when i was twelve or thirteen and spent way too much time in stationery shops one day i decided to pick up a tape embossing label maker. i'd spend hours just clicking, clicking away until my fingers were sore and any fancy lyric that surfaced off the top of my head would end up on a variety of coloured tape. it was tedious, yes, to push entire lines in letter by letter, but it was addictive.



the ones they sell in popular are from the brand motex which is... hrmph. not the original. when you mention a tapewriter, the first name that pops up in your mind is dymo. it's like comparing those awful large 'chocky' sticks to original glico pocky... it's just not the same.

so you can imagine my excitement when i stumbled upon this tapewriting set amongst the clutter that was the basement of ito-ya in ginza, tokyo in december 2009



interchangeable character wheels with a choice between uppercase, lowercase and cursive letters along with all those cute symbols... it was perfect. and i had to get it. despite the price. (comparing it to the ~5 dollars i spent on the first motex embosser plus additional tape, you probably don't even want to guess.)

i didn't regret it though. i love words and i love being surrounded by words in all these cute variations of fonts and colours. click click click. my dymo tapewriter was definitely not under-utilised.

but over time, due to my being such a cluttered person with close to zilch organisational skills, i lost something in the sea of junk that resides in my drawers. yes i have made several attempts to swim through said sea of junk in search of this thing that i lost but nope it can't be found. and my dymo set is now pretty much unusable.



can you see what's missing, apart from the tape?

no?

IT'S THE DAMN PIN THAT HOLDS THE CHARACTER WHEEL IN PLACE.

well.

i don't know why i didn't think of this earlier (i think i lost it around a year ago?) but i just bought the exact same set off ebay for 9.60*2.01381295. yup i just paid 9.60*2.01381295 for a little piece of plastic. embarrassingly to admit that is actually quite a bit less than what i paid initially... but nevermind that.

can't wait to start click, click, clicking away again.