I miss Google Reader- the OG epitome of blog readers. I used to start my day with a cup of coffee and Google Reader. It let me catch up on my news and all the blogs I used to read quickly and without following all sorts of links and bookmarks. IT was easy. Sadly Google killed it, largely because it’s hard to put advertisements onto a reader and on blogs.

I love blogs, not only because I’m a blogger myself. Blogs are a truly democratic method of communication- all you need is a free account and an easy to set up website. It really couldn’t be easier. If you want even easier, there are still many free blog platforms out there.

This post isn’t about blogging platforms, it’s about readers. Readers let you bring all your varied interests together into one spot and you can read it whenever you want. Reader allowed you to bring in as many blogs as you wanted- hundreds. The main issue I had when I migrated was that most of the reader replacements only allowed 100 feeds on a free account. At the closure I think I had close to 500 blogs on my account.

Anyway, now I use a couple of services- Feedly and The Old Reader to manage around 200 blogs. Feedly houses most of my coffee and maker interests; while The Old Reader has all the art blogs I enjoy. There are many options for a feed reader, just pick one that works for you.

I am starting this review with this disclaimer,  this review is full of my opinions on a number of matters, which include a review of the pen in question but also the company’s behavior in recent months.

Let me start with this, I’ve historically really liked TWSBI. Their pens, like Diamond, the VAC and Micarta fit perfectly into my aesthetic. I like demonstrators and the rough look of the micarta are just perfect. I own 4 TWSBI pens, 5 now, and I like them all. They fit me. That said, the Swipe is likely to be my last TWSBI purchase for quite some time.

Through reading various blogs and listening to The Pen Addict I learned that TWSBI had written to sellers of their pens, that also sell Narwhal pens, to let them know that they feel that Narwhal had stolen/copied their piston design. My understanding is that they then let these sellers know that if they continued to sell Narwhal pens, that TWSBI would no longer allow them to sell their pens.

I dislike this on so many levels. Sellers/vendors are just trying to make ends meet. I don’t know what the margins are on pens, but I see TWSBI as a middle sized fish in the pen pond. Narwhal is a tiny fish. Sellers are going to keep selling the pens that bring in the most money- since TWSBI likely outsells Narwhal, the effect of their letter on Narwhal is going to be disaster for the smaller company. Buyers would be forced to buy Narwhal pens directly from Narwhal and whatever sellers who decide to tell TWSBI to go to hell.

Listen to and read the various post I linked to above, but the issue TWSBI is really pushing here is that Narwhal has copied their filling mechanism. But do you really have a moral leg to stand on when you have modeled your filling mechanism on Pelikan’s?

From a sales standpoint it makes sense for sellers to stick with TWSBI.

As a buyer I want to have all the options and I strongly dislike it when someone tries to limit those options. I also dislike when one company tried to put another company out of business. When companies try to put other companies out of business through strong arming vendors, get over yourself. If your product is good, it’ll stand up on it’s own. No need to pull this kind of pseudo legal chest thumping nonsense. TWSBI pens are good pens. So are Pelikan pens. As are Narwhal pens. I wrote it in my review, Narwhal isn’t breaking new ground with their pens, but they are making decent pens. And hell while Moonman/PenBBS are smashing together styles from other companies, their pens function solidly.

Rise above.

It is my sincere and honest opinion that TWSBI has delved into unethical business territory in an attempt to drive Narwhal out of business. I don’t like it at all. I will not buy another TWSBI pen until TWSBI backs off this nonsense. I also have to wonder if this is legal? I mean, good lord, imagine if Pelikan decided that if a pen store carries Lamy that that store cannot carry Pelikan? It is preposterous and ridiculous when you change the brands involved. TWSBI really has their head firmly wedged in their butt cheeks on this one.

So why review the pen at all? In part to include my little rant, but also I bought the pen with Ko-Fi fund to review.  So I want to fulfil my obligation to my readers, but I also feel I should inform you about TWSBI and their shenanigans.

To start I like the pen, mostly.

So what I like? The color is killer- coral, or salmon pink. It’s the perfect millennial pink that I love so much. If you’ve known me since high school, you’ll remember that this was the color of my prom dress. Think pink with a hint of orange.

