Pen Madness (part 5)

It dawned on me that the fastest pens of mine to sell were the very cheap and simple ones, so the other day I whipped up a few more very cheap and simple ones.

I made all of these in under two hours. It would have been faster except that the three colored ones gave me a little trouble. I decided to wrap the shafts all the way up to the veins this time. The black and white ones are wrapped in a synthetic raffia, called wraphia. It was very easy to work with and creates a nice clean simple finish. The colored ones were wrapped in thin satin ribbon. They were much harder to do. The ribbon did not want to cooperate and kept puckering at the top edge. I got them done, but they took three or four times longer and with more aggravation than the wraphia ones.

I am not too thrilled with the quality of the feathers available at my local craft store. They look pretty pitiful, and these are the better looking ones. I need to find a good supplier on-line for some better quality feathers. If you know of any, please drop me a line.

And because I'm such a glutton for punishment, I bought more pen nibs, bottles and ink last week. It will now probably take me well over a year to recoup my expenses for this product line. On the up side, I now have nibs and bottles enough to make upwards of 720 pens and 576 bottles of ink. So I have that going for me, which is pretty nice. Some one stop me, please!