Shopping from My Stationery Stash: Brush Pens and Lead Holder

I went “shopping” in my stationery and art supply stash again, and this time used a Hahnemule Cappuccino sketchbook, a uni-ball sign pen, a Faber Castell PITT artist brush pen in light green (171), a Tombow ABT water based dual brush pen (I only used the brush side not the felt tip pen side) in light grey (cool grey 3 – N75), and a Caran d’Ache + Alfredo Haberli Fixpencil with a blue 2mm lead.

I used them all to draw the protest scene from this Saturday, using a photo I took during the protests. It was intensely hot and humid, and I went to the protests right after running a Dungeon World game at a small local tabletop roleplaying convention. With no art supplies on me, the best I could do was try and capture the scene to sketch later. When I was pulling things out to try out with this sketch, I decided to veer away from my comfort zone: I used tinted paper, a sign pen, mixed media, and an unusual colour. I like the result – for a quick sketch it captures the energy of the moment well.

I like the Hahnemule Cappuccino sketchbook. The paper is smooth but has a touch of grain to it that makes it work for pencils as well. It’s way too thin for wet media, but works great for brush pens, pencils, markers, etc.

My main sketching tool was the Uni Sign Pen. This is the first time I’ve used a sign pen for “serious” sketching, as I normally only use them for illustrations that I gift to friends’ kids. I like it – it has relatively little line variation, but on the other hand offers more control, and a good bold line. If you are dipping your toes into brush pens for sketching for the first time, this might be a good place to start to get a feel for the kind of thick lines these kinds of pens create.

The Faber-Castell PITT brush pen is a classic, one that I’ve used many times before in sketches. I’d love to say that they don’t disappoint, but like most soft and medium soft brush pens, the tip doesn’t last for long. They do come in lots of great colours and if you cap them they last much more than many other markers and brush pens in the market. They’re also waterproof, which is a bonus if you’re mixing them with wet media.

The Tombow dual brush pen is completely new to me, and I liked it enough to want to add it to my current sketching setup. It works well for quick shading (and shading and colour make sketches pop).

The Caran d’Ache + Alfredo Haberli Fixpencil… This is something that I want to properly review sometime in the future, so it’s been waiting on my desk for a while. For now I’ll just say that it did the job, although I have other pens and pencils that would have done the job better.

I also sketched our friend Joe during our weekly Zoom meeting, also on the Hahnemule Cappuccino and using the Uni Sign Pen. This was a very quick sketch, done it 2-3 minutes, and the sign pen does well with expressive lines.

Now go rummage in your stationery/art supply stash and find something new to play with. It’s guaranteed to make you smile.

Zebra G4-450Gel Retractable Pen Review

Never have I ever fallen in love with a standard pen faster than the Zebra G-450. Even the Uni-ball Signo RT 0.5 took a bit of time until it became my favourite, and I had much less experience with gel ink pens at the time. I liked the Zebra G-450 so much that after writing a few pages with it, I put in an order for two more packs, just so I’ll have backups and multiples of it.

So, what’s so special about this pen?

First of all, the Zebra G-450 looks like it was designed to be a prop in the Jason Bourne movies. It doesn’t have the “I’M A TACTICAL PEN, LOOK AT ALL THE WEAPON LIKE APPLICATIONS YOU CAN GET WITH ME” look of tactical pens. I find that look childish, and I find that it makes for very uncomfortable to write with pens. The G-450 is nothing like that: it’s sleek, features a durable and hefty-without-being-heavy brass body, knurling on the top, a very well designed rubber grip, and very Jason Bourne like fonts.

The G-450 has a well designed and solid clip, with a step down/cutout right in front of it that adds interest to the pen silhouette and makes it easier to clip onto things.

I love the console like fonts in white, and I really love the grip. It isn’t mushy like a silicon grip, but it is softer than the pen body, and with the raised pattern on it, gives you a rock solid grip on the pen. The ring on top of the grip announces that this is gel pen, with a medium (0.7) tip. The pen cone has an extra small taper towards the tip, adding interest and perhaps also helping stabilize the refill. There’s no clicking, jiggling or noise from the tip as you write with the G-450.

The click mechanism is solid. The clicker (is it called that? let’s assume it is) stays extended at all times, even when the tip is engaged, and it has a very satisfying click. There’s a red jewel with Japanese writing in silver on the end cap, and it adds a nice and subtle splash of colour to the pen.

