Posts
I know that I have some questions to answer about the typewriter journal project. I am assembling a Q&A, so look for it in the next week. Note that the deadline is June 15th, not May 30th. (Do you get the sense I am winging the details of this project? Worry not. It will get done.)
In other news, welcome to the First Official Strikethru Drawing For A Random Prize (FOSDFARP), which in this case is a set of three typewriter buttons from the Regional Assembly of Text.
Instructions to win: leave a comment on this post, in which you make a random remark about ephemera, pens, buttons, typewriters, cameras, or any related item of paper-based nerd-dom, for the entertainment of your fellow entrants.
You: "I'm too cool to enter this drawing."
Me: Wrong. Everyone into this general scribeomechanical hobby is a nerd. Face facts.
You: "I don't wear buttons."
Me: I am sure you know a person/bulletin board that does, and we need to get the typewriting message out there, my friends.
You: "How will you pick the winner?"
Me: The winner will be chosen at random and announced on the blog sometime in June. Winner will e-mail me their address, and I will send em off this cool set of buttons, whereupon they shall bask in the glory of winning the FOSDFARP.
You: "Why the hell are you having a FOSDFARP? What is this, Publisher's Clearing House?"
Me: I thought someone might like some typewriter buttons, and it's time to shake things up out there in the typosphere. It's CONTEST TIME!!!
Leave a comment. You know you want to. By the way, are there any new or prospective typecasters out there that aren't listed in my Typosphere list? If so, I want to hear about it.
26 comments:
I love this blog! I just started pencasting and typecasting in my own blog -
www.swansdepot.wordpress.com
I just started following your blog. It's very good. I need a refill of notebooks. What's your favorite right now?
I MISS MY OLIVETTI WITH THE STICKY SHIFT KEY
While working on a short story (in which the use of a fountain pen is mentioned,) I inserted the observation that the end of a fountain pen stroke leaves a small dot of ink darker than the main body of the character, an effect also noticed in watercolor paintings. It's this watercolor-like quality to fountain pens that must fascinate me.
My Grandmother used to write in fountain pen; I can still recall the faded blue ink, not opaque but watery such that the quality of the paper came through the transparent ink lines. She also used mechanical pencils, those old colorful translucent plastic barreled ones from the 1960s, with metal ferrule on the end for the eraser.
I've mentioned to other people, when inquiring as to the nature of my fascination of mechanical typewriters, that they're in fact not "low tech", but rather a keyboard directly connected to a printer. It's just all that junk in the middle of the system's flowchart that is removed, evidently extraneous and unneeded.
You, my friend, are going to get a lot of comments this way.
In other news, I may or may not have an Olympia SM-9 that is en route to my house. Is Strikethru a bad influence? Yes she is.
ALSO: Those pins will look mighty fine next to my NANO secret novelling patch.
Kaja, I am partial to the Myndology notebooks. There are so many good ones out there, but something about those has me hooked.
Swans, you are now in the typeosphere list.
Note: I am not entered into my own drawing with this post.
Matthew, lol.
Speegle, you will not regret your purchase.
And Joe, good point. Typewriters were rather high tech for quite some time. Why should that change?
Oh, an SM9. If you like the Olympia touch, prepare to have a fun-finger-frenzy. I love, love, love my SM9, and am trying to figure out a way to somehow acquire and then sneak another typing stand into my home, just so I can use it alongside my big Royal desktop for this year's NaNo. Desktop machines are a breed apart, and I think even "bad" ones type pretty well compared to "bad" portables (he says, with limited hands-on experience.) For me, the SM9 feels so much more like a standard than a portable... it's scary. And this from the era when most makers were turning out less-than-stellar machines. The SM9 looks all plasticy and 70s, but... oh my.
I hope you get it and like it, Mike. It's a fine machine.
At this point, I think a picture of a typewriter on a button is about the only kind of typewriter I'm going to be allowed to bring into the house for a while.
Thats what I use right now a SM-9, I can't get my self to go and get an SG1 or SG3 just yet. As much as I want a desktop I just don't the room right now. Though I dream about owning my first desktop all to much. My good old trusty SM9 gets everything done with ease. What more could I ask? Even with its little quirks like the ribbon not going to reverse by it self and it backspacing two spaces instead of one I love it plus I am use to it by now. Oh and I just noticed on Safari 4 where it shows you your top sites that you go to that my most often checked site is Strikethru!! Weird
Jeez, does the tag come with the buttons? Gorgeous! (Not that I need more ephemera of course...sigh.)
Nice to see fellow SM-9 fans out there. For our photo people- I refer to the Olympia SM-9 as the "Durst Laborator 1200 of typewriters." The Olivetti Lettera 32 (my favorite) is "The Leica M4-2 of typewriters."
Was in Boston yesterday, making some of the usual pilgrimage stops (Bromfield Pen Shop, Cambridge Typewriter, Bob Slate's, Harvard Coop); I'd run out of Waterman sepia ink- now all is well!
