As anyone who isn’t living under a rock already knows, Co-Founder and former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, died Wednesday evening. When my partner and I and I were driving home from dinner where I heard the news, I was trying to recall my first memory or even awareness of Steve Jobs. Katie compared it [...]

This weekend, I finished Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders. I don’t usually go for motivational, inspirational books, much less books that motivate and inspire my professional life, but I’ve heard several friends and trusted influencers rave about it. One reason I don’t read those books is [...]

Sometimes, when you step out of your comfort zone, you realize that you’re just, well, uncomfortable. When that happens, you step back in, and you’re all the stronger for it. In a nutshell: I’m not moving to California. My last update here explained an opportunity I had to work with Pencils.com as their marketing and [...]

My first week as the Marketing & Promotions Coordinator for Pencils.com is coming to an end, and it’s been so much fun so far. Here are some of the highlights:

A wise friend told me recently that resistance to change is hardwired into our DNA, and for good reason. It keeps us from making decisions that are harmful to ourselves or others. But sometimes, change is a good thing, and we need to look objectively at an opportunity, and overcome that resistance that change brings [...]

The Blackwing is back Caifornia Cedar ads a new generation of the legendary pencil to their Palomino brand (Published in The Pencil Collector, Volume LV, No. 5 — September/October 2010. www.pencilcollector.org) By Andy Welfle, #2099 Woodclinched.com The legendary Faber-Castell Blackwing 602, perhaps the most celebrated, most often written about wooden pencil  is back in production, [...]

That’s right. Yikes. I LOVED these pencils. It was a thrill for me every fall to go with my mom to K-Mart and buy school supplies, because she indulged me and let me get these colorful little sticks of fun. Just like the kid in the commercial, they were the opposite of boring. Everything about the design was crafted — from the contrasting (and often, conflicting) color scheme to the odd shapes, from the dyed wood to the bright rubber (and later, polymer) eraser.

You’ll probably notice I’ve been conspicuously absent on this blog lately, right after a frenzy of posts about pencils. That’s because I started back up in the Pencil Blogging business again, over at Woodclinched.com. My goal is to figure out how to repost what I write there onto here, and use Welfle.com as a repository [...]

As you may or may not be aware, California Cedar is reviving the Blackwing brand! The pencil community is all astir with excitement about it. Building up to their release, CalCedar’s Charles Berolzheimer (or “Woodchuck” as he is known on his blog) is writing a series of posts about the “why” of their decision to lead up to the product release. While I try to figure out how I’m going to do a video review of my new strange pencil sharpener, I think I’ll discuss the first of these articles.

I just saw on BoingBoing that the legendary and highly sought-after Blackwing is returning! Mark Frauenfelder reported that California Cedar, who makes the Palomino (one of the best quality woodcased pencils you can get today) has bought the trademark for the Blackwing earlier this month, and is re-releasing the Blackwing under the Palomino brand! This is extremely exciting news.