Today’s a mixed bag of off-topic. First, I’m trying a new very fine-pointed gel ink pen from JetPens.com. This one is the Pilot HI-TEC-C 0.25mm black ink stick pen. Jetpens.com specializes in hard-to-find Japanese pens and stationery.

The HI-TEC-C is fairly plain plastic stick pen. The point, however, it finer and sharper than any I’ve seen in the local office supply place. This pen writes really smooth, fine lines. It can write incredibly small, yet sharp letters. It’s a lot of fun to to doodle with, too. And for sketching little pottery forms, it works really well. As gel pens go, it’s very smooth and makes a good line. I’m a fan of Japanese gel pen colors, but this one is just a standard black. It’s nice and dark, even for the thinness of the line. I’m using it to write int the journal, sketch little things, and doodle.

Overall, a fun pen. If you’ve never had a gel pen this “sharp”, you ought to try one. It compares well with the Rotring Tikky Graphic 0.3mm pen I’ve been using for similar duty in the last few months. While the Rotring is more like a soft point, the difference in line thickness and sharpness is very clear. Both will get a slot in the notebook for a while.

The King’s Cup disc golf tournament, for which I made a bunch of mugs, was last weekend. It was a lot of fun, a lot of work, and worth every minute to see how much fun everyone had over the weekend. After handing out prizes, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners were invited up to pick a mug. It was fun to see how fast they flew off the table. Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to everyone who came out to play. Maybe next year, we’ll do something different, but there will be stoneware involved!

And finally, last night I got back to the wheel for a little while. I threw a bowl to warm up. It was fun. Kind of like riding a bicycle. The clay just knew what it wanted to be. Then I centered a 3 lb piece to make a tea pot body. I got too aggressive and it torqued about halfway up. So, pinned off, it turned into a little tea pot, short and stout. The next one was smoother and much larger. It’s a big ball. And then I threw a couple lids and some spouts. Tomorrow, I have a lesson with Yu-san Ishimaru to work on putting teapots together. We’ll see what happens with what I threw. I feel like the teapot is a form I really haven’t explored, so maybe this is the start. Pictures coming soon.