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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.


Honestly, I was planning to phone this one in and just use some pens that had ink in them already because I was feeling so burned out partway through a week of solo parenting, but then I pulled out the stickers and the dopamine hit was good enough that I had a nice time putting stuff together instead of feeling like it was a chore or something. This writing a blog post part felt like a chore then but I’m a bit more relaxed today and also I have to sit here with a heat pack on my neck for a bit to get the muscle to relax so I might as well type.





A set of journalling supplies for May 2025 including stickers, notebooks, fountain pens and inks. They are described in more specific detail in the post.




Fountain Pens and Inks






  • Pilot E95S <M> – Pilot iroshizuku kon-peki. At least it will be once I finish the last few drops of ama-iro that are in there right now.




  • Pilot Kakuno <M> – Sailor Ink Studio 750. Because I wanted the pen cap and ink to match.




  • Pilot Metropolitan <CM> – Pilot iroshizuku yama-budo. This is the cartridge that’s been in there a while, and I think it might be drying out because the ink is showing up as a lot more brown than in the original swatch, but maybe it’s just that the sheen is really working on this paper. It actually looks *great* with the stickers so I’m not sad.




  • TWSBI Eco-T <stub> – Colorverse Gyeongnyeolbi Yeoldo. This pen apparently had some sparkle stuck in it from the KWZ stardust so it’s got surprise shimmer ink going on until that runs out. The ink is slower to dry than I expected but I like the colour.





I’d been intending to pull out a Pelikan Twist I’d been using for todo lists, but apparently it has run out of ink so it went into the cleaning pile instead. I’m going to see if I have a converter that will fit it or maybe refill the cartridge, but I’m not





Stickers






  • Science kitties from Taylor_ross1 via Stickii




  • Calendar & flowerpot kitties from By Mossy Pine




  • Bees and crocuses from The Latest Kate





Notes from April






  • The blank Clairefontaine Triomphe notebook is working out pretty well even though I don’t really write straight. I did a tiny bit of drawing in it and liked it for that as I’d hoped.




  • I tried a Hongdian M1 in April but it had a super scratchy nib so I pretty much hated it. Worse than my other fine nibs. I’ve cleaned it out now but haven’t sat down to see if it’s fixable or what. I liked the form factor okay but I think it was pretty much a waste of money for me.

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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 is my 10th year setting “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around creativity and joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important. Especially in contrast to a lot of traditional new year’s goals that are kind of guilt based.





I usually limit myself to 4 that I’m really commiting to for the year, so here they are for 2025!





Revisit old goals – I wanted to revisit some old goals in celebration of 10 years of fiber goals, but I couldn’t decide on which ones. So instead, I’m going to try rotating through them like I did with different crafts in 2024. Every month, I’m going to look at the goals and see if there’s one I want to revisit with one project. Since I know monthly isn’t the perfect cadence for crafts, but it *is* a good cadence for reflection, some of them may take several months, and some months I may not bother, but the goal is to at least look at the list monthly and make a choice.





Try Something New – to go with revisiting old goals, I’d also like to try some new things, but maybe smaller stuff spread out over the year rather than one big thing. As such, I think I’ll focus on techniques I haven’t tried rather than full new crafts: for knitting that might be entrelac, mitred squares, planned pooling, stacked stitches. For fountain pens it might be painting with fountain pen inks, new drawing techniques, mixing inks. Or maybe I’ll try making some things I haven’t made before, like felted slippers or a blanket. I think I’ll try to put something old/something new together in my monthly planning so I think about it regularly but I’m going to be flexible about having things take variable lengths of time.





Something stash something – I think I’m going to run a craft stash focused challenge thing mostly for myself but also invite folks on Mastodon to join me. I’m not sure what it’ll look like yet but planning is part of the goal!





Game design – I haven’t been a game designer in a long time (did you know I used to teach game design?) but I accidentally got my kid excited about one of my old ideas so I’m making this a goal in hopes we build something together, even if it’s not that particular game. This isn’t very fiber-y but maybe we’ll find a way to make that part of it?





Many years I’ve also included a bunch of brainstorming ideas here that didn’t make the cut, but I didn’t make a list of those this year.

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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.


My 2024 fiber goals were as follows:






  • gift yarn




  • lesser used crafts




  • pants




  • colour play





I already did a mid-year 2024 writeup so I’m just going to talk about the second half of the year here.





