Campus vs Traveler's blank monthly calendars (size comparison)

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:00 pm
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This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


Back to school! As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve decided to use September as my “new year” because it works well with my kid’s school stuff. So it’s time to bid farewell to last year’s calendar, and set up a fresh one! I’m moving from the Traveler’s Notebook free monthly calendar to the KOKUYO Campus one, mostly because the latter is a bit bigger. (Spoiler: the squares are about 18% bigger.)





Last year’s calendar was a Traveler’s Notebook blank monthly calendar. I love the idea of the system of inexpensive refill notebooks and accessories in a planner cover that stays with you, but I wasn’t sure the slimmer form factor was going to work for me.





Traveler's Notebook blank monthly calendar with stickers on the front and a zippered pouch attached to the back cover. The biggest sticker is a shiny aurora over a mountain. On the upper left there is a smaller sticker of a fox-person sitting in lotus position with the caption "breathe" and in the upper right corner there is a sticker with a cat sleeping beside a witch had with the caption "today is a good day for getting cozy"
Traveler’s Notebook blank monthly calendar with stickers on the front and a zippered pouch attached to the back cover. The biggest sticker is a shiny aurora over a mountain. On the upper left there is a smaller sticker of a fox-person sitting in lotus position with the caption “breathe” and in the upper right corner there is a sticker with a cat sleeping beside a witch had with the caption “today is a good day for getting cozy”




Overall, I thought it was a great little calendar. I liked the textured cardstock cover, and I liked the whole setup even more when I picked up the zippered pouch that I have attached to the back cover and use for stickers.









Traveler's notebook with plastic zipper pouch accessory attached to the back. In this photo it's flipped open so you can see the sticker sheets I have stuck in there.
Traveler’s notebook calendar with plastic zipper pouch accessory attached to the back. In this photo it’s flipped open so you can see the sticker sheets I have stuck in there.




I particularly liked this format when travelling this summer, when I decided to use the blank back pages I hadn’t used for testing pens as the place for travel journal entries rather than dragging my regular A5 journal around with me. The tall-thin format is pleasantly easy to pull out of a bag.





Traveler's notebook calendar with zippered pouch accessory attached to back cover. This shows the loose stickers I have in the pouch.
Traveler’s notebook calendar with zippered pouch accessory attached to back cover. This shows the loose stickers I have in the pouch.




But when I’m *not* out of the house (which is most of the time) the calendar is just a little small. I use my monthly calendars for tracking a bunch of things, and while some days there’s enough space, that’s not true of all days when I have more stuff I want to record. I’ve also found that a lot of my favourite “small” stickers that I use as habit trackers take up a lot of space. (The dogs below were marking days that I’d spent time writing.)





A peek inside my calendar showing fairly full calendar squares including some tracking runes, dog stickers, washi tape (marking longer events) and a note marking my last day at Intel.
A peek inside my calendar showing fairly full calendar squares including some tracking runes, dog stickers, washi tape (marking longer events) and a note marking my last day at Intel.




Since I already use an A5 notebook for my journal, I decided I might as well match it for the calendar this year. Honestly I wanted to do that last year but a lot of the A5 options are Monday start and I thought that might be annoying when Sunday start is the more common format around here. The Traveler’s refill lets you fill in your own days of week. But this year I’m just gonna lean into Monday start. I conceptually like it better so I’ve changed my phone and stuff and we’ll see if I start having off-by-one errors.





So my new calendar for the 2025-2026 school year is a KOKUYO Campus Diary Free Schedule monthly calendar. I should note that although this is a blank calendar, the year overview pages are Jan-Dec still so … I dunno, I guess I could cover the labels or just start in the middle, but I apparently barely used those overview pages last year so I’m guessing it’ll just remain blank or I’ll doodle on it or something. While the book itself is clearly bigger, the layout is such that each day’s square is a bit shorter but wider.





Here’s some size comparisons:





The KOKUYO Campus blank monthly calendar with the Traveler's Notebook blank monthly calendar sitting on top. The Campus notebook is noticably wider and the squares are bigger, altough not as much as they might be since the Campus design leaves some blank space around the edge and the Traveler's does not.
The KOKUYO Campus blank monthly calendar with the Traveler’s Notebook blank monthly calendar sitting on top. The Campus notebook is noticeably wider and the squares are bigger, although not as much as they might be since the Campus design leaves some blank space around the edge and the Traveler’s does not.




