Still With My Hat On...

The recent trip to Berwick has given up a second slew of goodies which had been lurking at the bottom of a rather large suitcase. Now I can get at them, I thought I'd share...

First there's this small selection of items from the German company Nici, which I picked up in a bargain bin at some rather good prices. There's a pencil case decorated with Nici sheep in various colours - some of them are even wearing coats! The sheep also appear on the cover of the pocket sized notebook, whilst the address book features 'Taking it Easy' sheep and Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. My darling daughter also picked up the plushies of these to hang off her bag. They're very cute!

On the way to Berwick, we stopped off at the village of Seahouses, gateway to the Farne Islands, for lunch (chips from the fantastic chippy in the High Street) and, whilst munching I was drawn to the gift shop opposite where I picked up these two postcard books by Simon Drew. Each book contains 20 individually-designed postcards, all very well-drawn and extremely humorous; it is merely a coincidence that those in the photo above happen to feature cats.

I also picked up this colourful notebook with Puffins on the cover at the same shop, though the wooden bowl came from an outing over the weekend to Paxton House, just across the border into Scotland.

The bowl is interesting inasmuch as it is turned from Bog Oak by a local craftsman and the wood is around 4500 years old! That particular purchase didn't take much thinking about to be honest, as I can count on the fingers of err...a couple of fingers, how many Bog Oak items (that I could afford!) I've seen for sale. The bowl is a deep, glossy black and, depending on the light, you can just about make out some of the striations of the natural oak.

From what I'm told, Bog Oak most often surfaces when peat bogs are drained, and it tends to emerge as whole tree trunks, though usually only the heartwood of the log is in any fit state to be worked. Sometimes the whole log is unuseable, so it's always a bit of a gamble buying a Bog Oak log, though when there is good wood still to be had, gems such as this bowl are the result.

Still With My Hat On...

You Can Keep Your Hat On...

...and your coat, scarf, gloves and thermal socks! Apologies for mangling the lyrics of that well known Tom Jones song, but a weekend in a caravan in Berwick upon Tweed in October can be a mite on the chilly side; it's the first time this pen-thusiast has slept fully clothed for fun!

Who says we don't suffer for our art?!

It's not all bad news however, as Berwick is home to a couple of little gems as far as stationery shopping is concerned.

The first of these is Geo. C. Grieve Ltd. Stationers & Bookseller on the corner of Marygate and Church Street. Not just your average provincial stationers, oh no! Geo. C Grieve's is a veritable cornucopia of stationery-related goodness - postcards, notebooks, paper, pens, ink, art supplies, calenders, maps, local books, the list is (almost) endless. Grieve's is always this pen-thusiast's first port of call on a trip to Berwick.

Grieve's is a wonderfully friendly shop (of which there are precious few around these days) and this pen-thusiast has never failed to find something interesting or unusual to buy - it's worth a trip to Berwick just to visit this shop! It's also nice to be recognised and greeted warmly, even when your last visit was six months ago. A word of caution though, Grieve's website lists but a fraction of the stock available, so should you not find what you're after, please do email them, they'll be happy to try and source stuff for you.

The haul this time included a 0.5mm Pentel Graphgear 1000 drafting pencil (which came supplied in a great black pen sleeve), a Pentel Ain Clic eraser in red, a Stabilo Marathon ballpoint in black and a six-pack of Artline Multi Pens by Shachihata; no idea what I'm going to do with this last item, but they looked cool and are bound to be useful!

Add to that a few interesting postcards of the local area and a couple of magnetic-backed FootNotes notepads, and it was a happy pen-thusiast who set off, his wallet suitably lightened, to the next regular stop on the itinerary.

The second port of call on our whistle-stop stationery tour of Berwick is Doolally in Marygate, just round the corner from Grieve's in fact. Located on the ground floor of the historic Town Hall (which dates from 1761), Doolally is a combination bookseller and gift shop with a cafe, so you can enjoy a rather lovely cup of coffee while examining your purchases.

Doolally is located through the arch in the end of the building pictured above centre.

Visiting this time brought me my first contact with Momiji - incredibly cute dolls from Japan (I believe). Now these are not really my thing, but my darling daughter picked up the Kittie Doll, which even I have to admit is rather cute! We both grabbed one of the Momiji notebooks and a couple of the matching pens too.

I really quite like the notebooks - they're about A5 size, with wipe-clean plastic covers and have different designs on the pages, making them ideal as inexpensive journals (possibly more suited to our younger viewers!). The pens are needlepoint rollerballs and come with black, blue, red and green ink, each colour having a different barrel design.

Should you be heading up to Berwick, you can contact Doolally on 01289 306 796.

Not a bad haul for a weekend's work, eh?

You Can Keep Your Hat On...