The ink window is nice, especially with the spring inside. I like the way the ink sloshes around the spring. When the pen is uncapped, the grip section is also clear, allowing you to see the ink in the feed.

Despite the hard clear plastic of the grip, it feels nice in hand and I don’t find that my hand slips when I’m writing and sketching for long periods of time. The light weight is super comfortable and enjoyable.

The nib is a typical TWSBI- hard as a nail with a smooth feel as I write and sketch. It isn’t buttery smooth or glassy, but just nice. I like it on all of the papers I’ve used it on so far. The feed is right in the middle- not wet nor is it dry. It lays down enough ink that I’m happy with the darkness of the line.

The clip is the major downside of this pen. It feels a bit cheap, and is very tight. I tend to carry my pens in the chest pocket of my flannel shirts, and this pen sits very high when clipped in place. When I clip it to the placket of a shirt it hangs out way to far. I cannot tell if it is painted or a textured finish, but I carried a painted wooden box at work, and it left gray marks allover the painted finish where the clip rubbed. Yet, I do not see any damage to the clip.

Filling the pen with the spring loaded converter works well enough. I did find that I have to dip the pen multiple times to get a good fill. This means depressing the partially filled spring loaded cart down partially and then redipping the pen. It was a bit messy but effective. Included in the packaging is a regular twist style converter and a cartridge with a spring to hold it in place. Nifty.

The mold lines are cleverly hidden in the edges of the facets of the pen body. Those on the cap and grips are visible and textured enough that I notice them, through use I’ve worn them a bit smooth. (Also a note to self, pick up hand lotion for the studio. I should not be able to smooth rough mold marks with my finger tips!)

Overall I am quite impressed with the Swipe. At the under $30 price point it’s a solid and fun colored pen. I enjoy the color, feel, and even the twitchy spring loaded fill system. I love the bright fun coral pink color. It’s bright and cheerful. Continue reading →

I’ve written here and on Ko-fi about how I like my routines and how they feed into my ability to make art and get a lot done. Usually, those routines are a good buffer between myself and chaos. But sometimes things happen and they completely derail my routines and it always takes a bit to get back to them.

A few weeks ago now, my debit card info was skimmed, likely at the gas pump, and the skimmer/thief siphoned almost everything out of my account. I woke up to a fraud alert as the skimmer attempted to completely drain my account. They almost got it all. The bank was good about labeling everything but one charge fraud and reversing all charges. I take it back they flagged that charge fraud as well, but the app used to pull the money out of the account didn’t reverse the charges. I’m getting into the weeds on this story, the end result was that my mortgage payment was gone, and I had to spend the next week and a half on the phone every morning with the bank. I attempted to work with the app, they shut me down.

If you want to start your day off wrong, call the bank about fraudulent charges on your card.

A few other things happened, the details don’t matter but it landed on my lap to fix them. The end result of them all was more time spent on the phone before and after work, and sending numerous emails to the wide variety of people who needed to fix this stuff.

It was and remains a lot. And it all completely threw off my routines.

My routines aren’t set in stone, though I do try to keep to them. My weekdays all start and end roughly the same. My morning routine is the most important and it was the most impacted by the calls and emails. When I get out of work the offices for all of the places I had to contact were closed.

Why are my routines so important? they set up my day and help me clear my mind of useless stuff. It allows me to be creative.

I find that when my routines are in disorder my mind is too, and creative blocks are more likely to settle in and take hold.

These last 3 weeks have not been fun, but also I have to realize that I only have so many hours in a day. I can’t shove in just one more thing, no matter how much I would like to do so. No that doesn’t work at all. The more I beat myself up for the disarray the long the disarray sticks around and fouls things up.

It’s a whole cycle of blame and disarray. By being gentle with myself- labeling the disarray and acknowledging the difficulty and letting myself be okay helps to break the cycle.

It’s hard to beat yourself up over something if you can say to yourself, “Hey, it’s okay. A lot of people go through this. It’s going to be okay in the end. How about today I just do one thing to get back on track, even if it’s just making a pour over and writing part of a blog post.”* That lets me get started on making changes, just small ones and feeling good about it.

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I announced a reboot of my podcast RSVP Stationery Podcast awhile ago. The first of the new season’s episodes is out, and I have to say it’s a banger.