I did some measuring too:





Measurements comparing the squares in the Campus blank monthly calendar to the Traveler's one. Numbers in post below this image.
Measurements comparing the squares in the Campus blank monthly calendar to the Traveler’s one. Numbers in post below this image.





  • Traveler’s Calendar: 27mm wide by 33mm tall (total 891mm squared)




  • Campus calendar: 34mm wide by 31mm tall (total 1054mm squared)





So the Campus notebook squares are about 18% bigger, I guess. I don’t know yet if that’ll be enough, but I’m unlikely to start carrying around anything bigger than an A5 notebook so if this doesn’t work out I’ll likely have switch to a weekly planner for at least some of my tracking. My calendar seldom leaves the house but I carry it from room to room and into the backyard in my knitting bag, and A5 is my preferred size for that.





The Campus notebook is cheap enough that it won’t be a tragedy if I bail on it part way through the year. It looks like I paid $5.50 for the Campus one and $11 for the Traveler’s one, so it’s half the cost but also neither of them is exactly going to break the bank. And yes, I did intentionally buy this earlier in the year to help me resist getting too curious about fall planner launches.





The cover is considerably less nice (thin enough that I will need a flat surface or pencil board to write in this, no pleasant texture) but I have a cover for A5 notebooks that should compensate for the thin cover, and I already own several pencil boards that I use with my current journal, so neither of those is deal breakers at this moment.





Campus Monthly free Diary cover. It's grey and has a picture of some calendar squares on it.
Campus Monthly free Diary cover. It’s grey and has a picture of some calendar squares on it.




I’m also curious to see how I like the Campus paper. It’s supposedly decent enough for fountain pens, and although I only use those for date numbers currently, I’ll be using the pages in the back of the calendar for ink testing. I’m curious to see how I like it, mostly for the fun of testing a different paper. Although they do have a lot of other cute paper products geared at students that are quite reasonably priced, and I’m never sad to have options.





Some things that did work well this year:






  • Thin washi tape for marking longer blocks of vacation and events. I love the way it looks even if it takes up a few precious mm of space.




  • Sticker “rewards” for habits. I’m amused by how much more rewarding these are than drawing tracking icons.




  • Switching to pencil for calendar writing. I tried pen for a while but didn’t love it.




  • Getting a pen shaped eraser so it fits in my pencil case better.




  • Getting a pencil board and using it also as a bookmark so my calendar always opened to the right page.




  • The zipper pouch for stickers.





I may keep the zipper pouch for stickers even though it won’t be stuck on a notebook any more (I mean, I could, but I’m going to try having both A5 notebooks in a single cover so it would be kind of in the way).





I haven’t actually written in the new calendar yet (I’ll be setting it up on labour day and I’m writing this the night before it posts) but I’m excited to try it out!

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Pelikan Twist: my new favourite fountain pen for shimmer ink

Aug. 25th, 2025 02:00 pm
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This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


I mentioned back in June that shimmer inks had been giving me trouble. But I’ve found a new solution! the Pelikan Twist.





I own a few of the cheaper pens that people said worked for them, and the one that had been giving me the least trouble had been the TWSBI Swipe. But even “least trouble” meant that I could use the pen, but it felt like it was getting a shimmer particle stuck somewhere on the regular, so I’d have skipping and low ink flow and the whole thing felt scratchy and annoying to use. You can kind of see it in my journal writing:





A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in teh paper where the pen was giving me trouble.
A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in the paper where the pen was giving me trouble.




Note that this ink *is* shimmery but I couldn’t get an angle of light that showed the paper dents and the shimmer at the same time so you’re not seeing much of it in these writing samples. This is on white Clairfontaine paper in my current journal.





Someone on mastodon (sorry, I forget who but it might have been [profile] paradoxmo?) mentioned that they liked Pelikan for shimmer inks, but the ones they used were pretty pricey. But I had a Pelikan Twist I’d bought ages ago. So I wanted to know would the feed take shimmer as well as their more expensive pens? I can’t answer that because I don’t have any of those, but I can tell you that it’s worlds better than the TWSBI Swipe, or any of the other pens I’d gotten in search of the One True Shimmer Pen for my collection.





Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn't working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents.
Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn’t working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents.




I don’t know if the photos convey how different the writing experience is between these two pens. The TWSBI Swipe feels most often like I’m writing with a mechanical pencil: lots of feedback, very scratchy. It also tends to get finicky about angles. It’s not consistent: I think it’s happening when a particle gets stuck somewhere, so it’ll write fine for a word and then just choke. But basically it works beautifully for a day or two and then it feels like it’s running out of ink half the time.





The Pelikan Twist on the other hand, writes like, well, a fountain pen, even with the same shimmer ink. It’s smooth and the ink flows consistently. I can leave the pen for a few days without having to run the nib under the tap to get it going again. It is everything I wanted out of the writing experience but had never been able to achieve when using shimmer inks in any pen.





Pelikan Twist pen in red. It's a pen shaped like a long trianglular "tube" with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3.
Pelikan Twist pen in red. It’s a pen shaped like a long trianglular “tube” with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3.




I’m really pleased, but also confused: lots of people love the TWSBI pens for shimmer, and I have 3 of them all of which eventually did the same half-clog thing. None of my other pens fared better, including the Wing Sung 698 I’d bought especially for this purpose. (To be fair, that one had other problems so I may have just gotten a bad one.) I still don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if I’m just significantly more picky about my writing experience. The former is entirely possible, the latter seems unlikely given how fountain pen users are. I am rolling the pen periodically to keep the shimmer moving as I write, and making sure the ink bottle is shaken so the shimmer is suspended in the ink before I fill the pen.





For all that I now love it, the Pelikan Twist is a weird pen. I think it cost me about $20 and only came in medium (which is fine, I like medium). I had some trouble finding a converter that actually fit it. The internet said it should fit a standard international converter but nothing I had on hand worked; thankfully the fine folk at Jetpens have more precise recommendations so I picked up something from them and it’s great. (I could also hae refilled the cartridge that came with it, but I like converters better.) I will say that the plastic on my Twist is already kind of dinged up (if you look closely in the photos you can see some grey areas), probably from when I carried my pens around in a pencil case that didn’t keep them separated.





Pelikan Twist pen in red with teh cap off to show the triangular grip section, which continues in line with the twisted pen body.
Pelikan Twist pen in red with teh cap off to show the triangular grip section, which continues in line with the twisted pen body.




Unfortunately, the reason this pen never made it into regular rotation when I bought it to try many months ago (because it looked weird and was on sale) is that I don’t love the feel of the triangle grip. It’s not unbearable, just slightly off from what I find most comfortable. This got it most often relegated to “to do list pen” for months while I used up the cartridge, then got it forgotten in the pen cup until my shimmer problems made me pull it out.





But even *with* a grip that doesn’t perfectly suit me, it’s worlds better with shimmer ink than any other pen I own, and I’m really happy because this means the Diamine Inkvent inks I’d been struggling to use now have a dedicated pen and will be coming out significantly more often than they would have if I’d had to use a dip pen with them.





Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there's also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page.
Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there’s also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page.




I should note that it’s not *all* shimmer inks that give me these headaches. I’ve been having a delightful time with the KWZ All That Glitters inks in pretty much any pen I try. But my ink collection is very small so it’s pretty dominated by last year’s Inkvent calendar at the moment. Still, the problem was bad enough that I’d been refusing to buy other shimmer inks and had taken the Diamine inkvent 2025 calendar off my plans for this year because I didn’t want to pile up more inks I could barely use.





Anyhow, I’m very happy with discovering that even this cheap Pelikan pen has a feed that takes shimmer better than anything else I own! But I will admit that it made me go look at other Pelikan pens and of course I feel in love with one that’s considerably more expensive and limited edition to boot. I can’t really *blame* companies for making money and no one manufactures exactly the same thing forever, but this hobby can be a bit much with the special editions to keep you buying. Ugh!

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Forgot a new thing!

Aug. 5th, 2025 02:00 pm
terriko: (Default)
This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


A book nook built from a kit. It's a diaorama showing a train going over a river with shops and cherry blossoms, and it has been lit up with leds placed inside the diorama.
A book nook built from a kit. It’s a diaorama showing a train going over a river with shops and cherry blossoms, and it has been lit up with leds placed inside the diorama.




