So maybe you've heard that it's our favorite holiday today. National Pencil Day, to be precise. Today marks the day that Hymen Lipman was granted a patent for a pencil with an attached eraser, and thus the day that the classic eraser-tipped pencil is celebrated. 

But that's not the tone I'm setting for this month's Pencil Prompt. 

Here in NYC, winter still has her claws sunk deep into our souls, and as I see spring collections rolling out I become more and more bitter that I can't don bright yellow sundresses just yet. In short, I've become a little tired of gray. Sorry graphite, no hard feelings! 

On to something brighter! Specifically colored pencils. 

Between the brilliant red-pink cover of Caroline's new book, the incredibly detailed New York Magazine article on what's been dubbed "Millennial Pink" (come on folks, we all know it's really eraser pink), planning yellow and pink themed decor for NPD and book celebrations, and working with water-soluble on doodles of springtime flowers, you can *ahem* color me obsessed with pinks and yellows at the moment. Or maybe I'll color you obsessed - there's probably an adult coloring book for that. 

Speaking of adult coloring... This past month Time Magazine reported that the craze is finally starting to crash (can we go back to calling them "coloring books" now?).

Or maybe it's not? Penguin re-released the original "adult" coloring book on March 28. "The Executive Coloring Book," first issued in 1961, is a satirical and sometimes critical depiction of the life of a classic Mad-Men era executive, gray suit and all. Before the days of secret gardens and color-me Cumberbatch, coloring books aimed at adults were actually fascinatingly political. 

Open Culture: The First Adult Coloring Book: See the Subversive Executive Coloring Book from 1961

New Republic: The Radical History of 1960s Adult Coloring Books

From subversive political messages to mindfulness and meditation, there's a surprising amount of things to consider in the ways of coloring books. 

I digress... Let's get back to colored pencils. Wax and pigment have been mixed for centuries to create mediums with which to deliver or preserve color. Pliny the Elder (the scholar, not the beer) described encaustic drawings, which was a form of using hot wax and pigment to bind color to surfaces in ancient Roman times. Fayum mummy portraits were painted using wax and pigment as early as 100 B.C. 

Colored pencil history is a little trickier to track down specifically, but it's pretty widely accepted that Faber-Castell and Caran d'Ache were the first to create a market around artist-grade colored pencils. 

This How It's Made video depicts how a colored pencil is made in the Caran d'Ache factory, from pigment to core to delicately dipped tips. It's funny - it's actually the exact same place and process we were privileged to see in 2016 when we took a trip to the CdA factory! 

As for pencil yellow and eraser pink? Well, if you peruse the section on Pencil's and the World's fair (page 77) in Caroline's book, you'll learn that pencils being yellow had a lot to do with following trends. At least in the U.S., the 1934 National Bureau of Standards also had a lot to do with the permeation of yellow pencils for schools - they set the rules for how pencils could look and cost and be marketed in certain demographics. 

Eraser pink is based a little more in practical reasons than fashionable ones - the type of pumice that was originally used for pencil erasers was a reddish-pink color. The material was cheap and available, and even if erasers aren't still made out of that shade of pumice, you can bet that its use certainly started a tradition. 

So what am I doing with this colored inspiration? Doodling the hell out of it, for sure. In celebration of NPD and springtime, I've been putting my Prismalos to use more than I have in months and months and months. Between blank sheets of paper and my exciting library of coloring books, I'm sure I'll find more than just mindfulness and meditation in my little box of colors. (Pictured: my colored pencil box I've had since I was 10.)

Winter is gray, but erasers are pink (the subversive pink of both nostalgia and the accepted millennial color of gender neutrality), and pencils are yellow (the color of sunshine and happiness, right?) and there's a heck of a lot of inspiration to be found between the two. 

#PencilPrompt of the month: Break out those colored pencils! Anyone want to do a doodle exchange? Email me at caitlin@cwpencils.com and we'll swap addresses. 

