YAY I made a pen out of a goose feather quill!

Wanted to get this posted tonight as I have something I must do tomorrow.  Just can't stay away from calligraphy-related things.
I finally tried my hand at making a quill pen and used the directions here.    

The trickiest part was the cutting.  I don't have anything other than my Swiss Army knife that has a blade sharp enough and small enough to manipulate but it held up just fine.  After seasoning the quill to toughen it up, I made an initial cut down and away from me.   It was too steep judging by the pictures so I made some additional cuts until I felt I was in the ballpark. 

The edges were so rough though that I found my old battery operated manicure set and used one of the heads to file the edges smoother.  I doubt that would have made a difference, after all, they didn't have those things way back when right.
So the next step involves that last little cut and the slit.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  I  pinched the tip together until I heard a little pop (yes, it's splitting) and then with the knife, cut the edge off. 

The last step is to see if it writes--after all, it's no good as anything other than a novelty if it doesn't.

And it does!!   It's not perfect, it's not like the metal nibs and it'll never do a hairline but it wrote right from the start and held the ink well!!!   How fun was that?!