all made up with nowhere to go

Here is a short list:

1. I had to do a lot of faffing about on Friday, which involved two trips into town and back, BUT. I got to see two friends on the bus and have very short socialisations with them, and oh wow, the endorphins I got off that were amazing.

2. The book that I bought with my Xmas money from my rellies came! And I think I'm really going to like it. (It's Slow Stitch by Claire Wellesley-Smith - link goes to Goodreads). Except for the cover - for some reason it's flocked, and touching it sets my teeth on edge.

3. The next topic for the Post Once A Day meme, from lassarina, and it is about calligraphy!

So, I like fonts and lettering, and have for as long as I can remember, and I think any interest in calligraphy just stems from that. Although I resisted being interested in it for a long time, because my mum was also interested in it (she started buying herself books about it when I was a kid) and, of course, when you're a belligerent sort like I was, especially as a teenager, you don't want to be interested in the things your parents are.

I did use a fountain pen up till my late teens, but never learnt to write very nicely with it. Any interest I have now has been formed in recent years. In part because I spent a lot of late 2018/early 2019 watching mostly art videos on youtube, and seeing people do faux calligraphy (which sparked my somewhat dormant at the time interest in lettering), and then eventually I was like, "why not learn to do the actual thing? It's not like you don't have the supplies!" Which I did, thanks to my mum and her frankly massive pen and ink collection.

I just love the way some stuff looks? I follow someone on IG who is learning to write in Blackletter and other gothic styles with her dip pen, and it just. I dunno. I like looking at it. (Although I've always been drawn to gothic type fonts, so this should not surprise me).

I don't really know what else to write. Maybe there is nothing (although if you have any questions, Rina (or anyone else!), please feel free to leave them in the comments!)

The other day, I made a Cult Pens order, and bought my first bottle of Waterman ink, because obviously I need more bottles of ink, I say, staring hard at the ones I already own, and the ones that were my mum's.

Anyway, it is in Tender Purple (not Intense Purple, as I erroneously said on twitter; I think that's a Diamine ink colour). And, as I also said on twitter, the German for Aquarius literally translates to Waterman, so I was astrologically compelled to buy some of their ink at some point ;)

I also got three refills for my Pentel Energel pen, which I was given by someone I work with about a month or so ago. I've really been enjoying drawing with it, so I got a black refill (as it's black anyway), and also sky blue and turquoise refills, because my colour choices are extremely predictable.

So now I'm tossing up whether this is just me spending money, or whether it can come off the Xmas money I was given (maybe the ink yes, but the refills no). I feel like the Xmas money should go on stuff I wouldn't normally buy. Like the hand-dyed sewing threads I have just spent some cash on!

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When I haven't been watching Inscryption LPs/anything else that is a Let's Play of a game by Daniel Mullins, I have been watching a lady who is primarily a junk journaller. I found her through a sewing video she did, but I've been watching some of her other videos as well. I've discovered she has a two shops on Etsy - one of which she sells junk journalling supplies through, which includes lengths of yarn she chops up and bunches together.

Which is a thing I thought about doing almost two years ago, since I have some yarn I'd never knit or crochet with. But I never did, because I didn't think people would buy it. But they do! So mostly I'm mad at myself for never going through with that.

She also does a thing called Gelli Printing, which I have heard of, but I didn't know what it it was. It's basically monoprinting, but first you have to buy an expensive piece of synthetic gelatine*. (You can make your own, from actual gelatine, but obviously that isn't vegetarian/vegan friendly, and it only lasts around two weeks, and I know what my weasel brain is like). Websites say it's for printing without a press, which I am all for! However, I know the gel plate will give me textural issues, so I'm going to have a go at this and use a piece of glass as my plate instead.

It's interesting, because I've always wondered how people get these sorts of backgrounds (if you search for gelli printing on somewhere like pinterest, you'll see what I mean), but I am not interested enough in junk/art journalling to actually go and look it up, and I wouldn't have known what to search for until now.

So obviously, that is another thing my weasel brain has latched onto wanting to do - although I have wanted to do monoprinting for some time now, I just haven't got to it yet. Hopefully I will in the new year!

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In other news, I am playing FFXIII on my PS3 and I:

1) forgot how loud the fan on the console is, and

2) forgot how fast the horizontal camera moves. I honestly can't remember if it's like that on the Xbox version, but there's no way to change the speed it moves at, which is annoying, because it's legit making me feel slightly nauseous.

Anyway, I feel like I'm not very far in - I'm at the end section of the Vile Peaks - but the recap text informs me I'm in chapter four, so really IDK!

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Now to go and do something that is not internet related, I think!

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*The smallest plate, for example, that Jackson's Art sells is 6x6", and costs £22. I realise 6x6" is quite a big size, but I don't want to be spending that much on something I might not use.

So I've been reading stuff about fountain pens, because that's the hole I'm in at the moment. (No, you just bought two cheap fountain pens off ebay*).

