Mud, mud, glorious mud.

Birds. Pen. Daffodils.

Mud season. We celebrate midwinter (or Christmas, if you will) as the halfway point of winter, but I think it peaks a little early, because things don’t get really awful till January. By January, the memories of sun are too far gone to sustain you; all there is fog, and it seems all there ever will be is fog. In the early autumn, the paths are sun baked and hard, determined against the weather; by January their resolve has softened into an impenetrable slurry.

I can see the trainers from a mile off, blinding in their whiteness, untainted by January resolutions. It took me about two years after moving here to realise that people dress up in sports gear to go for a walk; I thought everyone was on the walking section of a couch to 5k run. For two years.A really, really long walking section. To be clear, you do not need special clothes to go for a walk, but you can, if that’s you feel comfortable in. Just not in mud season. In mud season I eschew even my sturdymost waterproof winter walking boots for wellingtons, and suggest you do too.

I know that you are supposed to look at the floor and pretend the townspeople are not there, because they get frightened if you speak to them, but I felt honour bound to tell the poor woman she did not want to go down the path in new white trainers. Not if she wanted to keep having white trainers, and dry feet. She looks at me and laughs, as if I had said a funny thing, then looks unsure. ‘Is it very bad?’ We look at the tide mark of fresh mud on my wellies, which hovers at ankle height. She decides not to go on.

Five cormorants at the lake today, and the heron. A new record, I think. The one with the white chest and a bunch of others. People give me cormorant reports now, such is my obsession. A sunny day, no cormorants. Overcast, five. Something to note in my book of confusing things birds do. Once I’ve figured it all out, I’ll be able to predict the future using the activities of birds.

In the field I walk amongst the twittering of skylark for five minutes before I realise what I’m listening to, and become joyously enraptured. Lapwings too, easily recognisable, black and white with their blunt wings, a loose flock, slightly incompetent in their aerial formations. There is always a straggler, who will muster up and join the flock, only for another to drop out. The circle the field seeming endlessly, coming close to landing but deciding against it, circling around again, dipping, rising circling. I think they landed out of sight behind the trees next to a really big puddle, but they could still be circling for all I know. I hope they stay and breed there again this year.

The great tits creak, the squirrels embark on amorous chases, the duck at the lake bicker and court. Imbolc, the first stirrings of spring, dwell unseen in the hearts and minds of animals, but they are there, and we must trust them; trust that better days will come.

Workings

January has been disappointing, as January often is. I’ve spent a lot of my energy going to various appointments, which those who are long time readers will know I am very bad at. I have attempted a scattergun approach on about 5 different projects, and made progress on all of them, but nothing finite, nothing I want to show people, which has somewhat shat on my resolution to complete at least 2 projects every month. I tell you once again that January is the worse month to resolve to do anything. Start the new year in April, when the sun is shining and it’s easy to take photos and see what youre doing. When the mud has dried up and your white trainers won’t get wet. Stop with the January challenges too. Dry January? Veganuary? January is awful and it’s enough to survive it. Let’s not make it worse please. Well done everyone on surviving January. We just have to survive February now, and possibly the bit of March before the clocks go forward.

Pretty pleased with how this guy is coming along though, looking forward to the next steps.

Findings

I think I promised you are review of my Tom’s studio pens which I have been obsessively purchasing recently, which literally no one asked for. With that in mind, I’m just going to witter on about two of the pens I currently own, for my own amusement; if you are one of those weirdos that has no interest in pens, you can skip directly to the really good painting I got in the mail that’s at the bottom of the newsletter. I might curse you with my thoughts on the fountain pens next week, after I’ve tried out my new nib.

(Fountain pen, wren and lumos pens)

The first pen I bought was the lumos, which is marketed as an infinitely refillable multipurpose pen. I mostly wanted to use this as a brush pen, but I had high hopes I could use the fineliner nibs to make a general purpose note taking pen for my bullet journal, which did not work out at all.

The positives: The most exciting aspect of the pen for me was being able to match the brush pen in to the fountain pen ink, but also, I don’t have to feel bad about wrecking nibs, because they are easily replaceable. I wreck nibs because I’m left handed and I have to hold the pen really weirdly to do brush lettering, and I do feel guilty because there is a lot of juice left in the pen that I can’t use once the nib has gone furry.

Another benefit is I can put in waterproof ink which makes it very worth it, especially as I can mix an infinite amount of colours with DeAtramentis document inks. Here’s an awkward video of me holding my pen weirdly.

The negatives:

There’s only one size brush nib, and it’s felt. I prefer the rubbery (whey-hey) type of nib you get with Tombow Fudenosuke that don’t deteriorate so fast. The pen would be vastly improved with at least a few more size options for brush nibs.

The lumos mini is half of the regular double ended lumos, so there’s a hole on one end, and they only sell the one type as a single, so you can never buy the other pen that should screw in there, which bugs me.

Changing inks with refillable pens is always a hassle, so it unlikely I’ll stop buying plastic brush pens till someone buys me about 50 lumos pens, and it’s not a cheap pen, so thats not going to happen (sorry landfills). If you use a lot of black fine liners in one size, though, it would make a difference.

Lastly, I absolutely hated it as a writing pen. It’s fine for drawing and brush lettering but for long form writing, I found it uncomfortable. The lumos mini is a very thin, fairly light, very short pen, and the aluminium is kind of slippery. I could have made some kind of grip for it but switching between writing and brush nibs is a hassle, so I decided just to get another pen for writing, definitely not because Lev got one and I was jealous.

The Wren

The Wren is a dedicated writing pen with just the one nib style, so is quite a bit cheaper than the other pens, especially when it is on offer at cult pens where I already had a discount. I feel that most of the criticisms of the fountain and lumos pens have been taken on board for a better writing experience; the aluminium on the grip has grooves so it’s not as slippery, the nib is nice and smooth, the pen is small, but becomes a nice size when you’re using it, and it’s a good and balanced weight. I can use my waterproof pigment inks in it. I like it a lot. My only beef with it is that to pull it out of the cap you need to yank hard, so it would be nice if that end was slightly longer. It wouldn’t matter for normal people but it would if you have useless bendy hypermobile fingers, or arthritis or some other similar thing it might be a problem.

Also, none of the pens have clips on them and the wren is particularly bad as it is too fat for the pen holder on my Rhodia notebook, so as I said last week, I lose it approximately 12 times a day. Tom’s studio needs to consider a clip, or a tracking device. Either would be fine.

Here’s the picture of daffodils Cathy sent me. It was a surprise! It made me very happy. I have put it next to my autumnal bird vase (which I took out of its frame for glare reasons

Happy Imbolc friends, here’s to the return of the sun!