Gift yarn





I finished the lighthouse shawl:





Terri, a mixed race woman, is standing near the edge of a parking lot outside. She has a Flo Mask around her neck over top of a hand knitted lace scarf, is wearing glasses, and is holding a black choir music folder.
Image Description: Terri, a mixed race woman, is standing near the edge of a parking lot outside. She has a Flo Mask around her neck over top of a hand knitted lace scarf, is wearing glasses, and is holding a black choir music folder.




And I started in on a pair of socks with a funny colourway called “Introverts Unite” that apparently I haven’t photographed yet. And I’m still working on the weaving.





So nothing spectacular in the second half of the year, but that’s expected because I wanted to do Finish or Frog Along and the fall gnome and then start in on Christmas socks for my Mom then the winter gnome. Maybe I should knit fewer gnomes? (That may be a problem as there’s going to be a lot of them next year.) The obvious solution would be to knit gnomes with gift yarn, but most of it is too variegated for that so no luck. If anyone wants to buy me yarn, apparently I need more 20g fingering weight minis in solid colours!





Overall, I think I got what I wanted out of this goal, but I do want to keep pushing to use more gift yarn in 2025 because there’s certainly some left that I’m really excited to use!





Lesser Used Crafts





The full year of crafts:






  1. January: spindle spinning




  2. Feburary: tatting




  3. March: mending




  4. April: weaving




  5. May: Origami




  6. June Pants




  7. July: (supported) long draw spinning




  8. August: Embroidery




  9. September: Writing




  10. October: Presentations




  11. November: Sashiko




  12. December: Countdowns





I missed out on some that I thought I’d do like felting, crochet and quilting. But I was really excited to do a lot more writing (honestly, now I kind of want to work on writing fiction, which I haven’t done in forever) and presentations (I had two accepted talks in the fall/winter). By December I decided adding another craft on top of swatching inks for inkvent and taking pictures of my various swatches and countdown calendars was too much, so I know “countdowns” isn’t a craft but there’s a combo of swatching and photography and writing a lot of alt text, and all of those are crafts of sorts.





I think rotating through crafts was very good for me, and I’m glad to have pulled out some stuff that I hadn’t thought about when I set the goal. But I don’t think monthly was the right cadence, and I was kind of less excited about it by the end of the year especially once I wanted to focus on Finish or Frog Along, so I don’t think I’ll be doing it again in this format.





I think this might work better as a quarterly thing or if I doubled up some months and only ran it in the first half of the year. But I’m expecting to have a busy 2025 and likely will wind up packing up a lot of craft stuff to move, so I’m thinking that I may try to pull out some unfinished crafts like my weaving, doing them, then packing up the supplies as I go. Probably won’t formalize it so I can play it by ear instead.





Pants





I finished the pants back during the craft rotation in June! I’d still like to revisit and work on drafting a better pattern for my preferences/body, but this isn’t a priority for me.





Colour Play





The biggest new addition here was that I bought an “invent” countdown calendar full of ink and swatched something Dec 1-25. It was a lot of fun, and I particularly liked the “painting with fountain pen inks” which I honestly hadn’t done much before but seriously, the inks are very fun with the multi-shading and the shimmer and sheen (less so the scented ones, but thankfully I didn’t have an adverse reaction to the scent they were just less-nice as inks because they were so wet).









I tried a few things over the year: dyeing, different spinnning colour techniques, pulling out some rainbow shawls and colourwork, learning what fountain pen inks I loved, and just knitting different types of yarn. It was very fun, but I will admit that this is probably all stuff I’d have done even if I hadn’t set the goal. I like colour!





The “other” goals





I often have a list of goals that I brainstormed but didn’t decide to do. But sometimes they happen anyhow!





Blogging – I got obsessed with fountain pens and then started writing more blog posts. Now I kind of want to write some fiction too…





Ditching Instagram/Meta – this did happen, and it’s improved my life a lot to only occasionally post for a contest or something and pop in maybe once a month or so. Not constantly getting bombarded by ads has been good for my wallet, and not getting nausea from auto-playing videos is great. I’m also slowly removing old fb posts on the rare time that I log in, though it takes forever.