All this is wonderful, but it’s the refill that makes it all sing. It’s dark, super smooth, and it dries almost instantly. Yes, even on Stalogy paper, even on Rhodia and other fountain pen friendly paper, it just dries as soon as you write with it. This is a perfect lefty pen (I’m not a lefty) and it’s perfect for jotting things down in a rush. It will write a bold, clear line, and not smudge.

I sketched a local cafe with the Zebra G-450, on Stillman and Birn Alpha paper. I then “opened” up the lines using a waterbrush, as the the Zebra G-450’s fast drying refill isn’t waterproof (as is to be expected with gel ink pens). The result was a nice greyish purple that you can see on the coffee machine on the right. The coloured graphite was provided by the Derwent Inktense paint set, but that’s a review for a different day. Suffice to say that while the Zebra G-450 isn’t a sketching pen, it will work well as one in a pinch, as long as you like thick lines, and don’t mind it not being waterproof.

Rarely have I encountered a pen that I wholly like after just a day of use. I love the G-450’s aesthetic, its refill and its feel in the hand enough to immediately add it to my daily carry. I used Zebra’s wonderful G-301 pen daily for years, and I can see the G-450 easily replace it on merits of the refill alone. Sometimes a pen just ticks all the boxes for you, and this one clearly does for me. I recommend giving it a try if you possibly can. Who knows, maybe it will become a new favourite for you as well.

Going Shopping in My Stationery Stash: Choosing Keeping Notebook, Eberhard Faber EFA 1000, Tombow Irojiten and Koh-I-Noor Magic Pencil

Over the past 24 hours things have gotten very depressing and very scary here. To distract myself a little bit, I decided to start working on a new project: Going Shopping in My Stationery/Art Supply Stash. I have a lot of stuff. I don’t use enough of the stuff that I have, to the point where I don’t even remember what I have. As I’ve significantly cut down on buying new stationery and art supplies, I’ve decided this would be a good time to go “shopping” for new things to use in whatever it is that I already have.

I bought this fancy looking A5 composition notebook from Choosing Keeping in London this April, after eyeing their gorgeous notebooks the last time that I was there.

Such a great looking notebook. Yes, the cover has gold foil on it.

The endpaper is also very good looking:

Back end paper with the Choosing Keeping bird sticker, and details on the notebook.

The paper is cream and unruled, and the edges of the paper are mottled brown. It is one of the best looking notebooks that I have:

I was planning on using it as a journal, but the paper was an utter disappointment. It is not fountain pen friendly, which really surprised me — the ink spreads and feathers and bleeds through. I could have used a gel ink pen with this notebook, but it somehow seemed incongruous with how fancy and special (and expensive) the notebook is.

So I shelved it and I haven’t touched it in months, until today. My eye caught it as I was looking for a notebook to sketch in, and I remembered that the paper had some tooth and texture to it.

Closeup on the paper and the ink results.

It’s a soft, velvety kind of paper, which made me thing that it might work with pencil quite well. I also had some pencils I wanted to try out, so it seemed like a good opportunity to not let a fancy notebook go to waste.

Enter the pencil that I wanted to try out most: the Eberhard Faber EFA 1000 vintage pencil in 2=B grade. I know, it’s weird. I don’t get it either. 2 is supposed to be HB.
I bought a box of these beauties at during my last visit at Present and Correct, and I’ve been wanting to use them since. They’re made in Germany, the lead is a B grade (slightly softer and darker than HB), very smooth and it retains its point surprisingly long for a soft pencil.

Eberhard Faber… with the Star. I love everything about the design of this pencil and this box.

The pencil comes pre-sharpened, and has an orange and black body that looks a bit like the Staedtler Noris, but in orange instead of yellow. It has “Germany”, “EFA”, “Eberhard Faber”, “EFA 1000” and “2=B” embossed on it silver foil. The fonts used look very futuristic and modern, which makes me think that this is a ‘70’s pencil.

The biggest issue with vintage pencils is the eraser, which is always dried up and completely unusable. For this reason I prefer vintage pencils that don’t have erasers, or better yet, those that have endcaps. Well the EFA 1000 gets lots of bonus points for not only having an endcap, but having a really good looking one. It’s also silver in colour, and it features three rings and a concave top.

I then sat down to create this quick sketch of the latest round of pro-democracy protests. The pencil was a joy to use, and it worked very well on the paper. I was very happy with the feel of them both, and with the sketch results:

Choosing Keeping A5 Composition Notebook and Eberhard Faber EFA 1000 pencil

I added some colour with three Tombow Irojiten coloured pencils and a Koh-I-Noor brown Magic Pencil. The Tombow Itojiten was an utter disppointment. The green pencil crumbled twice, the others were mediocre at best. The Koh-I-Noor was a lot of fun, but brown works best with other coloured pencils layered on top, to give it some life.