In my previous post about fiber goals I’d claimed not to have done anything new in July, but I forgot I made a book nook! It’s not apparent from the photo but it’s sized to fit on a bookshelf.





This was a kit I bought online a year or two ago. I did decided some of the pieces needed extra glue because the friction fits were not sufficient. But other than that, it was pretty simple and relaxing to put together over a couple of days.





Not going to be a new hobby since this is the only kit I bought for myself, but it was nice to do something different!





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Fiber Goals 2025 mid-year check-in

Aug. 2nd, 2025 02:00 pm
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This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


This year’s goals were as follows:






  1. Revisit Old Goals




  2. Try Something New




  3. Something Stash Something




  4. Game Design





We’re a bit more than halfway through the year so let’s see where we’re at!





Revisit Old Goals





Started strong in January by finishing up a rainbow shawl that had been on the needles for quite some time:





A rainbow bias knit shawl/wrap of my own design.
A rainbow bias knit shawl/wrap of my own design.




I’d intended to release the pattern since I had an old goal about writing patterns but… honestly, I haven’t felt like it, and I focused my time on other stuff that was bringing me joy. But I have a bunch of pattern notes and a bit more time right now so I may publish what I have without bothering to polish it.





February I worked on an old Beanie Bag kit from Jimmy Beans Wool that spanned 3 months. It was… honestly kind of boring and the pattern had a bunch of mistakes/confusing bits, but I finished one month’s worth and will likely do the other two at some point.





The first part of the Textures of Nevada Shawl that was part of a Jimmy Beans Wool kit subscription some years back.
The first part of the Textures of Nevada Shawl that was part of a Jimmy Beans Wool kit subscription some years back.




March-April-May I finally got around to knitting Wingspan, which was on my “something famous” goal plan but I never made it. It was a pleasant knit once I got into the swing of things, but by the time I finished it was too warm to wear it here so I haven’t really gotten pictures! Here’s one from before it was blocked, though:





Wingspan shawl knit in a gradient yarn that goes from burgundy to red to orange. It has no been blocked so it looks a bit lumpy and smaller than the final product looks.
Wingspan shawl knit in a gradient yarn that goes from burgundy to red to orange. It has no been blocked so it looks a bit lumpy and smaller than the final product looks.




June I took a break from old goals (and focused on writing).





July I pulled out some gradient balls and made socks for my mom’s birthday (a bit early because the timing worked out), plus I did tour de fleece stuff.





Blue/green/yellow-green gradient socks using the Affixed pattern from Shoreland Socks by Hunter Hammersen.
Blue/green/yellow-green gradient socks using the Affixed pattern from Shoreland Socks by Hunter Hammersen.




Overall, A+ on revisiting old goals. I have a couple more “use kits from stash” ideas but I may otherwise declare this particular goal complete and focus on some other stuff.





Try Something New





January started strong with me working on a hexagon blanket, which I’m still working on between other projects.





February I tried assigned pooling and made the “Shard” shawl by Romi Hill. It was fun and I’ll likely do other assigned pooling patterns!





Me modeling my Shard shawl (pattern by Romi Hill) knit in Chemknits yarn from valentines day 2024. It's a red shawl with purple "shards" from assigned pooling.
Me modelling my Shard shawl (pattern by Romi Hill) knit in Chemknits yarn from valentines day 2024. It’s a red shawl with purple “shards” from assigned pooling.




March-April-May I worked on Wingspan for the old goals and didn’t bother doing new stuff.





June again was a break from all knitting goals. (I was writing instead.)





July was mostly finishing up work/travel and I didn’t feel like learning something new.





There’s probably some more to be done here but… honestly, I’m not sure this goal is playing well with my burnout? I’ve got some tentative plans for learning some bookbinding in August if my kid is amenable so that might be up next. But I think I may just focus on finishing up the hex blanket rather than pushing myself to come up with new things to do if I’m not feeling it. So this goal may be as complete as it’s getting unless something fun occurs to me.