Tools I'm currently using: 

Caran d'Ache Prismalo colored pencils
Calepino Set of 3 Blank Notebooks
Shinola Sketchbook
Midori MD Notebook
T'Gaal Adjustable Sharpener
Faber Castell Polychromos
Color Ink Book (a favorite from my beloved SoCal!)
Edible Paradise 

Around this time last year a publishing house called Gestalten contacted me out of the blue about doing a book about pencils. A whole book about pencils! Totally daunting and really scary--who ever said I was an authority on pencils? I mean, I do own a shop dedicated them and have a lot of stories to tell, with histories supplemented by Henry Petroski's massively thorough The Pencil. I knew from the beginning that I could never complete with Petroski's work, mostly because of my incredibly short deadline and because he's basically covered it all, until 1990 when his book was published, at least. I set out to write something anecdotal, accessible, kind of fun and visually stimulating based on what I already knew, what I could dig up and what I'd learned from reading Petroski. 

The next step was deciding how I was going to write this book. My deadlines were strict and with a more-than-full-time job it was going to prove challenging, so I purchased myself a Smythson padfolio on sale, thinking that having an ultra fancy version of a spiral-bound notebook would be extra motivating. Turns out I was wrong. Writing in the middle of the night is really hard regardless of how fancy your paper is. It's okay though, because having pencils to sharpen and organize is an excellent distraction when distraction is needed. That, and an occasional field trip to the 7 Eleven around the corner because that's the only place to get emergency coffee in the middle of the night and this non-coffee drinker keeps nothing but a broken, handed-down Nespresso machine in the house. For the record, 7 Eleven coffee is bad even to a desperate, non-coffee drinking person. 

The whole process of writing a book like this made me feel like I was in college again. Except that I didn't go to a "normal" college and the end result wasn't a grade on a paper or a chance at being published in a journal but a design-y book with my name on it. It came and went like a tornado and besides being totally freaked out by finding myself as a reference on a Wikipedia page about something pencil-adjacent I survived the whole thing feeling really tired but relatively unscathed. 

When the proof was finally e-mailed to me many months later, I was sitting in the shop alone with two customers. I was excited and opened up the PDF immediately to find a book completely different to what I expected. In front of the customers, I cried like I'd just found out some really bad news--except that the really bad news was that, like many first-time writers, the final result wasn't what I had imagined all of those late nights when my only encouragement was this--the final product. In one word, I was disappointed. And then I realized that I wasn't the only person who'd worked long hours on this project over the course of the past 8 months. I was working with a well-regarded publisher of beautiful books and I should let me feelings and opinions be known but also trust that they know something that I don't. As it turns out, they were right. The book is everything I could have ever imagined it to be and though I'm still really freaked out by my name being associated with the words "aficionado" or "expert" or "authority", I'll get over it. I just hope Mr. Petroski will forgive me. 

Photo: One of my tattered, stained fancy notebooks and some very colorful drafts. 

In the early days of CW Pencil Enterprise we spent a lot of time on the internet stalking blogs and Instagram accounts to see what people out there love about stationery. One of our favorite taste-makers from the beginning was Tessa, a British blogger and stationery fanatic. Her reviews on her site All Things Stationery are thorough, honest and sound like a real person wrote them. What I like most about her blog is that she doesn't treat stationery items like they're something too precious, she's genuine in that she actually uses these things and cares deeply about how they function. In early October while visiting London I had the chance to meet Tessa in real life, which is always something I look forward to now that I've amassed a lot of cool internet stationery pals.

A couple of months ago Tessa launched a web shop called the Stationer  where she sells the stationery things she knows and loves so well.  I recently e-mailed her an obnoxiously long list of burning questions about her obsessions, habits and opinions on all things analog: 

When did your interest in stationery begin?

When I was little the only good thing about going back to school was getting to go to WH Smith (British shop that sells stationery) and getting a new pencil case, some Yikes! Pencils and if I was lucky, a Parker Pen. I’ve never really grown out of that feeling of excitement when choosing stationery, which led me to starting All Things Stationery a few years ago. Stupidly, I thought I was the only one and it quickly became apparent to me that there was a massive community online of other stationery lovers, which was a joy and a relief!

If you could only use three writing instruments for the rest of your life, what would they be?

A Kaweco Sport - I adore the art deco vibes, and I like that they’re quite small pens.

A Palomino Blackwing 602 - I can’t imagine not having a Blackwing on my desk, and the firm core of the 602 best suits my needs.

