I forgot to talk about the pen and ink set Mr. Dump gave me for Christmas. Well, I was there and picked it out a few weeks prior to Christmas and then he got it for me, so I knew I was getting it, but still….

Here is a link to picture of the set (and a link for buying it…the price listed is a little less than it was at the Higgins Armory Museum gift shop. But if you can get to Higgins, you should.)

http://tradingstories.com/4inkbottlekit.html

Man, use the navigation on that page to check out the other stuff they have for sale. As a writer, I was absolutely drooling.

Oh, so getting back to the pen…it’s really a brilliant design. You dip the entire tip into the ink and the grooves actually control the flow so you can get 1/3 to 1/2 a page written before you need to re-dip. I was actually impressed. I was also very nervous having an open bottle of ink on the table with a kid around, but sometimes you have to take risks, right? So big thumbs up to the 19th century Venetians who came up with this pen style.