Panic Mode Redux

(Well, it wasn't really a panic mode, more of an "aw, geez"...)

Monday night I finished one of my projects-in-progress (the one written about in "Panic mode" previously). It took me about an hour and a half to write up, and like usual, it didn't go flawlessly.

First, I decided to take the last line of the writing (where I write "Happy birthday, Edina! God Bless you with a long life!", a traditional Hungarian birthday wish), and instead of keeping it at a total height of 7.5 mm, I upsized my nib, giving me a height of 15mm--double the size. What this does, is screw up my calculations a bit. Of course, since I'm the type of guy who needs to take his socks off to count to twenty, I simply couldn't adjust the calculations, I had to recalculate. (Actually, that's not entirely true. I adjusted, but doubted my math, so I recalculated the whole thing. Which gave me the same result as my adjustment. "Measure twice, cut once", anyone?) Of course, at this time I should have taken a break, taken out a sheet, and written that line at the height it was going to be. But I didn't. I wanted to finish this, before my show came on. (Yeah, I got lazy. Right then.)

This is when I have to mark the sheet, so I have my x-heights, ascenders, and descenders. (I've defined x-height before; ascenders are the parts of a letter that go above the x-height, like the stem of a b, d, l; descenders are the stems that go below the baseline: the stems of j, y, p, q...) I often get slightly frustrated at this point. I'm using .5 mm pencil leads, and I have to mark a line at 2.5 mm, and I'm marking with the full knowledge that variance from that .5 mm will actually give a marked difference in the size of a letter. It's actually quite surprising to see the difference between a letter that's 2 and 2.5 mm tall; the difference is noticeable. (Back to marking...) For some odd reason, when I "tick" my paper, to mark where my various lines are to go, I don't seem to tick on the horizontal, but rather, in an upward direction. So not only is my mark thick, but I also don't have a "stable" point from which to line.

One tool I've picked up, and which I use on all my projects to line, is a pounce wheel. This is a small wheel, that has "teeth" on it, that allows me to rule straight lines (when used with a straightedge, of course). Two things I've now learned with this thing:

1. Push the wheel to make the line, not pull. Pushing the wheel into the straightedge keeps it firmly against the straightedge, and rules a straight line. Pulling it, well, it always veers away from the straightedge, and the line is no longer in any way straight. It's like the wheel goes "I'm going over here, now. Thanks for lunch."
2. The indentations produced by a pounce wheel are big enough for a Speecball C6 nib to catch on. I'm using a C6 nib, which is .5 mm wide, and wouldn't you know it, wherever the ruled line crosses my stroke, the nib catches in the dimple, and I have to be very careful about how I then pull the pen. I limit my use of pencil for ruled lines for two reasons:

• Depending on the pencil hardness, it can be very difficult to erase it, without leaving a tell-tale trace that I needed lines to write so nicely uniform and straight. And
• Even if I'm able to erase the line without leaving a trace, the ink actually seals the ink into the paper, leaving a nice uniform line at the top and bottom of the letters. This is even more obvious than the line traces...

So I've ruled my lines, I'm writing, and I'm being gingerly (and cursing under my breath at the nib catching in the dimples), and manage to finish with something which (thankfully) resembles Cancelleresca script.

All that's left is that final line, that I decided to resize just as I'm about to start to write, and because of its size, I'm actually able to write it in a beautiful Cancelleresca; this was flawless... except for the fact that I've extended the ascender for the 't' too high (problem solved by scraping off the top layer of paper that contained the ink), and being unsure of how long this line was going to be, I start the line as far left as I can. And the line ends halfway across the sheet. It's like someone took those last two lines, and just pushed them two inches to the left, off-centre.

My friend's thrilled with the result, everyone else that's seen it is impressed, and I'm settling for it. I'm not satisfied with it (I actually have yet to be satisfied with any of my projects. They all have something I could have done better). Not by a long shot. But I don't have the time with which to redo a completely flawless second attempt.

"Good enough" is never good enough.