What a beautifully evocative thread!

I have a personal love of pencils for note taking. I take the minutes at two nearby Local Council meetings, and find pencil is much easier to control, and my notes much more readable the next day. The slight friction of lead on paper stops my hand from shaking all over the page,as happens with ball-point pens.

I used to use Fountain pens for all of my "best" writing - all of my early essays were written using a fairly cheap (but very robust) fountain pen given me by my daughter the week before I went up to Oxford to start my academic career; and when I was finally awarded my PhD, some ten years later, my wife presented me with a very lovely Waterman pen, which I still use upon occasion.

But as I look round my study, with this thread in mind, I am fairly statled by the range of writing implements, and, indeed, the range of things to write on.
There are about two dozen pencils, in various hardnesses or softnesses, and of various lengths; some of them are standard grey-lead, some of them are coloured. There are a couple of those dandy pencils where you can take the point off and stuff it in the top of the pencil, which pushes a new point down, ready for use. You get given these at conferences, and always take them away with you.
I can see three fountain pens, half-a-dozen bic-type ball-points, a whole pot full of coloured felt-tips, three or for large marker pens and a whole tin full of coloured pens for writing on Overhead Projector acetates.
There are also two or three narrow paint-brushes that also get used for lettering occasionally.

There is a pad of letter-writing paper - very suitable for fountain pens, two different grades of printer paper, a whole stack of used-one-side paper, some torn into small squares for telephone messages, some full size.
There is coloured paper for notices and there is a box of acetates, to go with the OHP pens aforementioned.
Besides this, there are pads of paper, large and small, for note taking, and account books for keeping financial records.
There are also "post-it" pads, for sticking motes on to things, or marking passages in books where I want to take notes.

Now-a-days, the keyboard is far and away my most used writing implement. I love its speed and clarity, but still regret the feeling of satisfaction from well written words. I envy my wife's calligraphic skills - although her day-to-day writing is incredibly untidy and unreadable. But her calligraphy is beautiful. A very strange mixture, that.

Apart from these, I am surrounded by shelves of books and my computer table. There is a very small space in the middle of all this, where I sit in arachnoid stillness, watching for the screen to flicker, so that I can pounce.