Treasure hunt

At CAR I admired Barbara Haane's albums and saw how great old typewriter font can look on layouts and Project Life cards. Knowing that my parents have three old typewriters I went treasure hunting in their basement. 

Typewriters 1 and 2 look nice and vintage but were heavy monsters, one without ribbon and the other with a non-functional one. Plus I had no clue who to change ribbons in these, nor any idea where I could get new ones from.

Typewriter number 3 not only came with its sturdy original case but also with a functional ribbon. It is admittedly very old and you can barely read what is written, but I might even like the look. So here's my new old friend Monica:

This typewriter is also a part of our family history. My dad learned to type on this machine and my mum wrote countless test papers for her students on it - sometimes as blueprints when photocopying was not common yet. I remember being fascinated by this typewriter and happily typed random letters on it, using up the "good" paper against my mum's request to use scrap paper.

Then I found an office supply store which still sells brand new ribbons for this typewriter. The ribbon arrived today and I was concerned that I might have damaged the mechanism that lifts the ribbon when you type. The first lines on the paper are actually only coloured by the leftover ink on the types. Luckily I then discovered that the colour setting (see the small lever on the right of the machine above the shift key) was on white (= correction), which means that the ribbon would not lift. Moving the lever up then produced acceptable results.

I should probably clean the types, but I actually like the smudged look.