back from the holidays

Two weeks, and I mean two whole weeks of doing nothing but relax. The place isn't anything exotic or fancy, just the regular family house in the countryside, and old farm really, but I'm grateful for it. I took long walks in the woods, had too many cups of tea and painted a little... now it's hard to think about getting back to work!

Check my Flickr stream in a few days for the scans of the stuff I painted.

The one that got away

As usual today I visited the local flea-market looking for (pen) treasures.
I found a new, and I mean totally mint with box and tag, Pelikan M150, for 15€ (roughly 20$), and I couldn't leave it there could I?

I also found a Parker 51 but I barely looked at it for my dislike of such hooded nib. I'm not a fan of hooded nibs though I own an Aurora 88 and a Pelikan P1. While many might have jumped at the chance to get such a famous pen in their collection it didn't really appeal to me... until I got back home! I'm not saying that I finally saw the light and changed my opinion on the Parker 51, I still think it looks awkard and stumpy but I started wondering why such pen was so famous and well-liked.

So I braved the cold and went back to the market a few hours later only to find the vendor had already packed for the day and vanished.
In some ways I'm relieved I wasn't faced with the choice of getting such pen, but I'm also disappointed with myself for changing my mind and too late.

a matter of cleaning

In my opinion you shouldn't mail pens filled with ink, but last week I received in the mail a pen still filled with Waterman Blue-Black, it wasn't a big deal so I cleaned the leaks and started writing with it straight away.

Yesterday I finally ran out of ink so I started my cleaning routine (which basically means flushing for with lukewarm water until the water comes out clean) and I was surprised to see some dried ink particles coming out. As I kept cleaning the pen I saw more and bigger flakes of ink and it was pretty disgusting.
Maybe I'm a neat freak but I was highly disappointed, I've never seen that much dirt in a pen, not even in pens found at flea markets. It's just a matter of common sense, a clean pen works better than one filled with muck, there is no point at flossing nibs or lamenting poor flow when bits of ink clog everything.