There is a palette knife on my bench, a small trowel shape, bought in 1998 at a shop near the Thomaskirche that no longer exists. The handle is worn down to bare wood and the blade has a curve in it that was not there when I bought it. For years I thought the curve was damage and kept meaning to replace it.

Now I cannot work without it. The bend lets the blade rock and scrape in a way a straight one does not, and every time I try a new knife, the paint comes off too even and too polite. I have three new knives in the drawer, all of them fine, all of them useless.

Naja. It is not superstition exactly. It is that the tool has been trained by my hand and now my hand is trained by the tool, and I am no longer sure which direction that goes.

Anyone else have a thing that is objectively broken and that you would not trade for anything.