Haven’t heard of that brand. Maybe I’ll try it next.
Dot grid is fine. I find that the different formats change my psychology in different ways, none really positive or negative.
With lines I tend to stick to text. Can’t really draw.
With grid I tend to doodle and fill in boxes.
With blank I do whatever, but write a lot less. If I do write it gets all over.
With dots I end up doing a lot of connect the dots, but less structure than with grids.
These mechanical pencils. Overengineered is the right term - features you never knew you wanted, and actually… still don’t really want. But wow, a lot of thought and work went into designing these:
I guess the video is an ad? But if there was ever good advertising, this is it. Informative, to the point. More of a briefing than a sales pitch. Disregard the youtube-clickbait title, the content of the video is way better than that indicates.
These days I always have two paper notebooks/pads on my desk. One personal, one for work. I also have Obsidian note installed on the personal computer and work computer separately, but that’s off-topic.
Today I finished off the last page of my personal notebook, which I’m pretty sure is this one from Muji.
On the one hand, there was nothing to complain about with this notebook. Good paper. Nice binding. Held together to the last page. It’s just one of those situations where despite having no significant flaw, there was also no significant joy or wow factor. I would still be perfectly happy to go back to it, but I decided to try others first.
For work I’m currently halfway through a Rhodia ColoR Pad No 16. I really like the color and texture of the cover. I like the paper a lot. I think I made a mistake in getting the pad with tear-off sheets. For desktop note-taking when there are no co-workers to give paper to, tearing off sheets is not a thing. I also can’t use the back half of the paper at all.
I definitely want to try a notebook from Rhodia, because I do like the paper a lot. Separately I want a smaller version of the same pad for personal use. Right now if I want to write something on paper and bring the paper with me, I use a loose index card or a digital note on my phone.
My new personal notebook is the famous Leuchtterm. It’s got a dot grid, pouch in the back, two ribbon bookmarks, elastic to hold it shut, table of contents in the front, page numbers, the whole shebang. So far so good, but I’m not going to pass judgement until it has received much more usage. I’m still on page 1.
For when the work pad runs out the next one I have in the queue is the JetPens exclusive Kansai Noto.
Still using Blackwing pencils for almost all writing. Don’t see a change coming there. There are 10-20 unused pencils still in the box. That’s going to get me through several more years.
When I do buy more pencils I kind of want to get some without erasers. The eraser on the Blackwing is great. It erases very well. You can even extend it and adjust it so it never runs out before the pencil does. The problem is that once you start extending it, it gets pushed back into the pencil while erasing. If the pencil didn’t have an eraser at all, I could just force myself to use a stand-alone eraser. That would be much less wasteful.
As far as pens go, all my favs were discontinued. My taste also changed when I changed my handwriting. I bought a sampling of cheap fountain pens some months back to give it another try. Of those I’ve tried so far, I like the Platinum Preppy 03 the most. Some of the others were so meh I got rid of them, but the Preppy is almost out of ink. I guess I genuinely liked it if I kept going back to it. I really want to try the even finer 02 version. This may end up being a situation where I avoid the paradox of choice and just stick with something I know that I like quite a bit and avoid spending so much effort looking for something even more perfect. I’m already down that hole with the notebooks. No need to do it again with pens given how rarely I use them.
Continuing on my fountain pen journey. The Platinum Preppy ran out of ink. That was a signal that it wasn’t some confirmation bias. I was using it a lot, and using it more than the others. Clearly it was time to invest in a non-disposable fountain pen that I could refill with ink. It’s not only more environmentally friendly and economical, it’s also more fun.
And even if you get an expensive-ish fountain pen, (not some Mont Blanc thing for $1000+) it will pay for itself. Even if the Platinum Preppy were back in stock, those things are $7 each. Yes, they can also be refilled and refused, but they are still disposable plastic pens that won’t last forever. One of the ones I had had a crack in it somehow. Also, a pen made of metal feels nicer with more weight.
Today I went out shopping and first stopped at a store called Fountain Pen Hospital. This place has been around 70+ years and is a very NYC kind of store. All the staff are old geezer fountain pen nerds. The store was arranged by brand, and the prices were way out of control. Seems like they were really focusing on the luxury collector’s market. I didn’t see anything there that remotely made sense.
