Can we read your handwriting?

*crossposted from Seven Deadly Divas, click through to see their handwriting too!*

A few varieties of handwriting memes have been making their way around the web – there are tumblr and flickr ones, as well as the one I stumbled across from a pen and ink link list.

I, being a pen freak collector, was intrigued and thought it would be fun to see the various Diva handwriting styles that write here in text form.

A few quirks about my personal writing style (much of which will be no surprise for those of you who read my Fountain Pen post):

1. I am VERY picky about pens. I write with a variety of fountain pens, but also like UniBall Signo (preferably Micro), Sarasa Clip Retractable Gel pens and UniBall fine point Jetstream pens for times when a liquid ink pen would be, shall we say, a liability. Like at work or on an airplane.
2. I’m also very picky about paper. Paper should be smooth and thick, have no show through to the other side. I like writing on both graph and lined paper, and have journals of both types.
3. I also collect journals made of really good paper (Clairefontaine, Pomegranate, Black n’ Red)
4. My handwriting started out terribly as a child, when I regularly failed penmanship classes. Since I started doing calligraphy, it’s improved some, and I continue to work on it regularly. My favorite hand is Italic, and my general handwriting tends towards cursive Italic, a modern variant that’s both fast and easy to read.

Anyway, the general idea is for you to write BY HAND the things on the list that follows, scan it in, and post it for all of us to look at. No judgments please, your handwriting is yours, whether you think it’s awesome or not. (True fact, I’ve spent YEARS working on my handwriting and I still think it’s sloppy and not very nice.)*

I’ll be writing both with my fancy flex nib pen and with another fountain pen, because I like pens. Nyah.

The meme is as follows:

Write ‘Hello!’
Your name/blogger name
Your blog name/URL
Write ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’
Favorite quote?
A number
5 words
Favorite music?
A really awesome website you read
Anything else you want to say?

And here goes!

Apologies both for the compression (I’m still learning my new scanner) and the fact that my purple ink looks black. I’m also still learning that flex nib pen – as evidenced by the letter inconsistency – and the Noodler’s Purple Martin is too saturated to show up as anything but purple-black unless you look REALLY close at it. Really saturated inks like that do better in a drier writing pen, like the Lamy Safaris, where flex nib pens apparently like an ink with more shading.

THE MORE YOU KNOW!

Anywho, pen nitpicking aside, it’s your turn!

Take all (or part) of the handwriting meme, scan it or take a picture, and leave the link in comments! I’m curious what some of my readers might submit. It only takes a few minutes, and phone pictures are fine!

* If desired, I can do a follow up post on “handwriting triage” – some ways to make your handwriting more legible and more like what you want. This post is just for curiosity and sharing!

**Also, I seriously considered titling this post “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” but figured it was inappropriate…