If you like typewriter buttons, check this out:
http://boygirlparty.com/splash/index.html
Typewriters smell nice, as does peel-apart Polaroid pack film.
I love these buttons! Just the kind of thing I look for on Etsy all the time.
Soon as I get unpacked I will photograph all the typewriters I've dug up that have been squirreled away for years...
I'm new/prospective. I set up a blog for it a long time ago but posted all of maybe once because I am lazy.
Hi, I'm julia, I name office supplies after things, no I am not an addict. Okay, maybe I am. Typewriters are Jepha, Dorothee, and Zelda; staplers are Ren and Stimpy; and I have a notebook called Daggett. I'm a child of the nineties, obviously.
And I need buttons because I like buttons, and there's a Lorax on my backpack that needs a typewritery friend.
I love the new chicken and Chi-Chi's commercial. And typewriters.
How's that for a random comment?
For future notice, bringing a typewriter to highschool is an interesting way to garner attention from peers and teachers alike. Note that not all said attention may be positive.
On another note, typewriters are fun to share with friends. Soon as I can afford a nifty model from mytypewriter.com (are their typewriters overpriced, considering the care they take in ensuring it's a working and well-restored machine?), I'd like to give away one of the ones I got for cheap to a good friend. I'd recommend doing the same, for any of you who can bear to part with one of your babies.
Twenty-some years ago I bought a Mont Blanc Diplomat fountain pen for a ridiculously cheap price. And since that time I've used it regularly and have never been disappointed in it. The pen took a bit of breaking in, but, after a while, it wrote how I had hoped it would write. It is, on the move, a part of my arm in a way that no ball point or roller-ball can ever be. The only thing that could possibly be better would be a penholder with an endless supply of Bank Nibs and black ink.
Being a machinist in his fifties I can remember when blueprints were written by draftsmen in ink on vellum (and barely remember the Van Dyke projections in brown ink) instead of the CAD nonsense that one is burdened with today. In the old days prints were works of art. Today they are cartoons.
I have about nine manual typewriters lying around the house and work. They range from the Corona folding typewriter from the 1920s to the Hermes 3000 (an actual Swiss Army surplus typewriter). My preferred typewriter is a Smith-Corona Corsair made in the 1970s. It is plastic, rickety and was qa cheap typer when new. But it has held up and is apparently bulletproof. Who can ask for more?
I recently got hold of my dream typer; the sublime Smith-Corona Skywriter. But I haven't given the machine a workout yet, so my opinion the machine is on hold.
The great thing about fountain pens and typewriters is that they slow one down in one's writing. They make one think and they are merciless masters. People talk and write too fast these days. After three sheets of writing trying to make a statement and finding that one has not been careful enough in typing or writing one tends to slow down and think before one writes. And that may be a good thing.
--Hitz53
I know what you mean regarding blueprints vs. CAD drawings. I have to produce CAD drawings regularly, and since you have the abiity to endlessly revise them, they inevitably get endlessly revised. Sometimes the revisions are warranted, sometimes they have nothing to do with the validity of the drawing. In the old days, drawings had to be planned out to a certain degree.
Manual drafting vs. CAD is akin to manual typewriters vs. word processors.
OK, I'll play, if I'm not too late to the party! Very cool buttons--the third looks rather like an SG-3, though I couldn't swear to it.
If it is, then I deserve to win by default. ;-)
LFP: Nah, it's totally an Underwood Five, like the one used in Finding Forrester.
Win!
I carry my Remington Portable 1 to cafes in an ordinary tote bag. People expect a notebook (paper or computer), they get a glossy black typewriter.
-ElleEs
Oooh, what a gal won't do for free buttons! But this post also affords me the opportunity to share some good news with like-minded souls: After finally accepting the reality that my 1927 Underwood No. 5 has truly breathed her last, I have purchased a 1965 Hermes 3000. It has yet to arrive, but I look forward to working with a typewriter again. Hopefully it will arrive in time for my participation in the TYPEWRITER JOURNAL.
I love Strikethru and the people who frequent this space. We are stationery heads. We definitely have a stationery disorder. Nice, isn't it?
I will be choosing a random winner of the buttons the first week of June-- thanks for adding your comment folks.
Cajun, tell me what you think of the Hermes. I am weird about Hermes typewriters and not sure I like them, myself.
Enjoying everyone's comments on this post.
Digital feeds the beast.
Analogue fuels the soul.
I enjoy your blog. Keep hammering away on those keys!
Reply to Strikethru:
The Hermes arrived yesterday. I already like the look and the smell of it. However, Hermes did not weather the transit well and was rushed (by hybrid ambulette) to Mr. Tony Casillo in Garden City, NY for emergency 1st aid. I should hear back in a week. The GOOD news is, he says he can revive my old Underwood Model 5 as well. To celebrate, it seems I have now purchased an Aztec 700, having heard that it is quite easy to fit multiple typewriters in a studio apt. I promise to fill you in on ALL these machines as soon as I can actually type on one of them! Meantime, I am so curious about your Hermes-induced skittishness. Tell! Tell!
Post a Comment