigh.

I've also read that maybe I should rub them with olive oil after washing and drying because the oil would stop the rust thing happening...but it seems a bit weird to put oil on your nibs. I can only imagine it transferring onto the paper the next time I wrote because I would forget I had to wipe it off.

Maybe I just need to be diligent. Sigh again.

Does anybody have any good ideas about rust prevention and nibs?