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header by suzuki eizin, avatar by will barnet

[boatsease]

after over a year of hunting, i finally found the mechanical pencils to match my pair of favorite 1970s japanese fountain pens. now i just need the ballpoints and i'll have two completed sets of three :)

some history about these guys below

in the ~70s, platinum (& sailor & pilot) made a ton of pocket pens¹ with screenprinted nature motifs. these are from a series of 8 designs that had white-lacquered bodies and matching mechanical pencils & ballpoints

considering i got them from 3 different sellers, my quartet are surprisingly similar! they all have their price tags², which i slip off during use, and they’re all likely NOS store displays/testers³. the fountain pens have (very, very nice, less common) 18k soft fine nibs

¹with ~60s-80s japanese fountain pens, “pocket pens” = this specific form factor. slip-caps and short when capped, with a cap that’s most of the length of the body so the pen is comfortably longer when posted

²the prices & tag style put these btwn the series' ‘69 launch and its early-70s ¥500 price increase, at which they also made the pencils shorter

³the pencils show no weathering; the ginkgo pen is slightly sun-yellowed. the hydrangea pen is much more interesting: it was displayed posted, likely for years. there’s negligible fading on the barrel, but the yellows that platinum screenprinted green leaves with were fugitive, so the cap shows this beautiful green-teal-aqua gradient that works as a map for the pattern of sun exposure in its part of the store. i think that’s really charming.

[iamjapanese]

YAMAMOTO Masao（山本昌男 Japanese, b.1957）

Nakazora 中空 #845   1998   gelatin silver print    via   more

[iamwizzzzz]

[williamhereford]

6am in Nagano…  I shot these all within 1 block of each other on the same street while traveling on assignment last month through Japan.  

[abyssaldyke]

It's spring now which means the kids in my city have started drawing hopscotches on the sidewalk and as a rule I do every hopscotch I see because 1. Use it or lose it (ability to scotch) and 2. If a child got down on the hardscrabble streets of Boston Massachusetts to draw a scotch the least I can do is use it, but in doing the hopscotches, I've learned that about 50% of them are the typical 8-10 step scotch and the other 50% are. Somewhat avant-garde. And of course I'm not vetting the entire scotch before I start it so sometimes it's like haha 8 steps woo! Childlike whimsy! And sometimes they're 20 steps or 30 or they've got a section with three squares instead of two where you have to do a little Charleston to step on all three, or, memorably, FORTY one foot squares. A full BLOCK of jumping on one foot but I'm no quitter so once I've started Jigsaw Junior's fuckin hopscotch gauntlet I'm there til the end just a daily pot smoker in her thirties jumping kasa-obake style through an affluent suburb while some little proto-kennedy watches from his bedroom window rubbing his sadistic little third grade hands together and cackling. It's amazing. I love spring.

[dumnslut]

[door]

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Still Life with Wildflowers and Summer Squash, c. 1948) Oil and tempera on paper mounted on panel, 20 x 27 in

[rontology]

I love asking friends, without context, "what are you really into this week?" I'll go first. this week I'm really into mouthwash and sudoku. Last week I was into peaches.

[door]

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), After the Storm, 1952 Oil on canvas mounted on panel. 23 x 31 in

[kentoiidaillustrations]

horizon

[door]

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Frisky Day, 1939 Oil on masonite, 20 1/2 x 29 in

[savings-club]

Square Bloom

quilt by Jo Wollschlaeger

2nd place in American Patchwork & Quilting Transparency Quilting Challenge, QuiltCon 2025

this challenge focused on the illusion of transparency in quilting.

[batbetbitbotbut]

So I noticed this was second place in a contest.

So I looked up first place:

This is "Light Me Up" by Lindsey Berres. Closeups here.

Here is the (partial?) gallery of entrants on the QuiltCon website, but the image files are so large that I literally can't load them so have a selection of much lower quality screengrabs from this video tour instead...

"Neural Overlap" by Jane Eileen García (3rd place)

"Surfacing" by Tara Glastonbury

"Dot Your Eyes" by Nora Bauser

"Risograph Rings" by Colleen Kesterson

"Benched" by Linda Hungerford

"Windmill Meadows" by Lynett Muhaso

"Starman" by Lorena Uriarte

"Triple Silk Transluscence" by Cassandra Beaver

"Who Invited Cyan?" by Samantha Saturday

"Star Crossed" by Karin Rabe

"Contintuity of Radiance" by Svetlana Silver

"Mod Layers" by Anthea Naylor

"Dialectic No. 4" by Heather Akerberg

"Perfect Pansies" by Holly Clarke

"Still Life #1" by Barbara Strick

"Circle of Friends" by Erin Case

"Orange Peel Overlay" by Stephanie Bracelyn""Orange Peel Overlay" by Stephanie Bracelyn

"Spotlight" by Amy Friend

"Blobs" by Lucie Belanger

"Sunshine Amidst Rain" by Sarah Wigton

"Cellophane Squares" by Sharon Thomson

"Evolution of Man" by Carrie Stout

[ymutate]

Thomas Hart Benton (Neosho, Missouri, 1889 - 1975, Kansas City, Missouri),

"Clay County Farm," 1971, oil on canvas, 32 x 22 in.,

Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collectio

[door]

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Norfolk Harbor, 1918 Watercolor on paper, 9 1/2 x 8 1/2 in

[door]

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Chilmark, c. 1923 Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in

[insecuregodcomplex]

[hypokeimena]

image description: tweet by @/SillyBWoman, reading: Everything I say is a joke Unless you agree And in that case Speak to me privately I have even crazier ideas /end description

[frangonzalezorigami]

Origami praying mantis, designed by Satoshi Kamiya. Folded and modified by me. I used a square of tengujo paper