Tools used here. Eberhard Faber EFA 1000, Tombow Irojiten, Koh-I-Noor Magic Pencil, Caran d’Ache Design eraser

All in all this first attempt at shopping from my own stationery stash was a success. The EFA 1000 is staying on my desk, I learned things about the Tombow Irojiten (I’m glad I only have three Itojiten pencils and not a box of them), and I got to use a notebook that I’d thought would just gather dust. This is definitely something I will try to do again.

Weekly Update: Reading and Pen Inking

Long time no update, so I decided that it’s about time to write one up.

Reading

I’ve been in a terrible reading rut, and I blame the book that I’m currently reading: “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk, a 912 (!) page historical epic about Jacob Frank and his followers. I’m halfway through, and I’ve decided to put it aside for now and train my brain to enjoy reading again with some lighter and more fun material.

The book itself is masterfully written and researched, with the narrative made out of a carefully pieced together mosaic of characters, voices and narrative styles. I just cannot handle the subject matter right now. As my rights are being taken away by religious, power hungry fanatics, I don’t want to spend my free time reading about religious, power hungry fanatics. It has reached a point where I balk at the idea of reading again, and that’s just not healthy. I hate giving up on books like that, especially good books, but if I want to actually read again and not just beat myself up for not reading, I’m going to have to start reading something else.

Health

I went through a CPET (Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing) last week and it was pretty intense. My lungs aren’t working well in high intensity since my chemo, and so a lung specialist sent me to get this test, to see whether my heart or my lungs are the issue.

It started with a spirometry test (which is a simple test done to check your lung capacity and performance), and then went on to the CPET itself. I was hooked up to an EKG and pre-test measurements were taken. Then I was fitted with a special mask and filter that recorded my air intake and CO2 levels. Finally I was put on a special stationary bike, attached to a blood pressure monitor and a blood oxygen level monitor, and told to pedal without stopping until I felt chest pain or was about to faint, or until I was told to stop. As the technician calmly told me, they have a lot of people fainting during this test, which is why they do it on a bike and not a treadmill. I said it was intense, right?

Anyway, I pedalled for my life, with the bike’s resistance being constantly raised, and me gradually getting out of breath. The point was to see why, so I didn’t stop until the technician stopped me, at which point a little over 10 minutes of constant intense exercise had gone by and I was drenched in sweat and panting. H

ere’s hoping that I get some useful insights from the results. In the meanwhile I’m still running 5 times a week, just not as fast as I would like.

Pens and Ink

I wrote most of my pens dry and filled in a new batch, this time consisting of mostly vintage pens. There are also two expensive pens in this rotation, a few old ink favourites and some completely new to me inks, and a weird selection of colours.

The Henry Simpole Jasmin Pen is one of the most expensive fountain pens I own, and one that doesn’t leave the house because I can never ever replace it. It’s a Conway Stewart button filler with a bouncy 18K gold nib, with silver overlay created by Henry for it. The late Henry’s birthday was on the 4th of July, and so to commemorate him and his work I inked this pen up. I chose the Kyo-iro ink because it’s an interesting dusky purple that I haven’t had enough time with. Like the Jasmine Pen (bought in Portobello Road market), I bought the ink in London (at Choosing Keeping).
The Lamy AL Star isn’t interesting, but the ink in it is new to me. The Graf von Faber-Castell Yozakura is a pale and shading pink that I normally would never have purchased, because it’s so light it’s almost unreadable. It was deeply discounted during the closeout of a local pen shop, and I came in late and had very little to buy to show my support. I probably should have inked a much wider nibbed pen with this, but I have a big bottle of it, so there’s always another time.
In the Mahjon Q1’s case the pen and nib are interesting, the nib is not. This is one of two pens (the other being the Sailor Fude in the end) which I inked solely for sketching purposes. It’s a weirdly shaped pocket eyedropper fountain pen that I bought with a fude (bent) nib. I’ll probably review it at some time in the future.
The Montblanc Victor Hugo was a pen that I bought at the end of last year, during my last visit to Mora Stylos. This was an impulse buy, something that would never have happened if not for the display that Montblanc used to sell this pen. I love the Notre Dame de Paris, I’ve visited her and sketched her many times, and my heart broke when she burnt down. She’s a survivor, and seeing this pen displayed in a diorama of the Notre Dame in all her white glory, I just had to buy it. The ink was a gift that Mr. Mora gave me with the pen.
Parker 51 pens. The cocoa and the teal were all purchases made in the local flea market, and the cocoa is part of a set (with a pencil) and the earliest of the bunch (from 1948, a first generation Aerometric). The teal was in pretty bad shape, and took me a while to flush out. The demonstrator Parker 51 is from Mora Stylos, has a gorgeous stub italic nib, and is likely one of the Argentinian, aftermarket demonstrators. The Parker 51 is my favourite pen, and I have a hard time not buying all of them.
The Pelikan M205 Petrol was a Black Friday purchase, and I haven’t inked it until now. The nib is great, the pen is great, and Iroshizuku Ama-Iro turquoise ink is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Such an optimistic, summery colour.
The Platinums include two Preppy’s that I’m trying out, after being disappointed with their durability in the past. The Plaisir is the pen that’s been inked the longest of the bunch.
The Sailor fude is filled with a new ink to me, the Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black. The ink was purchased in the same closeout sale as the pink Yozakura, and I’m planning on testing it out as a non-waterproof sketching ink.
I wrote the Conklin Lever filler on top dry just as I was planning this post, so it’s here for reference only. I purchased it at Mora Stylos, it’s from 1919 and it’s in user grade condition (cap discolouration, significant brassing, the imprint isn’t in perfect condition). The lever filling mechanism is infuriating to use, both for filling and for cleaning the pen, but there nib is magnificent. It’s a true flex nib, going from medium to triple broad with no effort or railroading, and it’s a joy to use. The fact that I enjoyed it so much, coupled with its tiny ink capacity, meant that it took me about a week to write it dry. I used Waterman Serenity Blue in it, and that ink once again proved its worth in troublesome vintage pens. It’s a great shade of blue that is very pen safe and super easy to clean out of pens (think the opposite to Bay State Blue). A must have for anyone dabbling in vintage pens IMHO.

