Quill/brasscast: Thoughts about roots, cut short

I wrote this with a quill and with two metal nibs, trying out some "new" old paper, while keeping track of a two-year-old.

Quillcast: checking in

Quillcast: Pinecones

I wrote this about four years ago, along with music.  One of my goals is to get an ensemble together to record it.

To live between a rock and a hard place in between time

-I really had meant to do more posts on my typewriter, I really had.

I have meant to do many things, and making excuses has never been one of them.  But dealing with all the demands on my time ("too many hands on my time," as the Canadian poet also wrote), seeing how I fail at meeting them all, and seeing the hard choices I have to make, maybe I can continue to be patient and forgiving with others when they fail to gratify some of my wishes for time spent with them.

I haven't finished any of my planned Christmas calligraphy projects this year, but I'm going to post some calligraphy of Christmases past.  Looking back over my work, I can see that I have improved my technique, even though I still have much room for more improvement.

First, a section of the Wexford Carol, one of my favorites, that I did - oh, probably three years ago.

And this one, from about the same time, showing the same shaky penmanship and indecisive long "s" (though I'm not sure how much better my current forms are):

Finally, a translation of the Magnificat, which I did as a gift for someone, also in 2012.  This was a bit of work: I translated it into one of the languages in the novel I'm writing, which required some last-minute invention of words and grammar, and then I had to write the thing out carefully and neatly.  At least in this script you have no other specimen to judge it against.  Here it is, enjoy!

Quillcast: calligraphy: Proverbs 9 excerpt in Spanish

Chapter 9 of Proverbs has been one of my favorite passages of scripture since the summer of 1996 when I was reading through the Old Testament during a course of intensive ministerial training.  I've lettered it in English, and I'll do so again, I expect.  But I've also been wanting to letter more quotes in Spanish.  So here is the first part of Proverbs 9 from the 1960 Reina-Valera version.

Yes, I did this with a quill pen, one that I made myself.  (If you're interested in learning how to do really old-fashioned calligraphy, you can buy a quill pen from me on eBay or Etsy.)  It has taken me about six years to get to my current level of skill in lettering, and I'm still looking to improve.

Quillcast: a piece of calligraphy from two years ago

Quillcast: incomprehensible Yes lyrics

Another placeholder post of sorts: here's one of my favorite lines from "Heart of the Sunrise" written with my Reformed Gothic alphabet.

Quillcast: Rush quote: Available Light

A bit of calligraphy practice, using the opening lines of "Available Light."  Lyrics by Neil Peart.  The song is the closing track on Rush's Presto album.

The saga of the quills

So sorry for not having a typecast this time.

For the past five years or so I've been making quill pens, and gradually my technique has improved, helped along by various resources, to the point where, when things are going well, I have wondered if some of my pens might be good enough to sell.  Certainly they're better than the shoddy and overpriced jobs that you'll find in gift shops at historic sites.  Whoever makes those ought to know better, even if most of the tourists don't.  Indeed, I have wished with something like a missionary zeal to introduce more people to real quill pens and the joys of writing therewith - thus my wondering whether I might successfully sell my creations.

If I were to find some kind of market for my quills, I might make a few bucks, but I would also have a reason for making them more often than I do, and could thereby keep my technique sharp - pardon the pun.  Right now I don't use up the pens I make fast enough to need new ones very often, so when I do get around to making a new batch enough time has passed that I always make too many mistakes and waste some.  Cutting the slits is particularly tricky, and I could use more practice to improve my command of that part of the process.

The first problem I face is where to get feathers.  Up until now I've relied on craft stores, which sell packs of turkey feathers at variable prices.  Their quality is hit-and-miss, though the white ones with black-dyed tips (simulating eagle feathers) tend to work better than the colored ones - which, of course, are more affordable.

After a frustrating experience with a half-dozen of these colored specimens, resulting in only two usable pens, I decided to seriously pursue some way of getting fresher stock.  I had read this post on this gorgeous blog dedicated to sacred Hebrew calligraphy, recommending the gathering of primary feathers from wild geese during their early summer molt.  Unfortunately my plans to patrol the local greenbelt this past summer were foiled.  But wait!  Are we not nearing the end of goose hunting season?

A co-worker of mine has a nephew who hunts and said he could supply me with some primary feathers.  Yesss!  Of course, they would come from dead birds, which gave me some cause for regret.  I don't hold to a vegetarian lifestyle (though I like to eat like one when I have the chance) and I have developed sympathies for hunting, but I find geese so cute that it is hard for me to accept the notion of shooting them.

Well, if other people are going to shoot the poor things, at least I can turn their deaths to some further good beyond providing nourishment and use some of their feathers, which otherwise were wasted, for purposes of beauty.  So I eagerly awaited the delivery of the feathers.

And then yesterday afternoon, a young man came in with a big plastic bag full of . . . goose wings.

Yes, the whole wings!  About six of them, all the feathers still firmly attached and resisting my experimental pulls.  I stammered out a flabbergasted thanks for the grisly parcel and wondered what to do next.  I live in an apartment with a small kitchen and no garage.  I was not going to bring those things into my domicile: I knew my wife wouldn't want them inside, and I didn't want my daughter to see them.  It was traumatic enough for me to have to face such a reminder that honks had been silenced.  :(

There is a butcher shop and taxidermy side by side behind my apartment, and in a flash of inspiration I thought I would simply pass the task on to them!  On my way home I stopped and knocked on the taxidermist's door.

"Could you pluck some primary feathers from some goose wings for me?"  He responded with a look of blank puzzlement before telling me that they charge $40 per hour for whatever tasks they might do.

Well, never mind: I'd find some way to do it myself.

My wife was horrified when I told her of the strange cargo I carried in the trunk, in hushed voices out of earshot from a sweet little four-year-old who loves gooses.  But she came up with a helpful suggestion: boil a pot of water, take it outside and pour it over the wings to try to loosen the feathers.

So, after dinner, while the little one was otherwise occupied, Daddy went outside to "do something."  Night had fallen and the temperature was around zero.  I took a big pot of boiling water outside with a cheap baking sheet, which I set down on the snow-packed street in front of the car.  I turned on the engine and the lights, got the wings out of the trunk, and went to work.

"You should know that this is the strangest thing I have ever done!"  Crouching in the snow, pouring hot water over goose wings and then pulling HARD on primary feathers until they finally came loose, trying to work quickly before my fingers froze while trying not to bend or crack the feather shafts, and all the while the neighbors' stupid dog barking away . . . after a few minutes my next-door neighbor came out with a coat over his pajamas to ask me what I was doing.  To which the only appropriate response was the bizarre truth.

Soon the water was gone and my fingers were aching, so I put the wings into the dumpster with funereal mein and took the feathers in to clean them up in the kitchen.  Finally I had 25 big feathers that should be good for making into pens.  Not bad, I guess.

The fruits of my labors, now ready for processing.

Feeling sorry for the poor gooses.

Now that the dirty work is over, I hope the actual pen making will go smoothly.