The idea behind the reboot is that I take a topic, in this case, Using the Good Stuff and I interview and discuss the topic with 4 to 8 (maybe more) people. I use a framework of the same questions, but in true RSVP fashion we go on tangents.

I’m pretty excited by how this first season of RSVP went. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have in conducting the interviews. 

After all my posts about material snobbery, I had myself a little pep talk about just getting to it. When it comes to visual art I’m pretty easily able to just get to it, but when it comes to writing, well, not so much.

I cleaned out my reading nook, an area in the house, not an electronic device. The reading nook functions as a space where I drink tea, read, and write. IN the nook I have a couple of book shelves. The shelves are filled with my professional books about art therapy, when I had a traditional office those lived there. Now they are at home. I also have all my art books.

On a single small shelf are my writing books. There are only a handful but they live closest to the chair, where I can grab them and muse on their pages. Also on these small shelves live my composition notebooks. Not the empties, but those I’ve filled with my writing. I had to stop myself from writing BAD there. The writing isn’t bad, it mostly just a series of shitty first drafts. The other half of the comp books are filled with what I call my story bibles- character snippets and outlines. I write about the settings and people in the books, name ideas and the such. IF I made post it notes or index cards, I stick these into the story bible.

Anyway, after cleaning out my nook, I sat with my story bibles and novels that I wrote over the pandemic.

Surprisingly they aren’t half bad. Honestly, I’m not sure why I was so hard on myself. I mean, the pandemic, work stress, and all that contributes but these stories are at least half as good as some of the stuff I’ve read recently.

Maybe because things are going well- work is good, my family is good, and I’m not feeling the pressure of the world, I’m feeling better about my life and thus better about  my work.

I took my long weekend to take a story that has been stuck in my head on and off since I started a rough outline and character sketch and I reworked the sketches so they fit my ideas now, and then I hacked out a rough outline. After that I started to write.

All this makes me wonder about what it takes to do our creative work and how it changes as we age. When I was in my early 20s, I made art all the time. I produced zines. Because I was in my early 20s my life was a mess, but it never stopped me from creating. I used anything I got my hands on to make art. I stole photocopies at work and made my own screens for screen-printing. I experimented. I moved around.

Art was a constant. Writing was relegated to blogging.

And that worked for me for a long time. I hadn’t had an urge to write fiction in forever. I made time for the things I had urges for- art and blogging.

I’m not sure my point, but a good question is what art do you have urges to create? Make time for them, allow yourself to create and make.

I’ve always held the belief that for those of us with creative urges, it’s imperative to our mental health that we follow them in some manner. Ignoring the creative urge will only leave us bitter and unhappy.

Remember creativity in one area will feed creativity in another. Continue reading →

Material snobbery is an occasional problem for me. I grew up with access to a lot of materials, but not in quantity. I was occasionally gifted art materials, but in gift set size, which ran out quickly. I remember as a kid running out of one color and asking my Mom if we could get another tube. We couldn’t, for a number of reasons- we lived a hour away from the closest department store (Ames or Zayre’s back then) and a little further from the closest art supply store. The art supply store was very expensive and didn’t carry the kid grade materials I had.

Plus they were expensive.

In high school we had access to more materials, and I did at home too, but still the hour or 2 hour drive to the art and craft stores meant that if I ran out, I had to wait to get a replacement.

In high school I learned the difference between kids supplies and “real” artist grade art supplies. I was told, “Real artists use real art supplies, kid supplies are for kids.” We still had some student grade supplies- mainly colored pencils and paper, but we had professional inks, pens, pencils, and paint. My art teachers weren’t awful about us using other supplies and they even encouraged us to make art outside of school.

In college the professors were… Less forgiving of non-professional supplies. I bought Cotman watercolors for a watercolor class I took. The sneer on the professor’s face when I started to use them was visible, and a little shaming. He had lectured us about buying professional colors for the class, as they’d be easier to use and just look better. I remember shrugging and saying, “Well, this is the only way I could afford to buy all the colors for class.” He frowned and moved on.

He was right, professional watercolors ARE BETTER. They are easier to work with and you use less of the color than you do with student grade colors. But they were (back then) 3 times the price.