The pens, from left to right, matching the order of the writing samples with an added guest on top

Other Stuff

I’m working on an adventure for a 30+ tabletop roleplaying convention at the end of the month. I may publish something here about how I write adventures for conventions.

In the meanwhile my D&D 5E game, set in a university like setting and a university town next to it, is progressing nicely. It’s the most complex campaign that I have ever written, but it’s wonderful to see the players rush around in this world, having the time of their lives exploring, interacting and trying to break stuff. D&D is a pure joy and a wonderful escape from the pretty dark reality we live in these days.

Speaking of both dark reality and things that cheer me up:

It’s week 27 of the pro-democracy protests, and we’re still showing up in numbers (that are growing again). It’s great seeing whole families show up, including the dogs, to say no to stripping the judicial branch of its oversight powers.
I’ve been sketching people’s dogs, and it’s a pure delight to try and capture their personality with each sketch. Plus, it’s making people happy, which is a good thing.
I’ve managed to help a few people get back to running, and that’s always a joy. Go get some exercise. Do something you enjoy, and even 10 minutes is enough. As Dr. Jen Gutner says, exercise is like finding money in the street: if you find $10 lying around, you’re not going to leave them there because they aren’t $100. Invest a little in yourself, because you’re worth taking 10 minutes a day for.

London Haul: Fountain Pens and Inks

I was about to write a post about my currently inked pens, when I realized that I hadn’t finished writing up and publishing this post. Such is the state of my blogging backlog that things have been languishing in it since May.

My April London-Paris trip was the first one I made where I had nowhere to buy vintage fountain pens from. Henry the Pen Man (Henry Simpole) had passed away, and Mora Stylos in Paris had closed his shop in the end of December 2022. Would I even buy any fountain pens?

The answer is of course, yes. None of these pens are rare or expensive, but they are fountain pens nonetheless.

The haul: Lamy Joy, Kaweco Sport, Platinum Preppy pens and Platinum ink cartridges, on top of much needed blotting paper.

I had one thing that was a “must buy” for this trip, and I almost didn’t find it: blotting paper. I’m using a Stalogy notebook as my journal these days, and with some juicy ink and nib combinations a piece of blotting paper is necessary. Alas, I was unable to find any in London: not in Choosing Keeping or in Present and Correct or in any bookstore, stationery store or antique/vintage/flea market that I looked in.

Here Paris came to my rescue, with its fabulous Latin Quarter stationery and art supply shops. I found blotting paper, and then got carried away and added a few cheap fountain pens and ink cartridges to my bag.

I already have a Lamy Joy, and they make for great sketching pens, but I wanted one in black and red and to try and sketch with the included 1.5 nib instead of automatically switching it out for a fine or extra fine. There’s a charm to sketches made with bold, thick lines, after all.

