There's a few guys named Keith here at Pentrace so I'm the one with the capital "K". Anywhere else you go on the net I travel under the alias of "Feynn" and you will see that name in my e-mail address.

I am coming close to finishing my 37th year of life and I can truly say that life has been good to me so far... very good actually.

I have the greatest job on earth, I'm a Rehabilitation Practitioner and I work with developmentally delayed adults in a residential program. If I won the lottery I would still do what I do... honest. The staff and clients I work with are wonderful people and they teach me more than I could ever hope to teach them.

The love of my life is beautiful, talented, and equally pen obsessed lady who is a student majoring in computer sciences. She is also the mother of our four children; the "chicklets" are 5 and 3 while the "heir and the spare" are 10 and *gasp* thirteen.

I used to do freelance art work and even have a copywritten cartoon character that appeared in his own weekly strip some years ago. (I think he is bound to re-appear when I launch my new website). I think this life-long love of art and drawing also led me to discover the joy of using fountain pens. I used to use dip pens for sketching and cartooning and think I decided I needed a fountain pen for travelling and making notes.

Upon purchasing that first pen, I was immediately afflicted with penophilia and have now been a dedicated user and collector for more than twenty years. Being a tinkerer by nature, (and Scottish to boot) I started repairing and restoring my own pens and discovered that this is a task I truly enjoy.

Despite living in a large metropolitan city, finding fountain pens of any kind here is extremely difficult and like many other cities, there was no-one here who made it their business to offer repair services or offer any decent selection of pens of any kind. My penophilia has now spawned a small business where I perform a variety of repairs and restorations, and now sell a wide variety of pens to a mostly local clientelle. I like the personal interaction with people and they seem to enjoy having a pen guy who still makes house calls. I especially like working with elderly clients who's pens usually need nothing more than a re-saccing and a polish before they are again usable writing tools or being able to provide someone with a pen similar to the one they used in their youth.

I have also been asked to perform workshops and teach handwriting and pretty soon, I will have to clone myself so that I can keep up with things.

In the future I intend to begin designing and building my own pens and since I have an affection for vintage overlay and metal pens I intend to add silver-smithing to my eclectic repetoire of skills. In this way I will be able to fuse my love of art and design with my love of pens and hopefully, will be able to share some of these designs with others.

I am hoping that I will be able to travel in the coming year and will be able to meet many of the great people I talk to here and via that old fashioned method of sending letters with pen and paper.

I have discovered that the pens aren't nearly as interesting as the wonderful people I have met because we happen to share a common illness I affectionately call penophilia.

Cheers!

Keith