covet

There are very few things that I want these days.

Oh, sure.  There's a lot of little things that I kind of drool over.  Books I want to read, art supplies that make my fingers itch a little, fabric to add to the (despite my best intentions) stash.  That kind of stuff.

But stuff that I'm actually actively wanting just because it exists?

Not much.

Except one of these:

picture horked from brandnamepencils.com

Yeah.

That's a Thoreau pencil.  Like, living history, right there.

I'm still kind of obsessed with transcendentalists, see.

Anything Thoreau, or Emerson, or Alcott.  Whitman, as transcendentalist-adjacent.  Folks who quietly (and not so quietly) changed the world.

And, y'know, pencils.

Granted, one of these will run you as much as a car.  Good ones/unused ones are about as much as a (small, run-down) house, even.

But as a holy grail-type I will possess you kind of object, it's a good one for me.

Other people are all I want a pretty car  or  I want a big house, and I'm all I WANT A THOREAU PENCIL.

Pretty sure that says something about my life, but I'm not quite sure what that might be.  (I do hear my mom's voice in my head, saying misplaced priorities, that's what, but I'm totally not listening.)

Because transcendentalist pencils, that's why.

Please tell me you have weird stuff on your life list so I feel less like a total nerd....?

my heart

<3

She's a snuggler, this one.

waiting...gratefully.

So I ordered these pencils.

They're just pencils.  Not even really Fancy Art Pencils(tm) or anything,  Just new pencils, which are always infinitely better than old pencils, even when the old pencils are perfectly fine and pencilly and still make marks on paper, which is what pencils of both varieties are supposed to do.

Despite this fact, I've become a bit obsessed with their delivery.

Or, as the case may be, non-delivery.  The weather on the east coast, with all it's bomb cyclone nonsense, delayed packages, and my pencil pusher is in New York.  So my order is somewhere, probably frozen in a block of ice, and it made me all sad and junk.

To combat this, I decided to be grateful for what I have.

I know.  Not exactly revolutionary stuff, here.  But it's easy to forget: even if there's new stuff, the old stuff still works. 

Sometimes, it even works really well and better than you remember.

I spent last night mucking out simple supplies.  Testing all my brushes to see which ones I like best.  Playing with markers to both make sure they still work and that I still enjoy using them.  Even drawing with old pencils to remember why I was once just as excited to get them as I am for the new ones.

I still can't wait for the new ones to get here.

But in the interim, I'm enjoying what I have.

I should remember that more often.  (Preferably, before I hit "add to cart".)

Sketchbooking #1

(Well, #'s 5 and 6, actually....)

I bought this japanese sketchbook a little over a year ago at the University of Washington bookstore in Seattle on one of my jaunts up thataway.  Because I needed another sketchbook.

Ahem.

And right around this time last year, I decided I wanted to use it rather than just hoard it, as is my natural predilection, and decided to give it a theme.  After tossing around a couple ideas, I decided on "doors".

I finally -- FINALLY -- filled it up a couple days ago.  Apparently, I'm not so inspired by themes as I thought; I let the thing sit, sometimes for months, between drawings, and expanded it to doors, windows, the occasional sign, and door hardware instead of being strictly just doors by the end.  

But it worked, and now volume #5 is completely full of 60 sketches of varying media (mostly watercolor) and varying success (there are a couple that I'd cringe if anyone saw them, but mostly, I like them).

Then there was this book of patterns:

It's huge.  Like, 18" on the long side, huge.

I wanted to make my own patterned stock, with the intention of using them to make covers for inserts for my Midori Traveler's Notebook for this year.  Filled up this giant sketchpad with watercolor patterns over the last month, and finally finished the whole stack on New Year's Day.

From it, I learned that I'm not all that fond of working big, and that an intricate pattern can take longer than an actual drawing to complete.  (And that I'll probably just buy printed stock for my inserts from here on out. :D)

Anyway, that's two more sketchbooks, 100% full, which was the whole point.

Now, I've just got, uh...thirty more or so to go.

(If I don't buy more.)

um.

(I'll probably buy more.  It's an addiction, people.  Paper.  Yum.)