There's a problem that your pen nibs can have that's called Baby's Bottom (due to over-polishing the nib during the manufacture process), and I am absolutely twelve years old, because I laugh every time I see it written down.

Also I think I finally found out what the no-name fountain pen (that I actually really like) is! It is entirely possible that it's either a Jinhao or a Wing Sung, because both companies make grey demonstrators (clear or translucent pens), and both of them look similar to mine! I have no way of knowing for sure, but that's neat that I have some kind of idea now.

I also put a cartridge in one of mum's Sheaffer's** that has a fine ballpoint on it, and it writes like a flipping dream! It started straight away, and it's so smooth on paper, I love it. It's not quite as, uh, buttery as my Kaweco, but it's still bloody good. The only problem I find with it is having a nice paper for it to write on (Pukka Pads paper seems to be the best so far). This is down to a combination of things which I won't bore y'all with (I imagine you're bored enough already, right? ;) )

My Kaweco, on the other hand, writes on everything I've tried it on, without feathering, and that's with the cartridge it came with (own brand), and Diamine Oxblood in the converter I got for it. Which, I suppose, proves that you get what you pay for? Although from remembering using fountain pens when I was younger, I never (iirc) had trouble with ink feathering on paper, and I was using cheap ass pens then because my mum couldn't afford to buy me anything better. So honestly, WHO KNOWS.

Look. I just really like pens okay, and I need to tell this all to someone, because if I tell my friend Sarah I bought cheap fountain pens, she will yell at me (I mean, not really, but also pens are SRS BSNS for her - she recced me the Kaweco, and she owns at least one Sailor, and TWSBI Eco. She doesn't do pens under £10, probably. I will have to ask her one day!)

All of this makes me wish I'd kept using a fountain pen past the age of twenty. I was about eleven when I first started using them (either on my mum's instructions or because other people at school did, and I wanted to be like them). But as I gradually got older, I turned to gel pens and biros instead. The last time I remember really using a fountain pen was when I was copying hieroglyphs from books when I was around twenty. BUT. I'm going to restart using them! Especially if it means less hand pain/stress on my wrist. Not that I write tons of anything these days, but maybe one day I will write more again, who knows.

Okay, time to go and do something else, I think, since I don't think I have anything else to say!

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*The Jinhao 992 (Sailor 1911 clone), and the 599 (Lamy Safari clone). I partly wanted pens of my own, but I also wanted a cheap one I could use outside the house and not cry (too much) if I lost it.

**There are A LOT, as Sheaffer were her favourite brand of fountain pen.

I took the cat to the vet yesterday. She only needed taking for her booster injections (and she needed one that hadn't been done before, so we have a repeat visit in three weeks, yay) and nothing else.

The vet was impressed with her, though she did ask if I was sure Jazz is female because she's HEUG. Which she is, I'm not going to argue with that. She weighs FIVE KILOS. She can stretch herself out from my hips to my feet when she lies on my legs. But I've checked twice since we got home and she is definitely female.

(I thought afterwards that I should've said, "You're the vet, you tell me." But I didn't, because I'm not that quick off the bat).

Anyway, of course, putting her in the cat carrier was obviously the Ultimate Betrayal, and she spent a good hour running away from me, and pointedly sitting on the sofa, and not with me (which is what she usually does of an evening). I need to get her a bigger carrier, though, because she didn't really have room to stand, and I think that was part of the problem. I know she doesn't like being in carriers anyway, because they had a battle with her at the RSPCA when I went to pick her up. I also wonder if she thinks it means I'm going to give her away still, because this is only her third time in one with me, and I bet most of her experience in carriers so far is not being anywhere permanently, and not being in pleasant places.

So just the repeat injection, and then hopefully I won't have to take her for another year!

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I caved and bought an extremely cheap fountain pen the other day. It only cost £3, so if I end up knackering it, at least I won't feel bad that I broke a more expensive pen (I mean, I intend NOT to knacker it, but stuff happens occasionally). I do still have a fountain pen that I had as a teenager, but I also have no idea where it is (the last time I can remember using it was to copy hieroglyphs and that was...well over a decade ago). I did have a look, but it's not in any of the places I'd expected it to be, so it could literally be anywhere. So I got this cheap one as a replacement, of sorts.

I don't know if I'll try drawing with this one, but I'd least like to try writing nicely with it (I've been on a fancy writing kick since about New Year, so this is just the latest phase of it, I guess?) I don't think I'll ever write with one all the time as ink takes so long to dry, and probably my gripping issues will cause problems (and frankly I like the other pens I use to write with :d ).

I also bought a Uniball Pin drawing pen with the finest point I have ever seen on a drawing pen. It's 0.03mm, and I think it writes even finer than a mapping nib? It's certainly finer than my one Pilot gel pen, which I thought was super fine, but nope! (Well, it is fine, just not as fine as this Uniball one). It feels a bit scratchy, but that might be because I'm not used to it yet. Or possibly just because it is so fine, IDK.

I'll try to get some examples up on twitter or my sketchblog, and link them here, then maybe you can see what I'm talking about.