A Muji gel pen 0.38mm - I’ve always, always got one of these in my bag. They’re so useful for grabbing something to write with on the go. Despite how much I’ve learned about stationery over the last few years, these pens are what I started with and what I’ll always go back to.

How do you apply your interest in stationery to your everyday life? What are the daily tasks that you always do the analog way?

I much prefer doing anything that requires brain power the analog way. It helps my brain process things so much better. I think it can also be really important to take yourself away from all the distractions that come with a computer. I, of course, use a paper diary, all my grocery lists are on paper and we use a weekly planner pad in our house to plan out the week’s meals.

What is your favorite thing about the pencil?

It’s so iconic! To me, the pencil completely represents creativity.

If we were to open your bag on any given day, what's the most unusual stationery item we'd find?

I bought a vintage restored bullet pencil a few years ago from Huckleberry Woodchuck, which is usually in my bag. It’s cool to have a little piece of US history. Although I always forget it’s in my bag and then panic if I’m going through airport security that they’ll confiscate it for some reason!

Do you have any stationery confessions you'd like to make?

Ummmm… I’ve never properly cleaned out a fountain pen. I’M SORRY. I usually just fill them up with whatever ink was in there in the first place. And if I am changing inks, I’ll just give it a quick rinse through.

What do you love most about being the proprietress of an awesome online stationery shop?

Without a doubt the best thing is that my job is basically guilt free shopping. I get all that rush of choosing things I love and buying them, but I don’t feel terrible because I know I’ll be selling them on to good homes! I also love the photography aspect of running the website, getting to style stationery for my product shots is lots of fun.

What's your favorite thing that you sell?

Can I be greedy and pick 2 things?! I sell an Embossing label maker which is really cool, I use my one to organize my stock and packaging storage. Another one of my favorites is The Society of Crossed Pencils Pin - it’s made by a brilliant illustrator I know and is a must for pencil lovers! Plus, there’s a Wes Anderson reference in there so it doesn’t get much better.

If you were a pencil, which one would you be?

A Craft Design Technology HB, because it’s not too fussy, it’s reliable, and that mint green colour is my absolute favourite. In our house that’s called “Tessa colour”.

You can find Tessa in a these places: 

the Stationer

All Things Stationery

Twitter - here and here

Instagram - here and here

What exactly does that little paintbrush symbol mean on the side of your Technalo? Well... If your pencil is sporting a little brush, that usually means the core has an extra special property - it's water-soluble! 

Water-soluble pencils, first developed by Caran d'Ache in 1931, contain a propriety blend of materials that, well, dissolve in water when you get them wet. They're also known as watercolor pencils, and are usually seen in colored varieties, but graphite types are easy to find as well. 

So what do you do with them? The short answer is easy - treat them like a watercolor! Now, I am not an artist by any means, but I have done my fair share of dabbling in the watercolor arts, and was privileged to sit through a thorough water-solubles demo at the Caran d'Ache factory in Geneva last year. I'll share what I know, and hope it inspires you to get up and play! 

Tools: 
- Paintbrushes (if you want to get specific, watercolor brushes are best)
- Heavy paper (I've used Viking watercolor paper here, but any paper that won't tear or ripple too much when wet is good)
- Brush pens (Caran d'Ache makes a great one)
- Sandpaper
- Art palette or plastic cutting board
- Water
- Water solubles!

• Technalo
• Art Graf Soft Carbon
• Art Graf 2B
• Swisscolor
• Supracolor
• Prismalo
• Other varieties (Aquarelle by Faber-Castell are also great!)

The easiest way to get started is just to color a bit with your watercolor pencil, then take a wet paint brush or brush pen and smear the coloring around. This will give you an idea of how saturated the color is when wet. 

You can actually use your water-solubles as a regular old watercolor. There's a couple easy ways to do this: 

1) Using a piece of paper, color a rich, thick blot with your pencil, then apply water and dip your brush into it to fill up your brush. 

2) Color a swatch on a plastic artist palette or a cutting board with a slight texture to it, and apply water to create the paint. This way, if your paint swatch dries out mid-doodle, you can apply water to it again to re-saturate (whereas on a sheet of paper, if it dries out you're out of luck!). 

