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Readers, you may have noticed that the blog has been a little quiet lately. Your Tiger Pens blogger has been sickly for a bit, but now seems to be on the mend. Look for lots of great new content coming this week, along with news of giveaways and other great stuff. Meanwhile, a special thanks to The Pen Warrior for carrying the load. The post on keeping a notepad and pen in your car was super!

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• Normally, we view over-priced pens with a certain amount of disdain. But this pen is just too cool for us to do much sneering. Why? Because this Dunhill Sentryman is covered with a coating of space rock! According to Luxist.com, the pen:

…features an innovative lacquer finish containing authentic crushed black diamonds and meteorite stone for a stunning effect.

The meteorites apparently come from a well-known field of rocks that crashed in Argentina. Of course, the price reflects the fancy design. It goes for US$1,100.

• The newspaper in Pueblo, Colorado ran a nice little profile of a local pen enthusiast who has become something of a self-educated expert on inks.

John Bosley was a college student looking for some variety in his note-taking when he bought his first fountain pen on eBay. That blossomed into a fountain pen and ink obsession, according to the Pueblo Chieftain.

Bosley says his favorite pen changes from day to day, but his favorite brand is Esterbrook.

“It’s kind of the Bic of the ’40s and ’50s,” he said. “Probably anyone who was alive then has heard of and used Esterbrook. They don’t get much respect, but they just work so well. I kind of got addicted to them — I’ve got 50 or so.”

And as Bosley realized immediately after purchasing that first pen — an antique from the 1940s — you need ink. Good ink is beautiful. It comes in many colors. To use only one hue would be wrong, wouldn’t it?

Bosley started a website called Vintage Inks and has even been invited to the Smithsonian Institution for an event organized by Pen Collectors of America.

It’s always good to see pen collectors get some recognition.

• Anyone planning to attend the Stationery and Office Products Shows in London on April 13tand 14th? You might want to stop by the Zebra Pens display to have your handwriting analysed.

“We could not resist the idea of sponsoring this new attraction at SOPX” says UK sales & marketing manager, Martin Notley.  “Just as a person’s handwriting reveals a lot about them, so does their choice of pen.  Zebra pens epitomise style, fun and good taste as buyers will be reminded at the show!”

Everyone who signs up for the handwriting analysis will be entered into a drawing for a free bottle of champagne. Cheers!

(Register for free entry to the shows here.)

• This is easily our favourite video of the week. From the guys at Instructables.com, it shows you how to make a Pilot G2 into a Montblanc rollerball in 2 minutes.

The only question: Does the Montblanc refill write well enough to make this worth the effort, minimal as it is?

Due to technical problems beyond our control i.e Google bless them, not recognising our account that our Tiger Pens RSS feed was created in we have had to create a new RSS feed.

Please can you re-subscribe to our new RSS feed.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/tigerpensblog

Sorry for any inconvenience caused, Tiger pens Team.

• One of the most beloved items of Maswood Khan’s childhood was a red fountain pen, he tells readers in an opinion piece for The Financial Express, waxing nostalgic about the days when he wrote and received handwritten letters.

Among many things and habits, which are fast vanishing from our life in the whirlpool of modernity with computers and keyboards whirring and clicking, billions of cell phones buzzing with text messages and the nerds gabbling in net chatting, is the cool sight of a fountain pen beside a bottle of ink placed on a writing desk and the tradition of penning an elegant and polite letter in softie handwriting. Nothing can express one’s admiration for another like a handwritten letter. No love e-mail, text message or cell phone call will ever be as fondly and carefully bundled into a memory box as priceless treasures and savored for years to come.

Khan says he feels bad for children who don’t get to enjoy the sensations of writing by hand and instead have to use a “mechanical keyboard that vomits the desiccated words on a monitor that glares with punishing lights.”

Tired of playing phone tag with his son living in Canada and not satisfied with the occasional text or email, Khan has written him a letter and asked for one in return.

We hope he gets it.

• Have a passion for writing by hand? Then maybe you have a career in calligraphy ahead of you, like Janet Lorence, of New Harmony Indiana. But you’ll really, really need to like writing, as she explains to the Evansville Courier Press.