The Kaweco Sport in Blueberry was just an impulse buy, because I liked the colour and I have cartridges languishing around that I want to start using. The Platinum Preppies though, there’s a bit of a story there.
I bought a few Platinum Preppies in my very early days with fountain pens, and I purchased o-rings and silicon grease with them, intending to convert them to eye-dropper pens. They all cracked. Immediately. After the first use. One of them was even cracked before I used it.

I’m very gentle with my fountain pens, so I was very disappointed with the plastic quality on these, especially after I learned on the Fountain Pen Network that this was a common occurrence. Well, as I couldn’t care less for the ink cartridges supplied with this pens, I didn’t use them. For me the Platinum Preppy was trash.

Time passed and the Preppy kept getting recommended as a great beginner fountain pen, to my bafflement. It cracks, so why recommend it? Then again, I stopped seeing reports of cracked Preppies. Could Platinum have changed the plastic? Were they all using boring old Platinum blue cartridges and ignoring the cracks?

So when I saw a bunch of Preppies in a Paris art supply store (the wonderful Rougier & Plé) I decided to take a closer look. Wow! They come with purple ink now! And there’s a black ink one too… I decided to give them a try and add a few ink cartridges to my purchase too. The Platinum cartridges are proprietary ones, but I do have a Plaisir, so if all my Preppies crack, I can always use them with the metal-bodied Platinum Plaisir.

I also purchased two Sailor Studio inks at “Choosing Keeping” in London. The Sailor Studio 340 is a calm greyish powder blue and the 743 is an electric purply blue, and I love them both. These are expensive inks, and so they’re a rare treat for me, one that I indulge in rarely.

Ghosts of Planner’s Past: Bullet Journalling

I’ve been putting off writing this post because of all the planning systems I discussed, this Bullet Journalling (BuJo) is such a big topic and the system that I’ve used the most and the longest, apart from GTD. This will be the last post in this series as I’m planning on starting another series of posts on a different “how I use my notebooks” kind of topic. The previous posts are here: Chronodex, Weekly Planners, Daily Planners, Filofax, GTD and Friends.

So, Bullet Journalling was started by Ryder Carroll as a very utilitarian, relatively simple, glorified to do list combined with a calendar and some forward planning. At first glance it looked like another GTD system, and it’s clear that they share a common ancestry. This is the first video that Ryder Carroll published on the topic. He’s using a Moleskine squared large notebook here (he’ll switch to a Leuchtturm once he hears about the brand from the Pen Addict podcast, and he’ll land a collaboration deal with them later on), and there are no Instagram worthy spreads, metaphysical musings on how BuJo can transform you into a more enlightened human being, or attempts to upsell anything. It’s like the early days of Moleskinerie and 43folders posts – a guy finds a way to manage his to do list that works for him, and may work for others and so he shares it. Ryder Carroll knows how to explain complex things succinctly and clearly, and the video is beautifully made. It gained a lot of traction at the time, although it’s clear that Carroll prefers that you don’t watch that version of the BuJo explanation.

This is version of bullet journalling is what I started using, and what I still sort of use to this day. Why sort of use? Well, because the basis of the system is a daily to do list with a monthly calendar (and a monthly review), an index and a set of “collections” which are basically project to do lists. I still use the daily to do list and “collection” lists, so I sort of bullet journal. But I also sort of don’t – because none of this is new or unique. To do lists with checkboxes written out on notebooks, with project lists alongside them? There’s a monster list of those. You can’t get a book deal and a stationery collaboration based on that, right?

The official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal

Wrong. About a year passes from the original video, and Carroll signs a deal with Leuchtturm1917 and suddenly there’s an official Bullet Journal and a new video. Stuff gets added to the system. A future log. A whole set of new symbols instead of checkboxes. There’s an added aura of importance and self improvement sprinkled on top. This system will help you be a better person, not just a more productive one.

The included pamphlet – with a poem about BuJo no less – and sticker sheet

This is where the Bullet Journal system starts taking a problematic turn for me (and others, gathering by the comments to the videos). It starts becoming an Instagram thing. People spend hours making gorgeous, Instagram worthy monthly spreads. They spend money on templates, markers, stickers, and notebook bling for this. There’s an army of BuJo influencers. It’s no longer a “getting things done” system, it’s a “make pretty planner pages” system. Carroll inflates the system’s importance and “holistic” approach more and more. Out of curiosity I bought the second edition of the official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal. My PTSD makes planning a real struggle now, and I was at the point where I was willing to try anything. Well, for quite a bit of money you get an overly thick notebook full of Leuchtturm paper, which is tolerably useful with fountain pens. Don’t expect Tomoe River levels of fountain pen friendliness, as there is spreading, and it doesn’t show off the full properties of all your cool inks. Then again, it’s not really meant for that. There’s also an added 12 (!) page manual about the system and a large sheet of planner stickers (and three ribbon bookmarks). There’s also stuff printed on the end papers that shows you how you can divide the dot grid page using the supplied markings. If you create tables often, I guess it’s useful. What I mostly feel using it is that it’s a lot.

