Analog tools
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The Rocketbook
The Rocketbook does exactly what it says it does; it provides a reusable, eraseable writing surface. It just doesn’t do it very well, or in a way that makes me want to use…
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Pencil Sharpeners
In 1971 my parents bought a house whose previous owners had left a hand-crank pencil sharpener attached to a stud near the head of the stairs to the basement. The sharpener had a…
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Red and Blue Bicolor Editing or Checking Pencils
Bicolor pencils with a red core on one end and a blue core on the opposite end are often called “checking pencils,” or “editing pencils” because they are often used for copyediting and…
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Favorite Pencils
I am in the final stages of a general re-organization and purge that I started in the fall. That re-organization meant not only swapping around furniture to make a work area, given the…
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BaronFig Dateless Pocket Planner
When 2020 began I was using an A5 hardcover notebook as a bullet jourrnal, tracking appointments, tasks, reading, birthdays, due dates for publishers—a lot. In late summer, I realized it was just going…
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Pilot S20 Drafting Pencil 0.5 mm
I’ve had the Pilot S20 Drafting Pencil on my Wish list at JetPens.com for a few years. I like mechanical pencils, and I love a wooden body. This pencil comes in two…
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Annotating Books and Other Texts
As a child, I was horrified by people who wrote in books. In high school, I’d go through my textbooks at the start of the new school year and carefully erase the penciled…
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Musgrave Pencils
Musgrave Pencil is a family-owned and operated pencil maker in Shelbyville, Tennessee that’s been making pencils since 1916. The Musgraves began by selling Tennessee Red Cedar slats to European pencil makers; remember that,…
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Staedtler Norica 2B Pencils
I’m using pencils a lot these days, especially for drafts and taking notes. I’m starting to be a little more particular and leaning firmly towards darker graphite or the 2B graphite rating. I liked…
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The Commonplace Book Lives
In one of my earliest blog posts on February 8, 2002, I compared blogs and commonplace books. Since then a number of other bloggers have made the same comparison; it is in fact,…