“I went to a Catholic school. I always remember the kids that were bad had to write the dictionary, say a page of a dictionary 25 times or something,” said Lorence, “I always envied them, so I’d go home and write the dictionary, not because I was bad, but because I liked to write.”

She explains that the trick to good calligraphy is understanding pen grip and family dynamics.

“You want to learn not to clench the pen, you want to hold it kind of lightly, but one of the things about writing the different styles is the way the angle that you hold the pen at…When you are learning you always want to keep your pen at that angle, that is what makes the thicks and thins land where they go.”

“You kinda dissect it like the characteristics in a family, how is that person related to the other person in the family,” said Lorence, “You want to keep your letters looking like they relate to each other.”

Unfortunately, calligraphy is not particularly lucrative, but you’re work can end up in some interesting places. According to the newspaper, the Dalai Lama, composer Leonard Bernstein and former American President George H.W. Bush have all received items bearing her handwriting.

• A newspaper in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Div. did something a little unique for Valentine’s Day.

A handwritten love letter is a token of affection no e-mail can match. It’s such an intimate way of showing adoration that it can never be replaced. But in this digital age, the handwritten love letter is a fading gesture. For Valentine’s Day, we collected a sampling of love stories told the old-fashioned way.

Soldiers and their wives shared the letters they’ve written back and forth during courtships and long separations. One couple has saved every letter they’ve ever written each other and keep them in an old suitcase. The wife summed up perfectly one of the great things about handwritten letters – that they can sometimes serve as a bridge between past and present.

“I can just imagine a hundred years from now our grandchildren going through these.”

Some of the letters excerpted are pretty sweet. If you need a lift, we recommend you give them a read.

• Speaking of love letters, you can get some pointers on how to craft romantic missives from My Bangalore, which gives a point-by-point breakdown of the Dos and Don’ts. Among them were these interesting suggestions:

Avoid being casual, too light-hearted, or openly erotic. A Love Letter is a letter of respect that coveys deep, difficult-to-express feelings. Don’t discount the impact of poetry in place of, or in addition to, your words. Maybe your beloved has a favorite author or poet. It will be seen as a compliment if you take the time to quote someone he/she admires.

Be real. Your Love Letter should be a carefully crafted work of art, but it also needs to sound sincere. You want your Love Letter to make your beloved fall in love, not fall into laughter.

Be expressive, but at the same time be honest. Tell them out of the world sentences like, ‘I miss you like I miss my childhood.’

Guys, unsure about whether it’s worth the effort? According to the article, chances are good that she’ll appreciate getting that envelope from you.

In a recent study done by Lindt Lindor chocolates in the United Kingdom, 78 per cent of the women surveyed said they’d like to receive a handwritten letter, only 50 per cent of the men admitted to ever having written one.

If you decide to give it a try, we suggest that you write your letter on good stock stationery and use a fountain pen, one with an italic nib if you have it. Your letter will just look so much more romantic that way.

…with a bit of a computer virus, but we’re back and all better now!

Well, actually, we don’t know that it was a thief. But blogger Steve Knox wrote in the Janesville (Wisc.) Gazette this week that he is mourning the loss of his favourite Parker Frontier after it disappeared from his desk.

What the heck happened to it? More importantly, what the heck am I going to write with?

He’d had the pen since 1999, when he bought it in an employee sale at the company’s offices in Janesville.

(Parker Pens was founded in the town. The company headquarters was later moved to Newhaven, East Sussex, before operations were transferred to France. The Janesville manufacturing plant was closed in ‘99.)

You have our condolences, Steve. Maybe Santa will bring you a new one.

You still have a few days to get your entry in for the handwriting contest. Don’t miss out on a chance to win a great prize! Winners will be announced Nov. 27.

Linc Pen, the Indian company based in Calcutta, has come up with an interesting way to promote its range of ballpoint and gel pens.

The company created a simple, effective Facebook application that adds a virtual diary to a user’s profile.

Open the diary, and you can select from one of more than a dozen Linc pens – using black, blue, red, or green ink – to “write” in the pages. Friends can visit your profile, view the diary entries and leave their own comments.

Sure, the My Diary app is basically a stripped-down blog without hyperlinks, but it’s also a creative way for Linc to remind potential customers of one use for its pens – journaling.

If you’re a Facebook user, it’s worth a look, even if you don’t add it to your profile.