Few people enjoy getting shit in the mail more than Katr. Every time I turn around, she's subscribed to some cool thing or other - Japanese candy every month, ephemera for card-making, Wired magazine...and it is pretty cute.
What's funny, though, is that Katr also abhors clutter, so finding places to stash all the cool things she gets in the mail can sometimes be a challenge.
Witness what happened when Katr signed up for Felissimo's 500 Hundred Pencils from Japan. When we first started getting these packets of 25 incredibly gorgeous pencils in the mail, I was all "These are cool but, uh...where are we going to keep them?"
Katr's initial suggestion was "Up your butt" but after doing some research, we found that you could get awesome display cases in which you could showcase your yummy pencils, like ART! Katr ordered the plexiglass display case with the promise that once we had the pencils, we'd have an amazing new art piece to put up in the office.
That was back in 2009. So, for almost four years, we've been storing 500 pencils and a display case in the office.
And last week, when Katr's brother Drtr was here, we finally got the thing up.
Side note: I am surprised and thrilled that my brother-in-law, Drtr, keeps showing up here for visits, given that every time he comes, we present him with a "Honey Drew" list (funny, because his name is Drew - alias REVEALED) of household chores that we don't want to do, like standing on chairs to change the lightbulbs and, as a special treat this visit, recaulking our shower. He is a golden god. Never leave us, Drtr.
First, we removed all of the packaging and set the pencils up on the table in the order in which they were received. I was all for mounting them in that order...until I saw them all laid out. It just didn't look...right.
That's when Katr threw caution to wind and started MESSING WITH THE PENCILS. I threw up in my mouth just a little.
It took nearly three hours of hemming, hawing, clenched sphincters and moving pencils around before we all agreed we'd gotten the right combination. Then began the painstaking "putting the pencils in the display" process. As we put them in, we recited their names reverently, in monk-like monotone:
"Rivulet."
"Mansard Gray."
"Bobby Shaftoe."
"Who the fuck is Bobby Shaftoe?"
"I don't know, that's what it says."
"Toasty Orange."
When it came time to mount the pencils on the wall, I made sure not to interfere. Katr and Drtr are like a well-oiled machine and I'm the idiot bird who gets caught in the gears. So I just sneaked in and took a photo at every stage instead. These photos aren't great but whatever, it's my blog so zip it.
All the light from the windows fuck these photos up but these pencils are pretty magnificent, gang. And now we have more room in our office! For the stuff. That Katr gets. In the mail.
