The Brontës & fountain pen inks
Hope your 2023 is off to a good start! For some reason, it doesn’t really feel like a new year to me. I usually set a few goals (nothing crazy) and have a new routine I’m working on. But something about this year feels like 2023 kinda just snuck in, and the only thing that feels different is having to remember to write 2023 instead of 2022. Anyway, here are a few things I’ve been into lately. A great thing about my tendency to find new interests to obsess over every week is that I can easily find something new to talk about in every one of these newsletters. Just using my mental instability to an advantage.
The Brontë sisters
Two of my favorite books are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Don’t worry, I’m okay (if you know, you know). I’m currently reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, and I’m loving it so far. A different style of writing compared to Emily and Charlotte, but similar in that it’s a book written before its time. And I just recently ordered The Brontës by Juliet Barker, a biography about the sisters, one of the more accurate ones, apparently.
So my obsession with the sisters was reignited when I watched A Man Called Otto at the theaters earlier this week (which was so good, you should definitely watch it). Previews for Emily came on. I could hardly contain my excitement as I sat there amongst silent viewers in a packed theater. Apparently, it’s coming out in Australia on January 12 but has been out in the UK for some time now.
So, if you didn’t guess already, Emily is a movie about the Brontë family but with an extra focus on Emily’s life. I’m tempted to reread Wuthering Heights just as a refresher but would like to finish Anne’s novel first so that I have a somewhat equal understanding of all the sisters before watching the movie. I’ve also been doing some research on the sisters as part of my obsessive behavior. There’s not much out there since they died young, but I found an entire blog dedicated to Anne Brontë if you’re interested in going into a rabbit hole.
And that’s my spiel on the Brontës. I think it’s safe to say that the entirety of this month will be dedicated to reading their works and doing research. And then writing an essay or blog post inspired by something I’ve read about them. So I’ll stop raving now and save it for a later post.
On fountain pen inks
There’s an amazing stationery shop in New Norfolk, Tasmania called Flywheel. It’s the best stationery store I’ve ever been to. If you’re in the area, please go. You’ll forever be ruined and develop an unhealthy relationship with stationery, I promise. Thankfully, they have an online shop, so even though I can’t visit the store physically and have to pay $10 for shipping, I at least feel somewhat fulfilled. And they’ve just released their special line of inks in collaboration with Van Dieman’s. I love that they’ve based the ink colors on their shop’s aesthetic — Rust Brick Red, Printing Press Grey, and Type Cabinet Green. I’m tempted to just get all three, but I also don’t need three 30 ml bottles of ink. I am leaning more towards the grey and the green, though, since I already have a similar color to the red.
I own two fountain pens that I use my inks with but I also dabble into calligraphy a little as well. And I feel like ink drawing is underrated. With the right paper, ink adds a lot of depth and interest to what would be a simple sketch. There really are so many uses for inks.
So subtle of me to talk myself into getting all three inks.
But seriously, check out Flywheel if you even have the smallest bit of interest in stationery.
My latest blog post:
MY 5-STAR READS FROM 2022
I would have liked to have read more books this year. But this year was filled with lots of changes in my personal life, so reading was low on the priority list. But these are some of the books I rated 5 stars on Goodreads. If you’re not familiar with Goodreads, it’s an app where you can track what you’re reading and also rate and review books. The rating scale is from 1 to 5 stars, no half stars. So while I might’ve given some of these books 4.5 stars, I decided to round up. So here’s my list: