Enter Mary Katrantzou from Canada. I enjoy a good issue of Vogue as much as the next girl, and I consider myself fairly educated in the ways of fashion (not that my wardrobe would bear this out).  But I had never heard of this designer and her beguiling creations, which this season incorporate patterns and imagery based on household objects.

Katrantzou has taken the pencil skirt to a literal level, embroidering a svelte skirt with hundreds of bendy pencils in an undulating pattern. The price tag is set at an astounding $70,000 for the original garment, though printed versions are available at a slightly more reasonable price.

While I’m not entirely sure how I would sit in a garment like that (very carefully, I would imagine), I applaud the skill and innovation it takes to make Katrantzou’s pencil skirt a reality. The importance of the pencil in fashion design cannot be overestimated, from its utility as a medium for a design to its inspirational qualities (Metropolitan Museum of Art – when can we have a Costume Institute Ball with “Pencil as Muse” for the theme?).

However, this is the first time I’ve ever seen the pencil’s role in fashion celebrated with so much creativity and joy. With its pop-art colors and striking graphics, it would be impossible not to grab attention in Katrantzou’s creation.

“I wanted to work with something that not everyone sees the beauty in,” said Katrantzou in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. “You see them in an everyday way, but you don’t necessarily think about how beautiful they would be wearing them. I started to think about what are really pragmatic objects that aren’t like a Qing dynasty vase or Meissen porcelain and I came up with pencils and cutlery and type-writers and telephones and just every-day objects.”

Where will the next fashion inspiration come from? Is the lamp shade that hangs in your local coffee shop the inspiration point for a new shape in skirts? Are the bell peppers at your local market the starting point of a whole new summer color palate? Inspiration is everywhere – all you need is a pencil on hand to capture it.

And if you’re running short, Mary Katrantzou probably has one she can lend you.

Ann Mazzaferro, Writer

If we learned only one lesson during our junior year in high school, Mr. Schulz was going to make sure that it was that life isn’t fair. It headed the list of classroom rules that we read during our first session of American Studies (a combination of AP English and Honors US History), and it became the refrain we returned to time and time again throughout the year. Computer crash and eat your essay? A classmate earned a higher grade on an assignment while doing half the work? Group members dragging you down on a project? Well, no one ever said that life was fair. In fact, just the opposite.

Lest this paint Mr. Schulz as an uncaring, unfeeling teacher, let me note that he was one of the most passionate, energetic and exacting instructors I’ve ever had. Some of my favorite high school memories came from his class, where we did everything from re-enact the 1912 US Presidential Election to host a 1950s cocktail party where we each played blacklisted McCarty-era writers, actors and politicians. He didn’t stress that life isn’t fair in order to drag us down or belittle us; he did it to prepare us for a world that would, by and large, not care about our calls for fairness. It taught us to be self-sufficient and responsible, and to find new solutions to problems (Ever written a campaign speech for William Howard Taft by candlelight because a massive storm has knocked out your power and crashed your computer? Try it some time.)

It was the hardest class I had in high school, and it was the one that taught me the most. When Mr. Schulz retired a couple of years ago, I was heartbroken for the students that would have American Studies in the years to follow – they would never have the chance to work with one of the smartest, most exacting, challenging and outright inspiring instructors I’ve ever met.

But then again, life isn’t fair.

Alexander Poirier, Writer

Coming into my senior year of high school, I heard horror stories about my school’s AP English course and the tormenter who oversaw it. “Mr. Bott,” they said, “he’s relentless. He LOOKS for ways to fail you.” But so goes the high school rumor mill, so I enrolled in his class, did my summer reading and waited for the new school year to begin. Sometime in between the flurry of weekend shows and 2:00PM alarm clocks, I found out that his nephew, who was one of my classmates throughout my high school years, had opted out of his uncle’s AP English class. When I asked him why, his response was simple.

“My uncle’s a prick.”

Needless to say, I went into Mr. Bott’s class expecting the worst. Who I found wasn’t a relentless sadist who wanted to watch the world burn, however. Instead, I found a teacher who was genuinely concerned with my educational development, a teacher who didn’t play into the “This is Stagg, so we need to take it easy on them” mentality and a teacher who finally expected something of me.

Prior to going into Mr. Bott’s class, I had my major listed as “Exploratory” (the major for the lost and confused) on all of my college applications. The genuine passion for reading, writing and the English language on display in his class, however, inspired me to declare myself an English major, a declaration I stayed true to despite all of the stories of gloom and doom for English majors after college. It’s a decision that has served me well and, for that, I would like to thank you Mr. Bott.

So, thank you.

Can you briefly explain your use of pencils in the classroom for our readers?

After a few dark years of third grade pencil purgatory, I finally wised up and decided to order some decent pencils (Natural Prospectors and Golden Bears). My goal was to not only eliminate pencils as a distraction, but also make them a positive focus in the classroom. To that end, I use pencils when I’m making up a practice problem for sentence structure or multiplication. Massachusetts pencil patrons Joseph Dixon, William Munroe, and Henry David Thoreau make excellent biographical studies, a third grade requirement. Additionally, in third grade we introduce cursive and I spend a good amount of time reviewing proper posture, grip, and technique. I’ve also been able to match each student with the type of pencil best suited for his or her grip and confidence; jumbo, triangular, hex, whatever works best. And since I make a big deal about the importance of pencils, incorporating character education lessons is a cinch. Respect and responsibility tie directly to the nice pencils and pencil boxes they now own.

What results have you seen from this program?

My students are now ready to work when I need them to be. They have a greatly heightened sense of respect for their own property as well as other’s. Writing is now approached with greater willingness because it involves using a favorite pencil and maybe a story from me about how many pencils Steinbeck used in a day when he was writing (Thanks! pencils.com). Cursive has always been an easy sell to third graders, but now many of them reserve their favorite pencil exclusively for cursive. They get pretty excited to use it.

How do the students respond to the program?

They can talk pencils all day now. They obviously also bring their interest home and hit their parents up for any old or unusual pencils they might have. I’ve seen some interesting old pencils come into the classroom. Ironically, in a way I have simply replaced one annoyance (constant pencil sharpening) with a new annoyance, constant pencil questions. A happy tradeoff, however.

What types of pencils do you keep in your pencil chest?

The chest is meant to be the slightly mysterious epicenter of our pencilverse. I have some older pencils I inherited from an uncle: Hardtmuth,  Eberhard Faber, Venus, Wallace, etc. as well as Blackwing, Palomino, Tombow, Musgrave, Mongol, Semi-Hex, and all sorts of ForestChoice, Prospector, and Golden Bears. Nothing terribly precious, but every pencil has a story worth repeating.

What has been the most popular pencil pulled from your pencil chest?

For the kids who have struggled at times with penmanship, the Spangle Mini Jumbo and triangular Golden Bear have been very popular. The status conscious crowd loves the 602s. The real sophisticates favor a Palomino.

Do you have a favorite pencil?

Depends. When I feel foppish, I don a Blackwing 602 with a pink hat (for the pencil, not me.) Serious business calls for a Palomino. But I have to admit, I love finding a real quality pencil I can afford in bulk. So I’m digging Golden Bears the most right now.

What do you think the pencil’s role is in the classroom and in education in general?

My perseverating on pencils serves to shock and jolt the students in an important way. When they see how much attention I pay to a small detail like a pencil, they start to understand the importance of all steps in a process. They are less likely to rush simply to finish an assignment, and the process becomes more important than the product. Since, typically, third graders are a little short on the metacognitive and simply worry about what the teacher wants at the end, the whole pencil “thing” effectively prepares students to produce their best through all phases of a task. This results in better results and students who take greater pride in their work and exude more confidence.

For the teacher, it always helps to have an anchor or two, something one can turn to at any time to help clarify a point. Pencils are my classroom anchor. With pencils, I can plan a lesson, start an activity, or use the remaining pencils in a gross to illustrate a math problem.

Often a recap talks about the events of an episode, without addressing all that comes before – in this case, the title. “Lady Lazarus” was the title of last night’s “Mad Men,” raising some interesting questions about the significance of episode titles and who “Lady Lazarus” might be…

Some of the episode titles have been fairly straight-forward this season of “Mad Men” – “Signal 30” was the title of a red-pavement driver’s education movie, and much of the episode took place in a driver’s ed class. “Tea Leaves” looked toward the future, and featured a wandering medium who read tea leaves at a posh hotel.