Have you ever tried to write an essay using Microsoft Word? Have you ever been able to do that without futzing with the formatting, the alignment, the spacing, etc? Word is a program created with printing in mind, and it shows. Writing applications like Scrivener supply you with full screen blank canvases that contain zero formatting prompts because that’s how you get the actual writing done. What the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal does is give you all the tools you need to distract yourself from actually planning your stuff as quickly and efficiently as possible so you can move on to get them done. It’s full of calls to design pages, and I had a hard time at first training my brain to ignore the noise that the notebook came with. Ignore the wide margins, the little division markings, the pages with titles, the stickers and the pamphlet.

But back to the Bullet Journal system itself: stripped of its self-importance and its need to preen for Likes and Favs, is it still useful as a planning system?

Let’s take a look at it part by part:

Index – I didn’t keep one. I think I might have tried this during the first month, but I gave up quickly on this. It’s too much hassle for very little gain. How many times a month do you actually need to find something in your notebook, and when do you not just flip through it? There were many GTD systems with indexes and indexing systems, and I never found the indexes useful.
Monthly log – I keep a version of this separately on a small “Rebel Plans” pad from the Well Appointed Desk. It contains a monthly calendar that’s shaped like a calendar (and not a list of days), with important days in the month circled in a different colour, with basic monthly goals and big monthly milestones/events marked on it. I keep it before my eyes constantly as I work, and so having it tucked away in a notebook doesn’t work for me. I also find listing on paper the events of the day for the entire month a waste of time. That’s what digital calendars are for, and they’re much better than paper ones for it.
Future log – a new invention made for the official bullet journal notebook. I tried using it and found it to be useless for me. If you want true long term goal tracking, I suggest you try the theme system journal or something of the kind.
Daily log – this is the heart of the system, and it works because it’s a to do list. See also my post about GTD. I fluctuate between using the dash-plus annotation system and simple checkboxes, but you can use whatever works for you, of course. The important part is, of course, defining your tasks properly – actionable, doable in a short amount of time, and something that you can and should be doing.
Reflections – these are just a rebranding of GTD reviews. These work well if you do them, but it’s been my experience that it’s very easy to stop doing them because who wants to review what you didn’t get to complete as planned?

So there’s good stuff in Bullet Journal if you are able to strip it down from its anxiety inducing beauty contest trends. The question is, will you be able to ignore all the Bullet Journal page design noise and make use of this as a pragmatic planning system, or will you get carried away and start decorating pages and comparing monthly spreads with people who do this for a living, as you buy yet another template and another BuJo perfect pen? I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.

Three ribbon bookmarks and divider markings closeup. You can also see the white margin all around the dot grid page.

Franklin Christoph x Stilo e Stile 03 Sparkling Rock

This review has been languishing in my drafts for the past two months, as life (and particularly work) has gotten so hectic. As I wrote the Franklin Christoph x Stilo e Stile 03 Sparkling Rock dry today, I thought that it was about time to finish this review and publish it.

I don’t write much about packaging since I don’t care much for it, unless it is clearly overdone and something that unnecessarily added to the price. Franklin Christoph’s packaging is one of my favourites as the outer box is simple and elegant enough to be sent as a gift to someone, without being flashy. But what makes it even better is that many of their pens come with a pen pouch. These pouches are fantastic, and the one that I got features a velvety interior that protects the pens from scratches, and a grey, denim-y like external fabric that I really like.

This collaboration between Franklin Christoph and Italian pen store Stilo e Stile is a model 3 pen with a gorgeous black, white and green resin with chatoyance, sparkle and a great deal of depth to it. Photos flatten it out and do it no justice. It’s a breathtaking material.

I purchased an extra-fine nibbed pen, and used it for writing and a bit of sketching using the Sailor Studio 224. The 224 grows a bit darker with time, but still features a lot shading and some gorgeous dual colouring. I was worried that it would be too light to be readable, but that was not the case.