3) Actually run a wet brush over the tip of a water-soluble pencil, as if you're coloring the tip of your brush. This will give you a small amount of really saturated color. 

My favorite way to work with water-solubles is to apply them dry, then take a wet paintbrush to blend colors or create shading. 

I find that less is more when you're shading, particularly with the Soft Carbon pencil. You don't want to fill in too much dry color, or the color will be over-saturated once you apply water and you won't get much color-variation. 

With colored pencils like the Prismalos used below (or Supra/Swisscolors!), I have the most fun by blending colors. I tend to keep my brush just damp - if it's too wet, the colors run too much. Here's an illustration dry: 

And here it is after applying a little water: 

One more super fun (but ULTRA MESSY) tutorial. Using a sheet of paper and wet paintbrush, paint a doodle with JUST water. Now, take your sandpaper or nail file, and files a watercolor pencil right over your doodle so the little flakes of color land on the wet brush strokes.

Pick it up, tap off the excess pencil bits, and voila! A weird, marble-y sort of drawing. Practical application? I'm not sure. But it's fun!! 

What's your favorite way to work with water-solubles? 

When I opened this shop two years ago, I was afraid to even think two years ahead. Every day was a new adventure and a new challenge and as a newly minted, kind of naïve shop owner in New York City I knew better than to make any big plans right away. The entire idea of this shop was only a farfetched dream for a long time. I'd romanticized the idea so much in my head and described what I'd imagined this shop to be so many times that having it actually become a real thing hardly felt any different--almost as if I was just living in my own head. It wasn't until recently, when I first received a copy of a book with my name on it that it really dawned on me that this is something greater than a crazy idea in my head.

These days I arrive every morning to our office to meet any of the three amazing women with whom I spend my days here. We take turns spending time in the shop where we are thrilled to meet so many different people everyday--people who come to experience the shop but also to hear our stories and suggestions. In our office down the street we pore over ideas for Instagrams, new products and projects for the future. Knowing that there actually, really, really is a future is a big deal for me. This thing is a real, working business, even if it is an unconventional one. With the kindness of the media, the customers who continue to so loyally support us and the stationery community who have welcomed us with open arms we've been able to succeed without most of the things the internet says are necessary for running a successful retail business. For this, I am more grateful than I can express with words.

As for the future, I've learned that maybe I was right not to plan too far in advance because if anything that's happened in this two years has taught me anything, it's that things happen in their own time. I'm a person who makes lots of lists and seeks the security of plans but just about everything I'd dreamed about years before this shop existed have already happened. For now I think I'll just hang out here for a little bit, do my job and just let things happen.

Photo: Recent antics in in the shop--a leopard printed Caitlin photographing a flat lay with my awkward arm. 

In the nearly two years (Two years! Can you believe it!) that I've owned this shop I've had my photo taken a LOT. Whether it be by someone visiting from out of town or by a full team of professionals, I've been forced to learn a few things about how to cope with bright flashes and the discomfort of posing for a camera. Even so, I still find it really really difficult. I have a newfound appreciation for models and for people who know how to make themselves look great in photos because IT'S HARD. It also doesn't help that I'm allergic to most makeup and don't own any hair styling tools. Each time, though, I swallow my fear and try my hardest to not look too angry or too crazy. No matter how good the photographer is, or how much I prepare I almost always hate the photos in the end, but that's a natural human insecurity, right? 

The one thing that most photographers always want is a shot of a pencil in action. That is, my hand pretending to write with a pencil.  I always ask if what I'm writing will be visible and the answer is usually no, alleviating the pressure to write something clever. Usually I just write my name over and over again, except for that one time I wrote 'pizza' when Racked was here and this was the outcome: 

Sometimes I'm asked to hold a pencil while also posing in a way that's completely unnatural for a normal body ( see the above photo from Bloomberg ). The number of times I've been asked to pose 'naturally' while holding a pencil while also exposing my pencil tattoo is hilarious. For the record: it's not possible for anyone who isn't a contortionist. 

