JL Kaufmann
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jlkaufmann.bsky.social
JL Kaufmann
@jlkaufmann.bsky.social
3.2K followers 580 following 35K posts
Overcaffeinated scribbling person

SOLIDARITY

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jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Oh look, these are NICE @loreandordure.com
Hand printed Christmas cards in red or brown, with the lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and snowflakes, and pretty duck-egg blue envelopes.
November 13, 2025 at 1:08 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
I'm feeling grumpy and Down With The Patriarchy this morning, I'm very much the small tetchy lion, not the Babylonian king trying to control it.
A bronze statue of Hammurabi VI, Babylonian king and law-maker, with a fantastic ringleted beard and wearing a fringed kilt, holding out a tablet of laws while restraining a rather small lion. It gives massive 'accepting a parcel while trying to stop your cat escaping' vibes.
November 13, 2025 at 10:46 AM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Kimchi!
A Kilner glass jar with orange rubber seal and metal clip, sitting in a white dish with raised edges. The jar is full of chopped Chinese leaves, carrots, spring onions, all sitting in a brine mixture slowly turning red with chilli flakes. There is a print of a medieval painting of Florence in the background.
November 10, 2025 at 10:36 AM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
FREAKING PIGEON ON THE FREAKING SKYLIGHT
A tortoiseshell cat perched on the edge of a table. She is hunched down with her neck stretched out in POUNCE IMMINENT pose, and staring intently upwards. There’s a rather full bookshelf behind her.
November 7, 2025 at 10:46 AM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Hmmm. Where is the cat?
An unmade bed - a rumpled white sheet with a rumpled grey duvet lying across it. The tip of a little black paw is poking out from under the duvet.
November 6, 2025 at 9:44 AM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Does anyone want to see my mother’s mummified rat guardian of the greenhouse? I’ve labelled it ‘graphic’ in case you really don’t.
A very dried up but perfectly intact rat corpse, lying on a slatted wooden shelf, with glimpses of garden through the glass panes behind it. You can see all sorts of horrible details like its little ears and claws and the tail a perfect chain of vertebrae.
November 5, 2025 at 3:55 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
#WorldFantasyCon sock progress.
A three-quarters-done hand-knitted sock in variegated pink and white yarn with little green and yellow speckles, lying on the World Fantasy Convention Pocket Programme. The cover is illustrated with a rather interesting skull-faced being in a long dark coat, sporting a variety of horns and head spikes.
November 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
If you go to Brighton taking this photo is mandatory. If you don’t the gulls follow you home and menace you.
The skeletal ruins of the West Pier at Brighton, sticking out of the sea against a background of sunlit windswept clouds. There’s a row of boats in front, pulled up on the shingles keel up.
October 31, 2025 at 2:57 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Reunited with SCARF!
A middle-aged brown-haired white lady in glasses wearing a multicoloured hand-knitted scarf of emotional import.
October 31, 2025 at 12:04 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
AK duly bothered
The title page of the novel Sword of Avalon, by A.K. Faulkner, signed in magenta by the author.
October 30, 2025 at 4:29 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
The paw of a Squoof
The underside of a cat’s paw, with white fur and pink and black toe beans.
October 27, 2025 at 5:47 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Why yes all the UK’s slightly dreary car parks and municipal bins have a castle.
Some parked cars, some large red council dumpster bins, behind them a row of little terraced houses, and looming above all, the crenellated round tower of an actual Norman castle (extensively restored in the 19th century). We’re in Arundel.
October 26, 2025 at 4:34 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
A picture of the Marble Arch Mound, a truly ridiculous and unappealing artificial ‘hill’ built at the corner of Hyde Park in July 2021 and dismantled six months later as being a colossal waste of time and money. It was supposed to be a tourist attraction.
October 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
The hell is THAT?