“Lady Lazarus,” however, requires a bit of interpretation. The title references the Sylvia Plath poem of the same name, and contains some of her most famous lines, including, “Dying/Is an art, like everything else/I do it exceptionally well,” and “Out of the ash I rise/with my red hair/and I eat men like air.”

The poem contains themes of oppression, reincarnation and performance – the unnamed speaker can project a convincing front, no matter the situation. She can be a smiling woman, or convince you of her death so keenly that you believe it to be real.

So why choose “Lady Lazarus” for this episode’s title? The performance aspect could certainly apply to Megan Draper – after all, we’ve been reminded all season that she used to be quite the actress, and in this episode she finally stopped pretending that she wanted to be a copywriter (like everything else, she does it exceptionally well) and left SCDP to pursue her dreams of the stage. It begs the question, was she ever interested in copywriting, or was it a means of getting close to Don? Now that one mask has fallen, will we really start to see the real Megan?

Or is it Howard’s unsuspecting wife, Beth (played hauntingly by Alexis Bledel – Rory Gilmore, how you’ve grown!). Pete’s inability to figure her out echoes the many faces of Lady Lazarus; nothing about this woman is what it seems. And for some reason that I myself can’t quite explain, the lines “A cake of soap /A wedding ring, /A gold filling” remind me of Beth. She presents so many faces to the world that if you took it all away, only those tangibles remain. And what do those things really tell you about a woman?

Sound off in the comments, readers – who was Lady Lazarus to you? If you haven’t read the Sylvia Plath poem, here it is – let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

I’m going to be sharing my art and drawing tips with you on a regular basis, so I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and offer you the first of many tips designed to help you fine tune your drawing skills.

TIP #1

“What should I draw?” is a question my students often ask me. What do I answer?

1) FOCUS – recall something you find yourself often staring at. Maybe it is your face in the mirror, the reflections through water in a glass, clouds, anything. And if you can’t recall anything, then experiment. Start your day by swearing to pause when you stare at something and to make a mental note of it. Or jot it into a journal. Then . . . to be continued!

Therefore, I’m not terribly invested on the goings-on of tomorrow (I don’t even like mint juleps), except for one thing: the hats. As last year’s Royal Wedding proved, Britain has America well and truly beat when it comes to outstanding chapeaux, and the Kentucky Derby is really the only day we have to redeem ourselves in the battle of headgear superiority.

The Derby’s website has already posted some pretty smashing shots of the hats on parade, but as I looked through them all, I decided something was missing: pencils.

Yeah, you heard me, pencils. Specifically Palomino Blackwings.

Now, I can hear the collective eye-roll from here, but we already know that I can make a pencil-inspired martini, so hats shouldn’t be that big of a stretch. As it happens, I have a couple of fascinators and small hats lying about from different events (last year’s Royal Wedding watching extravaganza, our annual family Oscar watching party – not posh as much as extremely, ridiculously silly), so I busted out the Blackwings and got to work.

Hat one was simply a matter of inserting pencils (unharpened, please – nothing less posh than poking someone’s eye out with your hat) into the loops of netting on headband (if I were going for a more permanent headpiece, I’d likely hold them in place with a drop or two of glue, maybe even some stitches). Hat number two involved placing erasers at evenly-spaced intervals around the brim, adding a few more feathers and tucking a Palomino Blackwing 602 in the back.

Am I going to be wearing these to a fabulous party? Not a chance. Heck, I’m not even wearing them in the photos – I enlisted a model (aka a stuffed bear) for that job. But who knows? Perhaps you have the panache to carry these off in public that I lack, or at least a very understanding group of friends who will humor you.

Though come to think of it, I don’t think the cow will judge me too much.

Can you give our readers some background? Where you grew up, how you got into filmmaking, things like that?

I grew up in more than one place but mostly all over the south. My parents moved around a lot. At a young age I realized I wanted to go into film making because I wasn’t doing well in my science class. My dad had this old camera and I had been drawing all my life anyways. So, in 7^th or 8^th grade I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.

I never went to art school, but I kept sending my portfolio to Disney. When they finally brought me on, I started as an inbetweener. They fill out the details in between the frames drawn by the animators. I started on on a short called Trail Mix-Up and soon after that we started Lion King.

I worked my way up to animator when we started Pocahontas. But then I started to gravitate towards being a story artist. I still love making characters live and breathe but I really love creating the drama. After Disney, I went to work with Veggie Tales and now I’m working with a few different studios.