The point of all of this is that I have something really embarrassing to admit: I hold my pencil incorrectly and I fake it when my hand is being photographed or I'm being watched. I know, a huge percentage of the population has the same problem but I own a pencil shop--I should be setting a good example! No matter how many Stetro grips my mom bought me from the local teacher supply shop in first grade I just couldn't figure it out! I have a permanent callus on the right ring finger and my hand often starts to hurt when I'm writing for a really long time. The only solution I've found is to shake out my hand or to pull out my worst nightmare: the yellow Stetro grip I keep in a box inside my desk. Oh how uncomfortable it is! But my hand hurts less and looks a lot more elegant. I've learned that 90% of the time my bad grip is harmless but also that I must cope with the consequences of my condition. 

The moral of my story is that if you hold your pencil 'incorrectly' don't worry--it's no big deal! Who decided what was right anyway? (Seriously though, if you know the answer to that let me know). Maybe one day I'll stop faking it.  

In a month dedicated to love, it's nice to remember that pencils can help you get over the wrong person as much as they can record love letters to the right one. In Emma, Jane Austen's beloved tale of matchmaking and social maneuvering gone wrong, a pencil serves first as a treasured souvenir, and then as means of exorcising a former romantic interest.

To summarize the plot of Emma is a bit of a challenge (there's a reason its convolutions adapted so well to a high school melodrama in the timeless 1995 film Clueless), but all you need to know for this scene is that Harriet, Emma's social fixer-upper project, has been spurned by Mr. Elton, a young vicar who initially seems like a perfect match for Harriet. After a series of misunderstandings, it becomes clear that Mr. Elton is not, in fact, interested in Harriet, but is after Emma and her dowry. Having decided that she is moving on, Harriet brings a box of Mr. Elton-related "relics" to Emma's house to destroy.

It's Valentine's Day, and gushy hearts and flowers are all up in our biz today. While I generally am a proponent of this holiday (because I looove me some Conversation Hearts!), I know I am not alone in rolling my eyes at the lack of sentiment behind this sort of forced holiday. Don't get me wrong - I think it's nice to set aside a day for boxes of chocolates and roses, I just think the prepackaged sentiment... lacks something. 

So let's talk about love letters...

As I mentioned in my first Prompt, handwriting is such a beautifully unique aspect of a person - it shows off a part of you that may not be seen too often in a technology age. It takes more effort to write a letter than to send "Hey bb ILY." Effort is romantic, and a love letter is the perfect combination of deep, personal thought and true, honest effort. 

This time-honored tradition has been around for centuries, from Ancient Egypt to Imperial China to that little love letter emoji on your phone. People have feelings, and they've expressed their heart eyes to their beloved pretty much since writing utensils were invented. 

Daily Mail: Anguished love letter buried with 445-year-old mummy and written by the pregnant wife he left behind

Mental Floss: Dear Valentine: A Brief History of Great Love Letters

Fastco Design: 12 Hand-Written Love Letters from Famous People, from Henry VIII to Michael Jordan

 BBC: A History of Britain Through Heartbreak and Lust

While well-known love letters between Scott and Zelda, Beethoven and his Immortal Beloved, Johhny and June, and the like may make it seem as such, you certainly don't need a significant other to send a love letter. Your siblings, your parents, your bestie... Anyone deserving of love deserves to know your feelings, don't you think? Heck, there's even a group organizing love letters to America (although I didn't seem to find a place to hand write one as part of this organization, I'm sure you could mail one to your senator!). 

One of my very favorite examples of a non-romantic love letter is John Steinbeck's beautiful letter to his teenage son, who has fallen in love for the first time. 

The Atlantic: John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter

Supportive, full of celebration of love, and useful advice. Simple as that. 

Of course, you don't even have to address your letter to another person. A dear friend of the shop is a huge proponent of writing - and mailing! - letters to yourself. 

So how exactly does one write a love letter? I'll not claim to be an expert, but I find the best way is to just keep it simple. Getting a letter in the mail is exciting in and of itself, so half the effort is appreciated just in sending it. After that, simple and honest expression of "I love you" or "I'm thinking about you" is all you need. Did you know they even make cards for that? ;) 

Bonus: USPS releases Love stamps each year, so you can beef up the sentiment with your postage too! 

