I was doing a Fred Aldous order the other day and I saw this carpenter’s pencil and felt compelled to order it, even though I’m not exactly a carpenter and have no real use for it. It was only 77p so I popped it in my basket.

As it turned out, the day it arrived, was the day that we started making the decking in our garden so it ended up seeing a lot of carpentry action after all! I was curious as to the design of carpenter’s pencils, but as it turns out they are only flat so that they don’t roll away. I also have a theory that they’re usually red so that they are easy to see, as in my experience, pencils always seem to go missing on site.

And here’s the end result of our decking, in case anyone cares (we made it out of reclaimed scaffold planks):