What drew you to animation and story boarding?

I love the magic of animation. Getting into a character. It’s a lot like acting. There is a great magic there. When I started coming up with the ideas behind that, with the drama, making a conflict, creating a broader emotional arc for big chunks of the story and communicating a feeling to tell a story. It sounds trite but you’re speaking in metaphors and that resonates with an audience.

If you’ve attended any screenwriting classes, they tell you to write what you see. Script writing is different than writing a book. You have to detail what the camera sees. Storyboarding is even more exact than that. It eliminates the words and brings it down to the images.

One of the images you sent us for last week’s Pencil Artist of the Week feature came from a book you’re working on. Can you tell us a little more about that?

I have been writing these poems that are both humorous and dark. That image comes from a poem that’s a letter from the monster under your bed. Another one is a zombie love story that started as a Valentines Day card for my wife. I still have a few poems left to write and if I can’t find a publisher for it, I hope to self-publish it.

I have to ask, where did the nickname Bald Melon come from?

(laughs)

Bald melon came from my fortieth birthday. Some friends and I put together a blues band and I played harmonica. We were called Bald Melon and the Midllife Crisis.

(laughs)

Do you play any other instruments?

I also play ukulele. The harmonica and the ukulele: one when you’re happy, one when you’re sad.

Do you have any other creative outlets?

Well, I write poems. I’ve written a few of the scripts for Veggie Tales as well. Sometimes I tell stories in words and sometimes I tell stories in pictures.

Do you have any favorite creatives? Writers, animators, etc?

Some of my favorites are Bill Watterson and Doug TenNapel. Bill, of course, did Calvin and Hobbes Doug is the creator of Earthworm Jim. His style is brush and ink and very raw.

I also really like Stephen Silver. He does a lot of great illustrations. I like Bill Peet, the Disney story artist and Wallace Trip, who’s an incredible illustrator.

As far as writing goes, I really like graphic novels. The first one I fell in love with was Art Spiegelman’s Maus II. It was a version of the Holocaust story with animals. It just leaps over to the pure emotional side. He won a Pulitzer for it.

I know there are a ton of names I’m forgetting.

What is your favorite creative medium?

I really like just the pencil. Or an ink pen on a napkin. I really prefer a simple medium. Digital is quick and fun and clean, but there’s something about a nice felt tipped marker on a Starbucks napkin.

(laughs)

But that’s the way I grew up. People today are learning to draw with a mouse or a stylus and, for the next generation, that’s going to be the medium of choice.

I’ve noticed you also like to draw on envelopes. Any particular reason?

(laughs)

Any time I have an envelope going out, I like to draw something. I feel like it brightens their day.

Any time I can send a tangible card, I will.

How did you find out about Blackwing pencils?

I discovered the Blackwing when I was at Disney. A lot of people used them there. I think they went out of production when we were working on Brother Bear. I went to the supply closet and there weren’t any more!

Having to stop using Blackwings was really like someone trying to quit cigarettes. Everybody in the animation community was scouring and looking for more, searching for stubs in their drawers. When we found out they were being brought back it spread very quickly.

Teachers are in dire need of quality schools supplies and with a few minutes of your time you could reward them for the hard work they put in all year. We’ll even give you a reward for taking the time to share great people with our readers.

Before Teacher Appreciation Week ends (Saturday, May 15), submit a brief story or anecdote about a teacher who inspired, motivated or influenced you in some way in the comments section of this article for a chance to win a Pencils.com gift certificate for BOTH you and your favorite teacher. And don’t worry, you don’t need to submit an essay. 100 words or less will suffice (but if you have more, share away!).

Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories! We’ll announce the winner of the $50 Pencils.com gift certificate in the coming days!

When you’re a little kid, you want to save every dime of your allowance to buy your parent the best birthday or holiday gift that you can muster. Invariably, however, your ambitions fall short of piggy-bank, and often there’s that feeling of guilt or disappointment that you could not find some physical object that adequately expresses how much you care for your mom or dad.

My mother came up with a novel solution to this problem. Every year since my sister and I have been old enough to write, my mom has asked for a hand-written letter from each of us as a Christmas present. It didn’t have to be long, and it didn’t have to be fancy – binder paper and pencil was just fine by her. All it had to do was talk about what the past year had meant to us, and express the love and affection that can often get lost during the every-day shuffle of busy schedules and complicated lives.