If you need inspiration for creating lovely mail, check out a few of our favorite Instagram accounts, each experts in the art of letters. 

Edelweiss Post

Mail More Love

House Lars Built

Lucy Mail

#PencilPrompt of the month: Write a love letter. To yourself, to your beloved, to your mom, heck, even to your favorite inanimate object. In short, connect yourself more deeply to your love of someone or something by writing it down and sharing it. 

These are the tools I'm currently using for my love letters: 

Jabara Letter Writing Set (we even have a set in pink!)

Valgblyant Red Jumbo Pencil

Mini Heart Pencils

Heart Shaped Pencil

Marble HB

Dry Highlighter 

One of the many wonderful things about pencils is that they make great gifts. They're inexpensive, they tell a story, they serve many functions and they're just really nostalgic, universally appreciated objects. For this reason, we sell a lot of pencils for Valentine's Day. They last longer than flowers, don't have the fat content of chocolates and when hand-selected around the receivers preferences are a really thoughtful gift. 

A few months ago an out of town customer emailed us ahead of visiting our shop because he had just started dating a woman who is an artist and wanted to woo her with some pencils specific to what she prefers. He seemed nervous--like these pencils could make or break the relationship. After poring over the all the pencils in the shop we arrived at a modest but impressively unique selection that he would bring back to her. We laughed about the idea of using pencils as a tool for seduction but in all honesty, this wasn't the first time we've heard this story.  It warms my heart to see customers put so much thought into such a simple and often daring gift. This particular customer e-mailed us an update on his situation a few weeks later confirming that everything in his blossoming relationship was great, thanks in part to the pencils. 

We very often reference the line from You've Got Mail about the freshly sharpened bouquet of pencils and have hand-assembled hundreds of that very thing because a curated selection of pencils can mean a whole lot more than bodega roses or generic jewelry. There's reason why that line is a famous one--because so many people appreciate the simple pleasure of a freshly sharpened bouquet of pencils. 

Next time you're pursuing a new partner who has interests in the realm of analog or creative tools we encourage you to consider this type of gift. The subtleties of the design and function of a pencil can work as a tactful nod to a person's personality. You can wow him or her by applying what you know about all of those little quirks to a playful and personal gift. It's a sincere and unassuming gesture and not something that puts too much pressure on the recipient. Even presenting a person with a single pencil is a generous, friendly and thoughtful gesture. 

Next time you're going on a date or just meeting up with someone you care about consider bringing them a hand-selected pencil from your stash, our store or wherever else one buys pencils. It's a fine way to show your affection with out looking like you've tried too hard. Here are some questions you should ask yourself: 

1. Does he or she appreciate pencils already? If so, what is his or her favorite? 

2. Does he or she prefer design or function? 

3. Does he or she have a particular connection to city or a country? 

4. What is his or her favorite color? 

5. Does he or she have a hobby that involves pencils? (i.e quilting, crossword puzzle-ing, drawing, bullet journaling). 

Even an answer to just one of those questions can lead you an interesting, wow-worthy, surprise pencil gift. 

The most important thing to remember when trying to impress someone you are pursing as a romantic partner is that it's not about the size of the gesture but the thought that goes into it. One pencil can go a long way in the game of love! 

Looking for a pencil match-making service? You're in the right place. Get in touch with us and we'll help you find the right pencil for your special someone. 

 Photo credit: from the always perfect Present & Correct Instagram account.

There aren't too many professions in the world these days that absolutely require pencils, but we regularly work with a type of customer whose everyday carry must include a really specific pencil: musicians. 

Having sang in choirs for much of my life, I'm familiar with the constant need to mark one's sheet music with notes and edits and emphatic instructions from pre-concert crazed directors. It really is a pretty specific use scenario, and one that we've thankfully had a lot of experience answering in the shop, outside of my own personal experience. 

Pencil qualities needed: 

-Must be erasable! In my experience, sheet music is expensive and photocopying is a major no-no. Thus, your sheet music is often reused or returned if it's not worn. That means you need to hand it back in clean of your own messy notes so the next person can make their own.  

