Pelikan M200 Pyrite

 

 

I recently acquired the new special edition Pelikan M600 Georg Tippel, which I loved and still love and is such an excellent pen, and I vaguely said it was my last hurrah for a little while, especially as it’s Hobonichi and back-to-school season and I need to start being a serious human that contributes to society or at the very least the family business in some form.

 

But then this yellow Pyrite M200 came in, and I couldn’t resist. It’s just a fun little steel nib pen for a bit of scribbling here and here. A bit of golden light.

 

I have a small Pelikan flock, and some years ago I picked up a previous special edition M200 yellow one in Taipei, with silver trim, and no sparkles. I think it may have been a highlighter one. I am definitely a gold-trim kind of person, and it also turns out that while I’m not really a shimmer ink person, sparkles are part of the fun. Incidentally, when you ink it up with a dark blue ink, or maybe a black ink, or even a dark purple, the barrel looks like the night sky. A little something to help us look forward to the Mid-Autumn Festival.

 

 

Inked up with Diamine Rushbrooke Blue, a special edition Scriptus Pen Show ink from some years back, in celebration of Phil Akin, who was recently awarded the Order of Canada for resurrecting the Toronto Pen Show from its ashes. Alas no, that’s not quite accurate: while we are all grateful to Phil’s initiative and vision and energy and leadership in starting up Scriptus once again, the Order of Canada was something more to do with his contributions to Black theatre and arts and culture here in Canada.

 

In any case, glad he exists, and plus this ink he designed for the show is pretty nice, too.

 

 

Something about even the steel Pelikan nib is pleasing. A very German vibe. Is it the font of the Pelikan?

 

 

***

 

Life continues on. Junia is now age 4, which is both a lot of fun and also seems to be one of many things accelerating wildly beyond my control. She’s been cajoling and begging and chiding us, as her family, to teach her how to read. I think it’s in part because her older brother and sister read books and are heartless and don’t really read to her and no one has time to read to her in this reading family, everyone buried and burrowed under blankets with their own secret tomes. Is there also possibly an element of deep concern that she may never learn to read?? I don’t know. Far be it for me to be so cavalier about such things: there is no rest for any self-respecting tiger mom, even as I myself burrow under my own blankets, trying to angle my clamp lamp properly. The fat cat on the mat, eternal.

 

Junia has also been packing up her own supplies for our various outings, including, generally, a chapter book she has no hope of reading, a notepad, and a pencil case. The other day, sitting beside her in the church pew, I saw her open up her pencil case, and I was shocked and horrified to discover she had intentionally packed just this one, apparently carefully chosen, singular Blackwing, sharpened on both sides. An atrocity. A curiosity. I tried to interrogate her but was shushed by Jon. What child did this to this pencil? How, in a household with however many hundreds, if not thousands, of pencils and pens, was this the one tool selected? What if she needed a different writing tool for the task? What was all that empty space in the tin for? Was she worried about breaking the tip of this pencil with all that jostling?

 

The energy of preparation and confidence in a four year old is something to behold. Perhaps a mystery only to be enjoyed in contemplation and never to be solved.