The next place I went was the official Lamy flagship store. A really tiny store in SOHO. If you don’t know, SOHO in NYC nowadays is a district where due to zoning laws, geology (supposedly) and other reasons, all the buildings are short. No skyscrapers. Almost everything there is luxury boutique retail. The highest end fashion brands, an art gallery with a real Banksy in it, etc.
Anyway, the official Lamy store was a tiny little shop with one retail staff person and nobody else in it. I got to try all their pens. They taught me how to refill it with ink from a jar without making a mess, etc. I got a Lamy Studio with an extra fine nip in forest green color, and I bought the nicest dark green ink they had. Assuming I don’t lose it or break it, this could be the last pen I own in my whole life.
The only thing is I’m now terrified of making a mess with ink. Must avoid at all costs.
With fountain pens you’ll likely get some ink on your hands at some point. A couple tricks I learned to keep the mess contained though is to put the ink bottle in a Tupperware container when you are refilling. That way if something goes wrong and you do spill, it’s contained and you won’t spill beyond that small space. Also you can refill the pen using a blunt tip syringe that you can get at most fountain pen stores/sites (which the Lamy person may have taught you) to also keep spillage contained.
The tupperware is a good tip. As for the syringe, why could that be necessary? The pen itself is effectively its own syringe. As for getting it on my hands, that hasn’t been an issue somehow.
Some people like to fill the converter from the syringe and skip dipping the tip/feed into the ink bottle to keep that part cleaner. It can also be useful when the ink bottle gets low enough that you can’t refill using the pen, if you have a small ink sample container your pen won’t fit into, or are refilling a cartridge.
It’s not technically necessary but is an option I’d just figure I’d share. Goulet Pens has a decent short video on what you can do with them and how to use them: How to Use Ink Syringes for Fountain Pens - YouTube
Oh, getting the last drop out of the bottle. Maybe. I’ll see how much is left that I can’t get out. I think it’s going to be awhile.
I got a remarkable, not quite real pens and stationary but go with it, for christmas this past year.
I’ve been very skeptical of digital stationary and have given it a few goes using Surface tablets and other solutions in the last decade or so. Nothing felt great, and by and large I’d try them out for taking notes, or writing, or journaling but all of them there was enough weird quirks that it was more annoying than it should be for daily use.
The remarkable is fantastic, it really is basically digital paper. I have nearly 2 months of daily journaling in it and I’ve only noticed one or two instances where writing something or erasing something behaved more like a computer than paper.
I haven’t done much handwriting to digital text conversion, I don’t quite care about that; it definitely has an issue with organization of your writings, there are folders but it’s clunky and can easily get out of control if you import pdfs to mark them up; and while you get a year of their service for free, it definitely wants you to subscribe to it and then forget about it so they can charge you for the second year.
On the Aesthetic end, I am used to writing with an mechanical pencil, a habit from all the physis/engineering classes I took in college. Mechanical pencils look okay with block lettering but I writing in cursive (private school in the 80s drilled that into me) and it’s impossible to read chicken scratch.
But, and here I get to where I was reminded by the posts on fountain pens, I swapped over to the fountain pen nib and freaking suddenly my handwriting is legible and, dare I say, beautiful looking.
TIL, I was trained to write with a fountain pen and wasn’t told.
That’s the pencil I use!
The LAMY company has been acquired by Mitsubishi Pencil. That’s the company that makes Uni-ball. That is a tremendous shift in the world of stationery. This had been an independent German company for 90+ years.
It remains to be seen what will change in terms of LAMY products, but there will be change. I see time and time again, companies acquire each other, and they lie and say they won’t change things. Then they always do.
Thankfully, I think LAMY is so popular that they wouldn’t consider ending the product lines. But they could shift to cheaper manufacturing, reformulate inks, or do other things that might upset purists, or upset everyone. Uni-balls are also beloved by many, though. There’s a decent equal chance we could see some very positive developments if they can produce products that exhibit what people love about both LAMY and Uni-ball.