I Knead an Eraser

I got my first kneaded eraser when I was nine years old (4th grade).  It came in a General's drawing set, which had some pastel pencils, different graphite pencils, charcoal pencils, a sharpener, and.....hey guess what, they still make it!

It is exactly the same!

I LOVED that pencil set, and I still have quite a few of the pencils!

Of course I brought my set to school and someone stole my kneaded eraser.

Through the years I have had many kneaded erasers. I have only used one to the point of non-usability once. They pretty much last forever, or until they get too much charcoal in them and they make lines instead of erasing them.

The biggest danger to kneaded erasers is getting lost.  And cats.  Cats like to play with them- bite them, roll them around. If you drop them in pencil shavings and they somehow get really squished down and embedded, it's just easier to get a new eraser than pick out all the wood shavings. That's more unusual though; mostly they get lost.

Kneaded erasers smell WONDERFUL. I have always loved pulling them apart very slowly so they turn into a very soft velvety rope and smelling them.

They smell soooo good and are so soft when pulled apart

I have a lot of kneaded erasers because I kept losing them. So I would pick up another, And then I would find them, then lose them, then pick up another one...and so on. But since my studio has been nice and organized, my kneaded eraser has been living nicely on my easel tray, except when a cat gets to it.

And the spares all live together, too. My current working eraser is the one on the bottom right.