Pen and Ink: Sailor Studio 224 ink sample written with the 03 Sparkling Rock

I have a few Franklin Christoph pens and I love the pens that they make, but this is the first Franklin Christoph pen that I have that has a pen clip. So while the model 03 is as well made and well balanced as the other Franklin Christoph’s I’ve tried, I did notice that the finial above the clip had a tendency to screw itself a bit loose sometimes. It never got to the point where it screwed off and got lost, and I doubt that it will, so it wasn’t really an issue, just something that I noticed. The clip is secured to the cap with a screw, and is robust and springy, and completely unaffected by the state of the finial.

Closeup on the finial and clip. My camera has issues with photographing the pen material.

This is the Sparkling Rock 03 as I used it, uncapped and unposted (you can technically post it, but I don’t see why as it’s long enough and clearly better balanced to be written unposted), and it is perfectly sized to be comfortable for long writing sessions. Unless you grip your pen with your fingers right on top of the nib, the two ridges in the end won’t bother you. I found them useful as they helped me position my hand better.

The nib unit is a standard number 6 nib, and screws out easily, for both cleaning and swapping out. The pen itself, like all Franklin Christophes, is a cartridge-converter, and comes with a good quality converter.

This brings me to the reason for this review: in a pen market that features ever increasing limited-editions in ever increasing prices, Franklin Christoph offers a refreshing alternative. You can go to their website, find a variety of pen shapes in a variety of resins, know that you are getting a very good quality pen that will be a breeze to clean and maintain, and in many cases to convert to an eyedropper if you so please. And the prices aren’t eye watering. You can even splurge on an interesting nib grind, allow yourself to experiment a little, knowing that in the worst case you can easily swap out a nib on your own. It’s the ultimate fountain pen for those venturing out of the beginner pen group and wanting to experience something better, without paying gold nib prices or going the vintage route. It’s also very tempting to collect more and more of them, as you try out different shapes, sizes and resins, which explains why there are quite a few members in the 50th pen club (after buying 49 FCs you get the 50th, personalized, and for free).

London Haul: Carrying Cases and Standard Pens

I’m working on my backlog of posts after about a month of hiatus (work and health related) so here’s a look into more of my haul from my latest London trip.

Muji happened to have a sale on its standard pen sets, so I bought a pouch of these 0.38 gel pens (I think that Zebra makes their refills but I’m not sure) to have around. There are 10 pens in the set, and my plan is to bring them into the office to have them around as occasional highlighters, pens to doodle with or pens to loan with no expectations of seeing them again.

The red Olfa Touch Knife was an impulse buy and is the thing I use most from this bunch. I used it while gift wrapping books, I used it to open packages, and I’m using it now to open Lego bags for my current build (the large Disney Castle). This is a nifty and handy little tool and I’ll probably buy another one at some point as a backup.
The bronze paper clip is just a nicer version of the clip that I use to keep my pocket Stillman and Birn Alphas shut, as they don’t come with any kind of elastic closure.

The gold bics are from Present and Correct and they made me laugh. I plan on giving one away to a designed friend, in the hopes that it will make her laugh too. I used to use them so much when I was a teenager (before gel ink pens became widely available) and I hated them so much that having a gold one is just beyond perfect.

The black and yellow pen is the Bauhaus edition of the Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint. It’s a twist mechanism aluminium and brass hexagonal ballpoint pen that comes with a blue refill. I reviewed the gel ink version (identical apart from the refill) here. I purchased this pen in London Graphic Centre near Seven Dials/Covent Garden, and it was completely an impulse buy. Should you buy one yourself? If you’re in need of a pocketable ballpoint that doesn’t use a click mechanism, then maybe. Ergonomically it’s not the best for long writing sessions, and the twist mechanism doesn’t make it great for quick deployment, so there are better options in the market. The design is very fetching, and if you like it you might be willing to overlook the pen’s shortcomings. The Bauhaus edition was created as a companion to Leuchtturm’s Bauhaus notebooks.

I bought the Drehgriffel ballpoint to accompany the Drehgriffel mechanical pencil that I bought at the same time. The pencil is fire engine red and grey with silver trim, and the pen is black and yellow with brass trim, and the pencil is slightly heavier than the pen, though they’re both the same size.

I also got two carrying cases, one a blue Cordura pen case from Midori. The case is called the two way pouch, and it appears very well made.

The pouch is divided into two identical compartments (hence the name) each with a small divider/pocket inside. It also has a prominent and robustly built handle. I am considering using this pen case for my Caran d’Ache neocolors, but we’ll see.

The second case is a heavily discounted net pouch from Muji. This is going into my travel backpack as a way to keep easily lost bits and bobs together and easily found.