Stash Something Stash / Write more





I’d planned to run some kind of stash-focused event about appreciating what you have (as opposed to feeling guilty about what you have, a common vibe in a lot of “use your stash” events) and I got as far as coming up with a nice list of prompts and ideas. But then I realized that… I didn’t actually want to run it. I was burned out on social media and wanted to spend less time on my phone. So I’ve declared this goal as complete as it’s going to be. The prompts will keep if I decide I want to run things later.





That said, I replaced this goal that no longer fit with a goal of “Write more” instead since it was what was bringing me joy and it deserved some focus and time.





I’ve done a bit more writing for this blog but the biggest part of my writing this year has been fanfic since I’m having fun. I joined a discord to hang out with other writers in my current fandom of choice and I took part in a prompt challenge (which is why I didn’t knit as much in June-July so I could write). I’m now over the 40k “that’s a novel’s worth” of words since January and I’m pretty delighted with myself.





There’s something deeply satisfying in the current economic environment about making something that is basically non-monetizable put on a website run by a nonprofit (that I donated to!) and my output only serves to make strangers/new friends happy. And I definitely made a bunch of people happy! (Including my kid, who helped with some ideas in one of my stories.) Also I’m amused that my existing community of open source people and my new community of fan writers are somewhat similar and overlapping nerds. Not a surprise that people who share their creative outputs for free have some similarities but it’s still a delight.





I expect I’ll keep writing through the end of the year (and beyond but this post is about 2025 goals). I’ll probably join another challenge or two but even if I don’t do more than finish my current story in progress, I feel like this replacement goal has been met *and* it’s brought me a lot more joy than the original goal. And these goals have always been about finding time for things that bring me joy!





Game Design





It took waaaaay too long to get approval from work saying that my silly games weren’t going to conflict with my job at which point I was so frustrated with my boss for other reasons that I was intentionally trying to get put in the layoff pool (and I succeeded). But the end result is that I haven’t actually *done* any games stuff beyond a bit of helping my kid learn Scratch programming for his robot. I’m not replacing this goal because I still want to make games, but I haven’t figured out an actual plan yet so that’s on my list for part 2 of the year. So far I’ve got my personal laptop set up a bit better for game work (attached it to the kvm with my big screen and mouse) and I think I might aim to play around with some existing frameworks and make silly things with my kid as a goal for August.





More Thoughts





It turns out this year it hasn’t been *fiber* that was really keeping me happy. I mean, I still knit/spin/whatever but it’s writing and video games that have helped me cope with the burnout and grief (particularly from losing a friend earlier this year, but there’s grief tied up in climate and politics right now too). The fact that fiber wasn’t the perfect solution for this type of burnout makes sense because I needed something that engaged more of my brain and took me away from worrying about geopolitics/work/my deceased friend. I knit to focus my brain but when my brain is spiralling that’s not the right thing to do. I do knit-and-write-in-my-head a lot so it’s compatible with what works to distract me, at least, but fiber hasn’t been as much of a focus for a few months and I’m not sure if that’s going to change. I am wondering if I should stop calling these “fiber goals” next year so I can encompass some other hobbies, though.





With work as a stressor out of the way for now but more “international move” and “find a new job” stress coming, I’m intending to just roll with what works for these goals in the second half of the year. I *am* really enjoying using my fiber and stationary stashes now that I’m trying not to spend so much money — past me bought some lovely stuff and now I have time to use it. I think doing some game stuff is going to be fun when I sit down and start playing. And I’m really enjoying writing fanfic in a way that I haven’t in a long time, so I’m happy to keep leaning into that too. Last time I was involved in a fandom I presented as an artist, and writing is a different experience, and I’m loving it so much.

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Fountain Pens for Summer Travel

Jul. 27th, 2025 02:00 pm
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This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


I’m on a trip!





My travel stationary: a Travelers Notebook monthly undated calendar with a plastic zippered pocket thing attached for holding stickers, two fountain pens and a writing board that matches the calendar. On the right is a red pencil case that opens flat which is currently holding a vial of ink, a zippered plastic bag with a paper towel and pipette in it, a pair of thin washi tapes, and a mechanical pencil (pikachu themed)
My travel stationary: a Travelers Notebook monthly undated calendar with a plastic zippered pocket thing attached for holding stickers, two fountain pens and a writing board that matches the calendar. On the right is a red pencil case that opens flat which is currently holding a vial of ink, a zippered plastic bag with a paper towel and pipette in it, a pair of thin washi tapes, and a mechanical pencil (pikachu themed)




I don’t travel as much as I used to, so I think this is the first time I’ve brought a vacuum filling pen on a plane. I picked up a Nahvalur Original Plus last year when I was collecting a bunch of different fountain pens mostly to see what would stick.





