Ink-blue water

Ink-blue water

think ink, triologisms

As the logos on this website testify, I’m an ink-geek, and love inky similes.  Here is another one, about the sky rather than the sea.  A small breeze sent up a flurry over all the ink-blue water. Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson,...
Schoolboy sketches

Schoolboy sketches

paper shaper, think ink

Maurice Cramer was a Geneva schoolboy who joined his classmates in August 1870 for a school trip to discover Champéry.  It was common for such excursions to be recorded in some kind of journal and this one includes both text and drawings, even though it is believed...
Of pens and pencils

Of pens and pencils

podcasts, think ink

Listening time: under 3 minutes.   This is a charming account of negotiating communist bureaucracy at the height of the Cold War.  John Steinbeck and his pal Robert Capa showed up in the Soviet Union in 1946 for a month of exploration.  Here they encounter a small...
Wild pen

Wild pen

blogophyte bulletin, think ink

One of the foundation stones of building a new website is the choice of fonts.  As with colour selection, I look for a double whammy: a font (or colour) that has the visual impact echoing the character of the site, and a name to match.  Choosing for meaningful names...
Spirit of Dance

Spirit of Dance

blogophyte bulletin, think ink

In developing a companion website dedicated to love of life and the joys of sharing it, I sifted thousands of script fonts to find one with the dancing kinetic energy I wanted.  Spirit of Dance by Vera Holera won by a mile, and I have used it for the header text at...
Roughing out poems

Roughing out poems

poetry mojo, think ink

Hand-written notes and journals have a magic to them. Durrell is a favourite poet and his house in Greece was as close to the coast as you can be without getting your feet wet.  Were these spatterings the voice of the sea telling him when he had a fine turn of phrase,...
Keats on hand-writing

Keats on hand-writing

think ink, you got mail

Keats’ letters are treasures – he is every bit as fine a correspondent as he is a poet.  Here he chides a friend for visually attractive but sprawlingly illegible hand-writing. ‘You must improve in your penmanship; your writing is like the speaking...
Of berries and wine

Of berries and wine

paper shaper, think ink, writing & writers

Having a love of ink, the variety of its hues and the names people give them, and the chunky inventive shapes of ink bottles, I was enchanted by this notion of making your own ink from berries and wine.  I imagine blueberries, blackcurrants or elderberries would be...
Heroic journals

Heroic journals

think ink, writing & writers

All laud to Labaume, going to such heroic lengths to write his journal. I will have to introduce this makeshift front-line writing into a story I’m concocting: gunpowder mixed with melted snow in the hollow of your hand, and your raven’s quill cut with the...
The loss of a journal

The loss of a journal

metaphors, think ink, writing & writers

How many notebooks, journals or letters have been swept away by circumstance, carrying the minutiae of memory with them? Leigh Fermor used his to reconstruct his travels in his books and he clearly never got over this loss. Elsewhere he mentions a journal having been...
Well, well, well – dragons amid clouds

Well, well, well – dragons amid clouds

think ink

On a joyous day walking around the Art Institute in Chicago, I spotted this beautiful, pristine celadon writing box with three ink wells and an underglaze moulded decoration of dragons amid clouds. An ever unfurling surprise to me is the simplicity and timelessness of...

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