-Must be dark! When notating on sheet music, you're usually not writing on a solid surface. Your music will often be in a folder or on a stand or even in your lap, so your pencil needs to be soft and dark enough to make a clear mark without too much pressure. It also needs to be bold enough to be seen clearly at a reasonable distance, because one does not typically perform with their nose in their sheets.  

-Must have good point retention! Notes are usually made in small spaces, within the staff or on the margins, so the ability to write small and precise is necessary. Additionally, point retention is a must because god forbid you interrupt rehearsal with the distracting sounds of sharpening. 

- BONUS. It is really a huge benefit if your pencil has the ability to stay put somewhere (i.e. a clip!). 

Here's what we have discovered to be favorites amongst the music community (and my personal bias included):

Craft Design Technology HB - If you can't get your hands on an Ito-ya (which are terribly tricky to find outside of Japan and often sought after by musicians), these pencils are made by the same manufacturer Camel Pencil Company. They have a dark, smooth quality, but are also firm enough to have excellent point retention. Also, the erasers are simply FANTASTIC. I went an entire choir season with one, and only wanted (not even needed) to sharpen it once for the amount of note taking I had. 

Blackwing 602 - Stephen Sondheim famously proclaimed the Eberhard Faber original to be his ultimate favorite pencil, and was lucky enough to stock pile them early on. He's not wrong - it's slick, dark graphite and replaceable eraser make it a perfect choice for musicians. If you don't want to pay upwards of $60.00 for the vintage original, the current iterations of Blackwing, now made by Palomino, are excellent too. I prefer the Volume 530 or Volume 24 editions with extra firm graphite (keep in mind those are limited edition though!), but will use the 602 in a pinch. Really, even the Pearls are a good choice if you want to go extra soft - you'll just want to keep a sharpener handy! 

Musgrave or General's Test Scoring - Originally invented for early IBM computers, these pencils are made with artificial graphite that is designed to be extra dark (and electronically sensitive if that's a thing you need). Both hold their points quite well and aren't too smudgy, but I prefer the eraser on the General's one to the Musgrave one (but the Musgrave one is only $0.40!). 

Mitsubishi Penmanship 4B or Mono KM-KKS 4B - These pencils are designed for practicing calligraphy through repetitive writing. That means these pencils are extra dark - 4B, to be exact - with extra thick cores. Because they're designed for repetitive writing, they hold their points better than many other soft pencils. These are both also inky smooth and downright impressive looking. The only downside is you may need an eraser cap. May I suggest the Pentel polymer ones? 

Edelweiss 3B - This very unassuming-looking gray pencil packs a great punch. The 3B core is excellently smooth and just glides across paper with minimal pressure. The graphite quality in this 3B is also so lovely that it's point retention is really fantastic. Again, this one doesn't come with an eraser, but looks quite chic with a white eraser cap. Also try: Natura 3B, Grafwood 2B or 4B

Once you've picked out your perfect composition companion, you'll also need to add a few things to your arsenal to make sure you're extra-prepared for hasty note-taking. Here are a few recommendations: 

Sharpener - I suggest a sharpener that has a reservoir for shavings if you plan on sharpening as you go, just to not worry about disposing of shavings. Dux makes a good option, but you can also find sharpeners like these at most office supply stores. If you only can spare the fuss of sharpening at the beginning of a rehearsal, I'd instead recommend a sharpener that does a crisp long point so you do not need to refresh halfway through. The Masterpiece is a clear winner here - nothing really beats that point (and I like to stash the shavings in the clear plastic case it comes in) - but you could also try the Automatic Long Point or the simple Magnesium Long Point.

Perfect Pencil - I love this as an accessory for any pencil really, not just the pencil it comes with. It allows you to clip a pencil to your folder or stand or shirt and contains a simple but handy sharpener right in the cap. Downside: shavings everywhere (maybe you'll have a spare coffee cup nearby). 

Vintage Pencil Clip - I have an ever-growing collection of these because they are SO USEFUL. This is the easiest (and prettiest!) way to make your pencil way more accessible. I slipped one on to my Craft Design Technology HB and managed to keep it clipped to my folder all season long. 

Hi-Polymer Eraser Cap - I really like these caps because they don't make a ton of eraser dust and they don't require a lot of pressure. It doesn't hurt that the look nice too.