My First Fountain Pen

I've always loved stationary. From the faded Santa set my sixth grade teacher gave me to the Elk themed letter set I found at a thrift store in Alaska, I'm a sucker for cool correspondence materials. But my idea of splurging on nice pens is buying a pack of three Sarasas from the grocery store. I've never owned a fountain pen, or even tried writing with one. So getting one as a present from my dad was pretty wonderful. 

Here's a few photos of my new pen, with the fancy schmancy backdrop of a Totoro blanket: 

A pen that comes in its own classy bag - already this is awesome.

Different shades of blue for the packaging. Lovely.

The whole set, including a package of ink capsules and a bottle of ink. 

The pen! Gorgeous and simple. 

Engraved nib

I'm still getting used to writing with it. The pressure points on certain parts of letters - the curves of an 'e' for example - are different from regular pens. And my fancy stationary isn't porous enough to use with the fountain pen. The ink shows up faint and smeared. But other cards and papers are perfect.

I really love my new pen. I kind of feel as if I've had a trip to Ollivanders Wand Shop.  

The Model Enterprise

My friend Go Thou Geekly moved recently, and before he left he gave me an amazing rocket model set. I was really excited because I knew instantly what I wanted to do with the set - build it with my dad when he came to visit. 

My dad was only in town for ten days. We spent some of the time taking care of logistic issues - just the usual life paperwork that builds up - and I had to go to work everyday. So we wanted to hang out together in the evenings as much as we could, but since I haven't seen him in a year we didn't want to spend that time watching movies or television. We wanted to actively hangout. 

If you've never built a model set with someone, I just want to say that it is a great project to embark on with a friend. I was lucky in that my dad built models when he was a kid, so he knew all kinds of awesome tricks like soaking the decals in water so that they slid off onto the model and adhered as if they'd been stamped there. 

But even if you've never built a model before, it's a cool crafty project to undertake. And in the end, you're left with a unique reminder of the time you spent with that person or, if you build it alone, that time in your life. I think I'll always remember working on the shuttle model with my dad, taking a break to explain to him what a meme is, or for him to show me how to tape the edges of a wing so that our paint would be in a straight line. 

Here's some progress shots of us building the space shuttle together:

Fresh out of the box - the moving pad and booster rockets

Doing a test of how everything will come together once it is painted

I was given the task of taping the model before we painted.
In this pic, we painted the portion below the yellow tape black.

In progress shot.
 The tupperware container is full of water for soaking the decals.

I was pretty proud of how clear the lines are on this wing due to my taping the edges.
There's still some rough bits, but  it was immensely satisfying to transform a piece of
plain white plastic into a recognizable piece of the shuttle. 

The end result! The glue needed to dry before it would stand
upright on the pad, but it looked pretty spiffy. 

Go Team Moody!