Pencil shaving...the perfect rainy day activity

If your kids are going stir crazy thanks to yet another rainy summer holiday they might like to take part in the Cumberland Pencil Museum's pencil shaving contest.

A 22cm pencil shaving. Can you do better?

The idea began when the Keswick museum's manager Alex Spencer was a guest on Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show during a feature about the ‘weird and wacky museums’.

“Half-way through the interview, we realized that we didn’t know the record for the longest pencil shaving,” Spencer recalled. “So I asked his listeners to respond on Twitter about it.”

Now the search for longest pencil shaving is well underway with a prize of a tin of graphite pencils for the winner. Two runners-up get new battery operated pencil sharpeners. The closing date is September 5th and there is a random prize draw too for all entries.

To take part send your post your photos on www.facebook.com/derwentpencils or via www.twitter.com/derwentpencils.

• The longest ever pencil shaving clocks in at 12,222 feet and was made by Chicagoan Donald Kidlings in 1946. It helped that Kidlings was using a 9ft HB pencil.