Classes – I did take a dye class at Craft Emporium and it was fantastic! I’d like to spend some time experimenting with the techniques we learned but I haven’t decided what to make yet.





In conclusion





I accomplished all of 2024’s Fiber goals and had a good time and learned more about what I want to do next. Stay tuned for 2025’s goals on January 1st!

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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.


It was likely inevitable that I’d start thinking seriously about having some travel-specific fountain pens. I’m no longer the world traveller I was in my 20s when writing papers and going to conferences to present them was a key part of my job, but I have a certain amount of travel-specific stuff in my life. (I’ve been cataloguing and reviewing some of my favourite travel gear here on the blog.)





My travel stationery setup: Field Notes notebook, Pikachu mechanical pencil &  2 pikachu gel pens from Zebra, Platinum Preppy Wa with koi, Pilot Kakuno in purple, a teensy pencil crayon set, an eraser in a orange case with ears, Burt's Bees lip balm, a Fisher space pen, Lanisoh lanolin, all packaged with two Tom Bihn ghost whale pouches and a key strap to clip them into my bag.
Image description: My travel stationery setup: Field Notes notebook, Pikachu mechanical pencil & 2 pikachu gel pens from Zebra, Platinum Preppy Wa with koi, Pilot Kakuno in purple, a teensy pencil crayon set, an eraser in a orange case with ears, Burt’s Bees lip balm, a Fisher space pen, Lanisoh lanolin, all packaged with two Tom Bihn ghost whale pouches and a key strap to clip them into my bag.




For pens, I didn’t want to have something that only got used a few times per year, so I decided my travel pen(s) would need to do double-duty in my backpack for out and about jotting down of notes and doodling in restaurants/airports/cars to keep my kid amused. The picture above shows my travel setup except that I forgot to include the Traveler’s Notebook calendar that I’m currently using for tracking headaches, etc. Sometimes I carry all of that in my backpack, sometimes I slim it down and only carry the pencil and eraser, depending on how much I expect to be on my feet vs sitting. Most of this I already had for my summer trip, the fountain pens are the only part that’s actually new.





Before making any decisions on fountain pens, I read up on a lot of really solid recommendations on types of fountain pens that tend to be better for travel:






  • Vacuum filling and Japanese-style eyedropper pens are less likely to leak in flights despite their larger capacity.




  • Smaller pocket pens could be lighter for toting around, and might be less of a mess in case of a pensplosion because they had less ink.




  • Finer nibs use less ink, if you need what you’ve got to last.





And then some tips for just travelling with what you’ve got:






  • Travelling with a full pen or a fully empty one both made air pressure changes less risky.




  • Having pens nib-up during flight would reduce risk of ink blooping out since air could escape more easily.




  • Having the option to use cartridges instead of bottle-filling could be convenient and less messy.





I’m really not sure about the cartridge thing — sure, it’s convenient on the way out, but for short trips I’m highly unlikely to finish a cartridge and there’s no way to stopper most of them, so I felt like I’d still be stuck flying with an open reservoir on the way home. But I guess it works for some people who either write more or are more willing to throw away a half-filled cartridge than I am?





After much internal debate and online shopping, I decided I wasn’t ready to buy a more expensive vacuum filling pen (yet) or even a nicer “sport” or “pocket” pen. I felt like buying an expensive pen would undercut my plan for handing this to my kid for distraction and doodles. But I also hadn’t loved my existing stub-nibbed pens with my travel notebook so I didn’t want to just travel with what I had again. So I went the $10-15 starter pen route instead for my trip to Google Summer of Code mentor summit in October.





Pilot Kakuno





First on my travel list was a Pilot Kakuno. I already had the converter for this since I’d intended to try it in my Pilot Metropolitan eventually. I went with the medium nib for personal ergonomics reasons and also because I was still fussing with the Metropolitan CM nib so this gave me an excuse to use the medium and have the option to swap them later if I never got the hang of the CM. The CM and are are getting along fine now, but I did this purchase earlier in September before I was reasonably confident with it. The medium is significantly less fussy than the CM, so much so that my kid and I didn’t have much difficulty drawing stuff with it.





A doodle of a Corgi ready to dig in to a plate of bacon and eggs with a fork and a knife.  This was a quick copy of some cute artwork we bought in San Jose Japantown.
Image Description: A doodle of a Corgi ready to dig in to a plate of bacon and eggs with a fork and a knife. This was a quick copy of some cute artwork we bought in San Jose Japantown.




