portrait of the blogger as a smoking man

i contracted with an award winning photographer to snap some photos of my new pipe. here it is:

and here it is with extra chins:

it's actually bigger than i was expecting (though it looks small profiled against so many chins), and while i don't think it reaches the level of perfection of my other dal fiume, i also paid a lot less for it. i have noticed something about my smoking habits: my favored tobacco category flip-flops when i buy a dal fiume. witness:

going into chicago, my favorite tobacco style was straight virginia, or virginia/perique blends. i bought my first dal fiume from the man himself, intending to use it for Va and Va/Per blends. I smoked a couple such bowls in it, then didn't touch it for 3 months, having switched almost entirely to english blends.

Then I realized that I didn't have a nice Dal Fiume pipe for English blends, so I bought this new one for exactly that, smoked one nice English blend in it, and then promptly switched back over to Va and Va/Oriental blends. I call this the sainttoad Dal Fiume paradox.