Aw, it's a little *baby* Golden Bear!
1. Pencil Post
After a few weeks and some seventy-five composition book pages (albeit with a certain amount of white space factored in), the Golden Bear I was using dwindled to a little over three inches long. I set it aside in favor of this week's favored pencils, primarily a General's Cedar Pointe and a USA Gold. But I keep wondering if I'm selling it short. (No pun intended. Sorta.) I mean...it still writes. It's doing all it can. Doesn't it deserve my using it to the best of my ability until I absolutely cannot hold it anymore? (I'm not sure if these questions are pure sentiment, Catholic guilt, or my partially-Scots blood...)
For those of you who use woodcase pencils routinely, how short do you let them get before giving up on them? And what do you do at that point--toss 'em in the garbage without a second thought? Save them up for a once-yearly ceremonial funeral pyre? Hoard them as pocket pencils even though you know deep down they may never be used again? Take them out in the woods and set them free in the wild? I'm curious.
2. Plus
Has anyone else noticed that Blogger recently added a sort of rudimentary statistics application to their dashboard? It's not super powerful, but it gives you a vague idea of how many hits your blog gets and where the traffic is coming from. Also, it shows you which recent search terms led people to your site. And thus it was that I discovered a few days ago that if you searched Google for "inane bunnies," my site was the first one to pop up. Woo-hoo!! I'm number one! Oh...wait...what? Inane bunnies?? Really? (Sadly, I've since slipped to third or fourth place...)
On the bright side, Inane Bunnies would be a good name for a band.
And yes, there are days when it might even be a good name for this blog.
Also, today is my birthday. You know you're getting old when you can't actually remember how old you are and have to do the math three times before you believe the number you're coming up with. For the record? Thirty-four. Eep.
6 comments:
Elizabeth,
Happy Birthday! May there be many years of Inane Bunnies in your future. BTW, I consider anyone under the age of 40 to be a youngster. I vaguely recall being 34 but it's a distant memory.
I haven't worn down any pencils that far yet but I have given it some thought. (There's a bit of Scottish in me as well.)3.5 inches is probably my limit because I have big, thick hands. The stub would be uncomfortable for prolonged writing. I might keep a few in my shooting box to jot down notes on targets. I also have an idea for a still life photo session that would involve writing instruments and worn down pencils would be a part of that.
Jeff
Happy Birthday from Pencil Revolution!
I don't know what I would do with a shorty pencil. I have so many in the junk drawer that they all seem to be getting shorter together, yet all of them still have some life left in them. Like Jeff, I'd figure that at roughly 3.5 inches I'd have to move on. Since I tend to collect all manner of firewood and small flammable scraps for camping, I might just be prone to tossing the old writing tools into the scrap box for later burning entertainment.
Maybe you should become a hoarder of too-short-to-use pencils and have everyone send them to you. Pretty soon you could have a room or so full of them. You'd probably make the news someday if you kept at it. I'm sure that is something you aspire to.
Happy birthday.
Check ebay or any of the online art stores (Dick Blick or Jerry's Artarama) for a "pencil extender". These are a 4" or so wooden or metal sleeze into which one slides a far too stubby pencil in order to eek out a few more days. Of course searching for these starts its own new obsession but at least then one can justify hoarding little pencil stubs.
Tony
Happy Birthday!
Shorties -- if you really love them -- pencil extender.
Thanks for the heads-up on Blogger tracking stats. Hadn't noticed. But now I'm wondering why 2 Russians and 3 Saudis visited my blog this week. ;)
Thanks for the birthday wishes! It was a good day.
Pencil extenders--brilliant! I really like that idea. Bit of an outlay at first, but seems one would more than pay for itself over time, especially when it comes to pricier pencils. Thanks for the idea!
Of course, that still leaves me with questions about what to do with the stubbier stubs I would then be left with. I'm thinking filling a glass jar with colored pencil stubs would be highly decorative, so there's that. Or I could glue them one at a time to the wall of my home office, eventually covering a whole wall. I'm sure my landlord would *love* that.
Post a Comment