He should have suggested that students should get together and buy tubes of paint as a group and buy large palettes to squeeze out the tubes into. (This is what I do with my classes, a small blob of watercolor will last most students several paintings and I can make 10 high quality palettes out of tubed paints, rather than buy 10 cheap palettes of watercolors.) If 4 or 5 of us had banded together we’d have been able to afford the better paints.

Or even better started us off with 3 color palettes to challenge our mixing abilities. Now that I’m an adult and I’ve had the ability to buy an embarrassing number of tubed professional watercolors, I often stick to a 3 color palette. Three of even five color palettes are fantastic. They limit choices and speed the transfer of paint to paper. They are also much less expensive and allow even a beginner to afford professional colors.

We had many lectures about using archival materials, “Don’t use Sharpies.” “Don’t use Bic pens.” “Don’t use (fill in the blank).”

This led to a real sense of material snobbery. I’d gone from drawing with anything I could get my hands on, to worrying about the longevity of what I was putting into my sketchbooks. Which is not at all helpful when I’m trying to noodle out an idea. I really don’t want hang ups when I’m working on an idea.

A year after I graduated I was able to have Richard Lee come to my classroom for 2 days. He led a papermaking workshop on day 1 and a bookbinding workshop on day 2. With him, he brought an amazing journal- the cover was made of cast paper pulp in a face shape create from a mold pulled directly from ruins in Mexico. The journal was thick- 2 or 3 inches and roughly 8 inches square. On it’s own it was a work of art. In it he scribbled notes with an Ultra Extra Fine Sharpie and added dollops of Cotman watercolors from a little plastic palette.

I watched him as he sullied this priceless sketchbook with Sharpie. I asked him, “You’re using a Sharpie? They aren’t archival.”

He shrugged, “Well, I can get them anywhere. I was able to get them in Japan, China, and even in Mexico when I was traveling. They just work and I use a lot of them.” he shrugged again, “It’ll give the archivists something to do when I die.”

I’m not sure where I heard the phrase, “Buy the best you can afford, and use the shit out of it.” I like the concept. Buy the materials you like and use them.

Occasionally I find myself feeling bad about some of the materials I like- like cardstock. I really like printing onto thick cardstock. I mentioned that I was “only going to print on this cardstock” to a printmaking friend, and I think my tone of voice told him I was embarrassed by that, he replied, “What’s wrong with cardstock? Cardstock is some of my favorite stuff to print on.” It’s a funny thing when people unintentionally highlight a hidden thought pattern. It knocked me for a loop, and now when I think about stuff, I try to think about the GOOD aspect first, and why I like it. Rather than feel like I have to defend why I like something, I now point out, “I like this thing, it’s nice.” Continue reading →

It’s not often you find me talking myself out of things, but here I am telling you I’ve talked myself out of a free photocopier. If you’re scratching your head right now, let me explain.

I’ve wanted a photocopier for years. They are incredibly useful tools and when I was in college we had to run to the library to photocopy designs to paper for transferring with chemical or to rub the paper off. Copies cost 10 cents.

I made an off handed comment about how we should consider getting a photocopier for the printshop and the professor chuckled and agree but added that they’d have to have a place to lock it up because every print student and everyone who knew about it would use it. And frankly, she wasn’t wrong. I’ve noticed that every place where I’ve worked where a photocopier is left unattended it gets used for other purposes, from zines to personal copies to whatever.

But I’ve also wanted one of my own.

For art making but also zines. Photocopiers are just better for making hundreds of copies at a time. Further they can handle large quantities of cardstock in a way a laser printer can’t.

I find photocopiers for free on craigslist pretty often. I’ve stopped myself from inquiring about them for quite a few reasons- too big, too damaged, too whatever. Before we moved into our house part of that was, “Too big to move.”  And I can’t imagine how some of my landlords* would have responded to finding a 300 pound copier left behind.

A smaller sized machine showed up in the free section, smaller at still close to 300 pounds, with a tag of “needs work.” I asked about what kind of work it would need, if it would power on, if they knew what parts it would need, etc… The current owner was utterly unhelpful. So I asked some more questions, they answered, still not helpfully.

Then I considered, do I want this for work or myself. And how the hell would I get it onto the van and then into MY studio?

The answer, finally cleaning the basement and the help of some bulky friends.

