I’m back from California and a month-long visit with my new baby grandson. My report: he’s very perfect, and like many babies, he resembles Charles Laughton. Also, relative to his tiny body, he has enormous hands, and I foresee a career as a piano player or a typewriter mechanic.

As a gift to the brand new parents, I did night shift for the month while I was there. It was a gift to myself as well, spending time with this weird sleepless creature in the dead of night and contemplating him and life in general. What’s it all mean, Kid? He seems to have the wisdom of Baby Yoda.

After a month, I came home to Virginia in a blank-eyed, blasted Zen state and slept for three days straight. Restored, I then immediately went to Unique, an enormous thrift store that is the size of three Goodwills. It never has typewriters, but what do you know? There was an Underwood 21 with some kind of a Cyrillic character set.

I think I know which language uses this keyboard, but hit me up in the comments if you have an idea what it is.

Also at the thrift store, a nice made-in-Japan Kenmore 158 with a free arm:

So tempting, but I left both the sewing machine and the Underwood 21 at the thrift store, for I had another new Underwood at home.

Before I left for California, a generous member of the local typewriter community gifted me a 1938 Underwood 6. I brought it home and took it outside to clean it up. It really didn’t need much, just a dusting, blow-out, and dabs of mineral spirits here and there.

The guts were full of colorful little game pieces that didn’t seem to affect the functioning at all.

I removed the side panels and retrieved the game pieces.

I finished cleaning up this Underwood, so impressed by its solid, high-quality build. It has nice little details like the word “Champion” printed on the inside of the space bar. Yes, you are a champion, Number 6.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my 1950s Underwood portable, the De Luxe Quiet Tab. It looks swell, but it’s no Number 6.

After my return from California, I had a lot of correspondence to catch up on. I have been using the De Luxe Quiet Tab almost exclusively ever since I replaced the escapement’s broken loose dog with a 3D-printed one. The typeface is very nice (“Continental”), but more importantly, I wanted to stress test the 3D-printed dog and evaluate the durability of the PLA-printed part.

I was typing along last week, creating some typewriter art of a Bundt cake. Choosing blobby, amorphous subject matter rather than Notre Dame cathedral because of my below-average typewriter art skills, I pounded on the Underwood portable and had several very hard carriage returns in a row when *ZZZZZZING*—the carriage flew off to the left.

I will have to remove the carriage and pull the escapement to confirm, but in my heart I know I have a dead dog. R.I.P., little 3D-printed loose dog.

Fortunately for this Underwood portable, a package had arrived while I was out of town. It was from Canada’s own Brendan R.

The escapement plate’s arrival was beautifully timed. Brendan had a parts machine, a 1950s Underwood portable, with an intact, perfect-match loose dog. He was very kind to to pull it out (not a fun task) and mail it to me.

In a subsequent post, I will publish a step-by-step photo description of how I made the replacement for anyone nutty enough to want to remove the carriage from a 1950s Underwood portable.

I have been the grateful recipient of so much lately. I have gifted as well. While in California, I gave away a loft bed and mattress.

The young guy who picked it up brought his New Jersey dad who spotted my typewriters in the living room. The dad got excited and told me all about his typewriter in New Jersey and wanted to give me his IBM Selectric II. Unfortunately, it’s in New Jersey.

Speaking of Selectrics, my husband’s drummer gifted me a set of Selectric typeballs because she knew I was into typewriters. I don’t have a Selectric (and neither did the drummer). I may hold onto these in case one crosses my path, but maybe it would be better to gift them to someone with a Selectric and no typeballs.

So much good stuff—all freely given. I could make the argument that gifts hold society together—not in an even-steven or zero-sum way, but as a way to build connection between givers and receivers. I am so grateful for all the generous exchanges and good mojo in the typewriter community.