Classy pencils

I get a garden supply catalog that I just love from Lee Valley. They have good things at good prices. Lately they have been sending me their woodworking catatlog too. I am really a klutzy woodworker, so I am sadly unable to buy any of their beautiful tools. But I like to look at them anyhow. A few weeks ago an entry in the woodworking catalog caught my eye. It asked if I had noticed that the quality of pencils has been going downhill. Yes, I have! I get most of my pencils from my dentist who has a cup of new ones on his receptionist's desk for patients to take. [He means the school kids, probably, but what the heck. He charges enough.] I am very fond of pencils. I need them for crossword puzzles of course and I just generally like to write with them. For a long time it seemed that the dentist's pencils were superior to Ben Franklins'. But lately even his cause problems. When I sharpen them the new point is often already broken and falls off. Ben Franklin's pencils are made from some junk wood that gets all peely when you sharpen them. These are exactly the problems that Lee Valley also noted. But they have solved the problem. From them you can buy pencils made of fragrant cedar wood. Their graphite is not soft and gray. It is hard and black. They come in different lead sizes just like pencils always used to in the good old days. "A number 2B writes like a Belgian chocolate tastes." Finally I was able to order from the woodworker's catalog. I selected the sample pack of six pencils of all the different lead sizes and a box of 12 2Bs of course. [I love Belgian chocolate, or any chocolate for that matter.] My pencils have arrived and they are all that I hoped they would be. The ad said nothing about erasers, but the erasers are excellent too. The pencils are a dark pine green color with Lee Valley inscribed in gold. And get this, the classiest touch of all, farther down the pencil, in smaller letters also in gold--made in Great Britain.