This is a nice pen. I really love that the sparkles in the black parts are rainbow iridescent, which definitely sparks joy when I use it even though it’s not easy to photograph. I got a stub nib in it because I love the way it forces me to write with a bit more care to get something a bit more elegant. The wider nib might not have been the best choice for travel but I rarely get much time to write on my journeys nowadays so I’m not concerned about using a full tank of ink or too much paper, and I’ve shifted to using a pencil with my calendar so this is just for journal entries. So I guess the only downside for me personally is that I can’t use it as easily with cheaper pocket notebooks, I guess? It didn’t seem like enough reason to choose a smaller nib. The stub in this pen feels a bit less forgiving than some of the others in my collection when it comes to writing at different angles and starting on an up-stroke, but I can train myself on that.





A close up of my Nahvalur Original Plus fountain pen in the "Lovina Graphite" colour which has a clear ink resevoir and black cap/ends that have rainbow sparkles in them.
A close up of my Nahvalur Original Plus fountain pen in the “Lovina Graphite” colour which has a clear ink resevoir and black cap/ends that have rainbow sparkles in them.




No leaks on the plane, as expected. I’ll see how I feel about it after more trips, but so far I think it’s what I was hoping for as far as a travel option.





That said, it’s not really a favourite pen for regular use because it holds too much ink! I’ve been rotating my pens and inks monthly and this pen will last a lot longer than that, so once I put something in it I have to kind of work around that in my colour planning or handle the longer process of cleaning it. Good thing the vacuum mechanism is fun, but I have come to accept that this pen is probably not the best fit for me. Still, it is convenient for travel and I’m not sad to have bought it. This time it’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo which is at least an ink I love to use so it won’t be too bad to make a dent in it before I get tired of it and clean out the pen.





Since I normally switch between 2-4 colours in a month mostly to keep me engaged and also to make it easier to see where the days switch in my journal, I decided to bring a second pen. This trip’s choice was a Kaweco Sport with a medium nib, because it’s small, has a very small converter, and it’s very easy to clean, so I could bring it with a sample vial of ink and clean it out before flying home. Easy peasy! I didn’t love this pen at first because it didn’t sit well in my previous pen case, but it’s been good in this new one and the tiny converter has worked out really well for my usage patterns of late where I’m writing in my journal a bit less (on account of writing more fiction, mostly). This time I brought another Pilot Iroshizuku ink to go with it, Ama Iro. I wanted something without sheen or shimmer to make life easy.





The Kaweco Sport has become among my favourite pens to clean because the converter is so easy, and sometimes my kid will even clean it for me if he’s bored and on the hunt for something. It’s not a screw, so it’s very quick to push it in and out. This is the older style of converter and it’s slightly easier to clean than the folding one but they’re both fairly easy you just have to be a bit more careful with the folding version. I’m actually tempted to get a shiny blue Liliput or one of the AL sport pens because I love shiny colourful aluminum, but I’m trying to cut back on spending while I’m unemployed so it likely won’t be soon unless I happen to catch a nice sale.





On the stationary front, I didn’t bring my current A5 journal because I assumed (correctly) that I’d get very little time to write on this trip and might as well use the blank pages at the back of my calendar since I’ll be switching it out in September and didn’t really need all of them for ink testing. (I use the calendar for tracking a few things and decided I wanted to bring it on this trip, though I don’t always.) I don’t *love* the slimmer format for journal writing when I’m at home and don’t have size constraints, but it’s nice for travel and I really love the zipper pouch attachment I bought so I can carry stickers around and actually *see* them.





And the pen case is the same one I’ve been using for a while now to keep my pens contained in my knitting bag. I definitely could have just thrown the pens in a zippered plastic bag in the bottom of the A5 pouch I use for everything, but I know the kaweco sport has gotten scratched up a bit from me carrying it so it’s nice to have it contained better in a case. And I really like this one!





Overall, it’s all worked quite well for tracking and journal writing this trip! Now if only I had a bit more time to write…

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