I grew up with an even MORE egregious cover with a blond Ged on it. I mean look at this grotesque thing.
Absolutely ludicrous cover for Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy showing a not only a white but a blond blue-eyed white Ged with magic sparkle zappy fingers. Offensive bloody nonsense.
October 22, 2025 at 9:16 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Who’s this?
A wasp-resembling creature next to a 20p coin for scale. The wasp? is about as long as the diameter of the coin, ie somewhat larger than a standard British wasp.
October 22, 2025 at 12:04 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO SIT DOWN.
Tortoiseshell cat lying on her side on a red armchair and looking very innocently up at the camera.
October 18, 2025 at 7:23 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
It took the anaesthetists EIGHT GOES to find a working vein yesterday. This attempt blew so spectacularly a nurse got sprayed and had to go change scrubs. Go me. (Have labelled it graphic in case you have NO INTEREST in seeing that)
My inner forearm, very pale against a red pillow, with an absolutely lurid three-inch-long bruise surrounding a puncture mark.
October 18, 2025 at 7:21 AM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
This is me on my wedding day, 20-odd years ago. (I blurred out some guests, very incompetently)

I have so many complicated feelings about this, not least, why did no one tell me I was beautiful, or, more to the point, why didn’t I believe them?
A young white woman in a formal red silk gown, side-on to the camera. Her brown hair has been put up and a few loose curled tendrils hang around her face. She is looking down and holding a fold of her long skirts out of the way. You can see she is wearing her aunt’s pearl earrings, and a brand new wedding ring on the hand clutching the skirts.
October 15, 2025 at 11:15 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Innocence in her little fortress of virtue.
A tortoiseshell cat in one of the little dens on her grey furry cat condo. She is lying in the doorway with her paws folded like a human crossing their arms. The thing in front of her is her ladybird catnip toy with crinkly wings. She loves that thing.
October 14, 2025 at 4:03 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
The swirly Darail pen is delighting my heart.
An uncapped fountain pen lies next to its cap on a sheet of lined paper. Above it someone has used it to write ‘Diamine Grey. In a soft buttery broad nib. I love this thing.’ in grey ink. The pen is a smooth cylinder with rounded ends, all made out of grey resin with white and almost pinkish and greenish swirls. It looks like a very subtle gas giant, possibly a Victorian one that was widowed a decade ago and knows dove colours suit her.
October 11, 2025 at 5:48 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
London Pen Show Loot, or, JL Has Impulse Control Issues, or, Retail Therapy.

(See Alt text for details).
The Diamine 2025 Inkvent Calendar (teal edition). Lying on top of it, top left, two boxes of J. Herbin 1670 ink - Caroube de Chypre, with a brown label, and Opale nocturne, with a turquoise label. To the right of them, a white TWSBI pen box. Just below it a black sample bottle of ink labelled ‘Robert Oster Lyme Regis Grey’, and the Espresso Bronze TWSBI Eco fountain pen, a clear piston filler with a coffee-brown lid and piston knob and bronzed fittings. In the middle, fountain pen in soft swirling grey resin by Darail Penz, next to a grey leather pen sleeve. Believe that, a bright yellow leather notebook cover, A6 size-ish, lying on the grey cloth pouch it came in, printed with the Kayztyle logo.
October 11, 2025 at 4:47 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
BEHOLD. THE SWOON-WORTHY.
A selection of extremely expensive Sailor fountain pens, displayed in individual cases. There are several urushi pens and one decorated with eggshell and raden and a wooden one and a maki-e one.
October 11, 2025 at 2:55 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Tables and tables of this sort of thing.
Trays of fountain pens - all sorts of brands, all very fancy, some with maki-e, some with gleaming celluloid, some with ‘crushed ice’ resins…
October 11, 2025 at 2:49 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Random Conway Stewarts. I have a little crush on the white one with snowflakes. I also have a cat to feed.
A row of pretty fountain pens in a display case, with price tags of hundreds of pounds each.
October 11, 2025 at 1:18 PM
jlkaufmann.bsky.social
Lined up on stands, left to right, five Nahvalur Eclipse pens, six Schuylkil pens, and six Nautilus pens. There’s a transparent Fathom with rainbow trim lying in front of them.
October 11, 2025 at 1:06 PM