One sunny autumnal day last week Sophie and I were walking along the beach. She started collecting seagull feathers, which promptly joined the bottle tops, leaves, pebbles and sweet wrappers in the bottom of my bag.
I mentioned that many years ago feathers were used to write with and were called quills. She didn’t believe me. So when we got home I unearthed an old bottle of ink. She then set to work, with wonderful results…
I haven’t used that bottle of ink in many, many years. I used to write a lot of letters to my dear Grandmother and used to take pride in my handwriting (years of typing have since been detrimental to my neat, flowing letters!).
The ink bottle brought back many memories. At school we were taught to write joined up and I felt so grown up when I mastered it. A teacher suggested I try writing with an italic ink pen and then I felt like a ‘real’ writer. Such romance, history and emotion. I think it’s time I dusted off my old pens and tried my hand at the old-fashioned stuff for a change.
Interesting link:
How to Cut Quills from Feathers
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How fascinating to read about how to make a quill pen…and what a super idea to make one with the treasured feathers made from a lovely walk on the beach.The picture of you writing is so full of feeling and just love it.Is there no end to your talents!!
Well done Sophie..your writing is excellent too!!
is there no end to your talent? what a novel idea, well done;
Love it! I find my hand aches if I write anything for too long. Bizarre, RSI for writing. I think I should take a feather out of Sophie’s book.
this brings back memories of when I was a child too
I did what your daughter did 🙂
We use to have access to a very old holiday house way way up north and I did this activity when I was there 🙂
The girls and I have done this before, it’s so fun!
no jokes, this is michael’s fave thing.
but we have no real ink… he just uses diluted food colouring!
(there are supposed to be ‘rules’ about where the writing can occur – i keep finding little spills on his bedroom carpet. oops.)
love X
Great idea – I will have to get my girls to try this out as well.
oooh I might try that. My son isn’t really keen on drawing, writing or painting much, so this might be worth a shot as it’s a bit different. I’m about to blog about our recent face painting experience, which got him going a bit! Thanks for the tip.