In the end I’ve decided that I won’t get THIS machine but I’m going to keep an eye out for another smaller machine that will fit my needs better. Canon makes a few small sized machines that will handle cardstock and lots of copies pretty well. The toner doesn’t last as long but they are out there.

NOTE: After finishing this post, I took to Craigslist and FB Marketplace, and within 10 minutes found a free smaller sized copier for free, and with the sort of repair that I can do with ease. It’s in my shop, even better it didn’t require the help of Burly Friends to move it into the shop, I can carry it myself. Though not easily!

It turns out it didn’t even need a repair, it needed a setting changed and the toner cart needs to be slammed back into place on the regular. I suspect a weak clip somewhere. I’ll find it and fix it.

Continue reading →

Working on a Zine, like Useful Journaling V2 can start in many ways, but for me it starts with my pocket notebook and a pen or pencil. Here I record ideas and thoughts I have about making the zine.

Ideas for content are quickly jotted down and then if deemed useful are expanded upon in a larger notebook, usually an A5 or composition notebook. Whichever I’m using for my current longer notes and ideas. I don’t draft everything in these notebooks, when I do that I feel like I’ve finished my goal and don’t finish. Instead I expand the idea and gather information- research and what not. I write longer ideas out and organize the notes into something that makes more sense.

After I organize my ideas into something that makes sense for me, I expand upon them in either a google doc or NovelPad. Here it really depends upon the final length of the idea. I use docs for all my blog posts and Ko-Fi posts, while longer things like some zines and fiction work all ends up in NovelPad. Though, that is with a caveat- some zines get typed up in Docs.

While I’m working on a zine idea I like to keep my notebooks with me at all times- I never know when a good idea is going to hit or when I’ll have a few minutes to develop an idea. I go through them at varying rates depending on the project and what I’m working on. A zine seems to move through notebooks slowly, while novels chew up notebooks and spit them out.

Not for sale

Anyway. I though it interesting that I’m nearly finished wit a pocket notebook and just starting a composition notebook for this zine. I lost my last pocket notebook, and the one before that. Covid and WFH has really done a number on my ability to hang onto a notebook…

Let me be honest here, it’s not COVID it’s the new pants I’ve purchased that have crummy pockets for keeping notebooks in pockets.

The end of the year as we roll into the new is often used as a moment of reflection. A place where we look back on the bad and good and use that to set goals and intentions for the new year.

WOW! What a year we had. A second of a global pandemic, which is back on the rise in my area with folx still refusing to get vaccinated or to even mask up. MY city attempted to hold a meeting about mask mandates, and because they were too… stupid to lock it down, anti-maskers spoke over them and drove them out for over an hour while city officials figured out how to work Google Meet. Sweet Jeebus.

Anyway, this is what we’re living with here in the States, instead of attempting to wipe out a measly virus we’re fighting over wearing a simple piece of cloth over our faces. I have more to say, but this post isn’t about that, not it’s about reflection.

I spent the last year working on a series of prompts and ideas for the newest volume of Useful Journaling. We’ll see how it comes out. But 2021 saw me using my journal more often than in a few previous years, and making it more of a practice again. But it also saw me wanting to continue with my zine efforts, while floundering on the original premise of Useful Journaling. But now that I’ve taken a year to think and mull on it, I see a new option.

Most frustrating for me, I lost** the original files for Useful Journaling, including my layout file. Annoyingly I thought I’d redundantly backed them up, only now I can’t find all of them. Awesome. For some reason when I updated the OS on my cheap little laptop it corrupted all the attached drives- including the expansion micro SD card. While I thought I’d uploaded the files to Drive AND DropBox, I had not. Bummer. It’s not a hard one to recreate but here I am.

Fortunately, I have original flats of all my old zines, which means I can scan them easily. (JK I just found these in yet another search of Drive. deep sigh of relief.) But A word to the wise, if you think you have backed things up, check and double check to be sure that you have. While I’m not exactly a digital hoarder, it is useful to keep; some of these digital files on hand just in case.

So a few goals for me in the upcoming year-

• Redundant back ups, for everything I’m currently working on. And double checking to be sure I’m doing this.
• Consistent photos for the blog and instagram.
• New issues of Useful Journaling, but different than before.

Continue reading →