Marion Makes…

I ate two of em by myself and I’m fairly certain the server judged me for it. No regrets tho.

Picked up some new calligraphy supplies and also stopped into a stationery store and gained my first real-life guild quest… there’s an email in my inbox about joining “the guild” that the proprietor of this store recommended I join when I mentioned being an amateur calligrapher, but I don’t know what the guild actually is, specifically. Like probably calligraphy, but also it was a stationer who referred me and we had just had a nice long conversation about paper, so who knows. Google could probably tell me, but why ruin the surprise? I will wait to hear back from the guild member I have been casually put in contact with. Lmao.

It was nice to not have to worry about baby. As soon as she and Nate came back home it was like an entire part of my brain suddenly kicked back on, which was very weird. We are AcTiVeLy PaRenTiNg again. But the break was very nice.

The new calligraphy supplies are excellent so far and may change what my default ink is. I’m not sure yet, because I also tried the new ink on a new paper, and I’d like to try it on my old paper so I have a better grasp of the comparison between my old default ink and the new ink.

(Extra calligraphy deets for the interested: The new paper I used was a “bristol” style paper (maybe a bit smoother and definitely thicker) by Canson but my usual is Strathmore’s calligraphy paper. I’ve seen recommendations for both so I just wanted to experiment. For the inks, my current default is sumi ink and I’m considering a switch to india ink. Both are usually carbon based “lampblack” (made by burning wood or oil, not made from bone ash), but sumi ink often uses animal based glue as a binding agent while india ink uses shellac, which is insect based. Along with my being more comfortable using insect byproducts than animal byproducts, it has the added bonus of being more waterproof and blacker than sumi ink. Annoyed I hadn’t looked into this more closely before; you’d think I’d have done it sooner than ten years into the hobby… I’ve used gouaches and acrylic inks and all sorts of shit really, but never thought to try india ink, thinking like that’s exclusively for image drawing somehow. So silly, such a weird box to put that in for no reason.)