Those letters have gotten pretty creative over the years. They’ve included DVDs with slideshows of photos and music, been folded and coaxed into miniature scrapbooks, rolled into elaborately decorated scrolls, and (during one year where the majority of my income came from content farming) written in the style of a how-to article (“How to be the Most Amazing Mom, Ever.”)

Over the years we’ve grown up and gotten jobs, been able to afford nice gifts and fancy wrapping paper, but the gifts that mean the most to her year after year, the ones that we would never forget, are those letters that chronicle our relationships as mother, daughters and friends.

Shortly after Christmas this year, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. While aggressive, they caught it early, and thankfully she came through it with her health and good humor intact. However, it was a frightening, dark beginning to the year, and the first three months of 2012 were some of the hardest we’ve ever weathered as a family.

Given that the beginning of 2012 was such a dark smear of time, my family and I decided that April 1 was the true beginning of 2012, and that from that day forward we would celebrate a new and brighter year as a family.

With Mother’s Day approaching, I found myself thinking about the late-night chocolate cake and Phase Ten sessions, the hoots of laughter as we quote “The Birdcage” entirely from memory, the times when I’ve felt like my heart would burst with how much love I have for my family. And I found myself thinking of the letters my mom has saved over the years, from childish scribbling to elegant adult script, and how much they’ve meant to her.

So for Mother’s Day, I have a couple of small gifts set aside – things that she’s said she’d like over the year when she didn’t think anyone was listening – but it’s a new year. And a new year means a new letter, and a new way of saying how much she means to me. She’s probably reading this right now – she’s a proud mom, and it’s what she does – but it doesn’t matter that the surprise might be spoiled.

You can’t save a webpage. You can’t touch a pixel. But a letter you can hold onto, through the dark days and through the good. It’s a memory made physical, a touchstone for the times when you need a reminder of faith, hope, laughter and love.

Feel free to borrow this family tradition and write a letter to your own mother this year. After jewelry has lost its shine and appliances wear out, it’s your words – and your love – that remains.

Two things before we begin:

-Does anyone else want to get Sally Draper a cookie and a therapist, stat?

-Major props once more to costume designer Janie Bryant, who is knocking it out of the park this season. Did anyone notice the eerily similar necklines, colors and accessorizing on Peggy and Megan for their respective evenings out? The square-scoop necks, almost identical shades of pink, with each girl wearing her best jewels – both women were wearing outfits that presented them as the ideal of femininity. They face problems that are as similar as their wardrobes – both are discovering what they really want in life, and what they have isn’t it.

This season the name of Dick Whitman has barely been spoken, and yet it is constantly nipping at Don’s heels. This week found him in bed, forsaking his earthier James Bond novels for a more high-brow read in order to impress wife Megan’s parents. No matter how hard Don tries to outrun Dick Whitman, it seems that there’s always something to tug at his sleeve and remind him of how much he lacks.

So just what was Don reading in bed in order to impress his in-laws? That would be Bernard Malmud’s novel “The Fixer,” published to international acclaim in 1966. The fictional story, based on a real-life case from 1913, centers around Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman who was unjustly imprisoned for murder in Tsarist Russia. Yakov endures beatings, interrogations and isolation, during which he looks back on his life and his own beliefs. He strenuously proclaims his innocence and that he is apolitical in his views, but the novel ends with Yakov led to trial, as he concludes that there is no such thing as an apolitical man.

To be apolitical is defined by Merriam-Webster as having no political significance, or having an aversion to political affairs. By the end of the episode, Don will have learned the same thing that Yakov believes to be true – Don cannot and no longer exists in an apolitical world. As an advertiser, his job was to remain neutral, and do his best to sell the client and the product. To have an opinion about the product was irrelevant; sell it and move on.  However, once Don wrote his letter denouncing tobacco products, he decidedly announced his beliefs, even if they were to sell another product (in this case, the American Cancer Society).

This season has been about the longing to return to the way things were. What Don and company finally seem to be absorbing is that there is no way to return; the line has been drawn in the sand, and there’s no way to walk back to the other side. Don has announced his cynicism and his beliefs to potential clients, and it will take a whole lot of fixing before Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce can succeed.