The net is just on one side of the case, which is perfect, as it allows you to see what’s inside the pouch and also have this little bag have some sort of body and structure to it due to the solid side.

The solid side of the Muji case next to the Drehgriffel pencil and pen.

I also bought a solid plastic box for the my neocolors at Muji, but I decided not to use if for them in the end. It was too small for them and they rattled around in it and made a racket every time I walked, and I didn’t like that.

All in all this was probably my most “impulse buy” bit of the trip, and I’m OK with that. Compared to previous years I’ve really toned down my “must try all the pens in the world to find just the perfect one!” tendencies. If you’re reading this I assume that you can relate.
Now to just use it all…

London Haul: Books

While I’ve really cut down on physical book purchases, especially while I’m abroad, I always end up buying a few books, and this last trip was no different. On Thursdays there’s a decent antique market in Spitalfields (it also includes several food carts and a good selection of vintage clothes stalls, plus it’s a few minutes away from Brick Lane), and I oftentimes find interesting things there. I’ll likely write a separate post about my haul there, but I did get three Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons series books: We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea”, “The Big Six” and “The Picts and the Martyrs”. They’re hardbacks in decent condition, with the dust jackets and the original Ransome illustrations, and I’m very glad that I found them half hidden in a comics and book stall. Ransome is an excellent British children’s book author, and if you liked the Famous Five and the Secret Seven or Kipling’s children’s book writing you’ll likely enjoy Ransome’s work.

The other two books are paperbacks that I bought at Waterstone’s Piccadilly while waiting for a friend (I’m not to be trusted in bookstores). I’ve been wanting to read something by Lawrence Durrell for a long time and “White Eagles Over Serbia” seems like a good place to start. J.L. Carr is a superb writer, and although I’m not sold on “How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup”‘s subject matter, “A Month in the Country” was good enough for me to want to give this a try.

I still have April’s book backlog to finish reading, but these two books are next on my list.

London Haul: Pencils

While I was in London I went to Present and Correct and purchased mostly woodcase pencils (and some paraphernalia). Here’s a breakdown of what I got there and why:

Blackwing Eras – I also purchased the previous Eras pencils from Present and Correct. These are very expensive (and overpriced) but after hemming and hawing I decided to splurge. These have the extra firm Blackwing core, which I enjoy writing and sketching with, with a little bit of zing with the nostalgic arrow punch design. I have a project in mind for them, and will feature them in a separate post them.
Eberhard Faber pencils. These are vintage, and I’ll post a review of them separately, but they are gorgeous and I love vintage pencils, so these were the first thing that I got once I saw them.
Musgrave Tennessee Red – I have several boxes of these, and yet I got another one. These pencils are gorgeous, and they’re great for both writing and sketching. Some people find their corners too sharp and prefer the rounds, but I’ve yet to obtain the round Tennessee Reds, so I can’t compare between them. I wrote a review of them here.
Mitsu-Bishi 9850 and 9852 – Japanese pencils. The 9850 is for “office use” and the 9852 is a “master writing” pencil. I have only one or two 9850s and I wanted a pack because they are excellent pencils. I haven’t tried the 9852s I think, and anything with that wild green and pink package with “master writing” on it is a must.
Loose USSR vintage pencils and graphite stick – I got these as a gift for my purchase at Present and Correct, together with the…
Faber Castell Goliath – a wide barrelled vintage, USA bonded pencil that was meant for school children just learning to write.

Woodcased pencil haul (and one graphite stick – the one to the immediate left of the Goliath)

I also got a set of salmon coloured Japanese pencil sharpeners there – I have another two sets that I bought there and enjoyed – one that I’ve gifted and one that I regularly use. There are surprisingly few pencil sharpeners of this kind that are actually good, and these are very convenient for my sketching kits as they are small and light.

I also got two mechanical pencils, one from London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden, and one from Gibert Joseph in Paris:

Sharpener set and two mechanical pencils

The top pencil is the Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 2 mechanical pencil (purchased at London Graphic Centre). I will be writing a review of it once I get to use it a bit more, but for now I’ll just say that it’s an attractive desk object.

The bottom pencil is the rotring 600 in camouflage green. It’s the rotring 600 – one of the best drafting pencils out there – and the colour is a dark racing green that makes it look black upon casual glance. I bought this pen at Gibert Joseph in Paris and was about to go for the red rotring 600 when I realized that what I had thought was a standard black rotring 600 was indeed the green one. The colour is difficult to reproduce, but I find it fetching and intriguing, so I’m glad that I went for it instead of its red or blue counterparts.

Overall I’m happy with my purchases, and can’t wait to start using them.

Writing at Large

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