I really like this pen. Since it’s plastic, it feels absurdly light compared to the Metropolitan, and that was absolutely a feature rather than a drawback for a pen I intend to carry a lot. The medium nib is more user-friendly than the CM (not that CM would have been an option on this pen, just that it’s what I was used to). I chose better on my ink, which also helped. I’ve got Jaques Herbin Violette Pensée in there because it matched nicely and because I knew I’d want a purple ink in my October planner palette anyhow.





Pilot Kakuno pen disassembled to show the CON-40 converter I'm using and the fact that after the trip I've got more than 1/3 of a tank of ink left.
Image Description: Pilot Kakuno pen disassembled to show the CON-40 converter I’m using and the fact that after the trip I’ve got more than 1/3 of a tank of ink left.




The CON-40 converter that I have is pretty small (it’s one of the big complaints about it), but for a weekend trip with two pens getting rotated this was more than enough. And having a smaller reservoir does mean less risk in case of total pen failure at altitude.





Platinum Preppy Wa





Second was a Platinum Preppy Wa. I could have chosen a cheaper, less fancy edition of the Preppy, but then I wouldn’t be me. (It wasn’t that much more expensive anyhow.) It also amuses me greatly that this is the “Wa” edition as my kid decided when he was learning to speak that “wa time” was his term for nursing, so I spent quite a lot of time hearing that syllable even though it’s obviously a different word. Add on the “Koi no Taki-Nobori” fishy pattern being associated with the koi banners flown for children’s day and, well, clearly this particular pen was the one for me.





Platinum Preppy Wa Koi no Taki-Nobori version with koi fish in silver on a dark blue barrel.  The cap is off so you can see the spring mechanism a bit more clearly.
Image Description: Platinum Preppy Wa Koi no Taki-Nobori version with koi fish in silver on a dark blue barrel. The cap is off so you can see the spring mechanism a bit more clearly.




Like the Kakuno, the Preppy Wa feels absurdly light compared to the others in my collection and that’s a definite advantage for my purposes. I got a fine rather than medium nib so this would be different (and also because it’s what was in stock) and while I definitely don’t love the fine nib as much for writing, I was really happy to have it for drawing:













The fine nib is also undeniably nice in my smaller travel notebook and on my calendar, though I mostly use pencil in the calendar anyhow.





I also was amused to see that the patented cap design mentioned in their ad copy includes a spring that’s pleasantly visible through the clear plastic cap, so I can watch it clip into place. Very satisfying. The artwork on the barrel is also raised and textured. I find it pleasant to touch but I do worry that it may get rubbed off over time. I guess I could make/find a sleeve for it?





I don’t own a converter for the Preppy Wa and I’m currently planning to try refilling the cartridge with a syringe. I don’t know that I’d feel super comfortable flying with a cartridge that had been refilled many times (I assume after a while they probably wouldn’t seal as well against the nib) so I’ll likely either buy a converter or a fresh cartridge for the next plane flight. We’ll see how I feel about it once I’ve actually tried a refill.





Flying with the pens





I tried to learn from my experience flying with the TWSBI Eco-T where I did have a leak, so I was more careful about making sure that I tightened the piston before my pens were packed, which probably helped. I also moved things around in my bag so my ebook reader (which I always pull out before takeoff) was sitting next to the pens so I wouldn’t forget to move them to be upright.





I flew to California with the Kakuno very full of purple ink using the converter and the Preppy Wa without a cartridge installed. I managed to put the Kakuno in my pen case upside down, so I flew with it nib *down* (pretty much the least recommended position) instead of the nib-up that I’d planned, but I suffered no leaks anyhow. Though the idea of making sure the air is at the top for pressure changes makes some sense, this makes me wonder how much it really matters in a modern pen. There are ball bearings in that converter to limit flow when it’s nib-down, for example, so my particular setup may not have been hugely different than a ballpoint when nib down. If you’ve ever heard of someone doing a proper scientific experiment on fountain pen orientation vs leakage in flight, I’d love to know about it! (If I had a lot of pens and a pressure pot I’ll bet I could design something…)





I flew back with the Kakuno less full and the Preppy Wa with the original black cartridge installed. This time I was a bit more careful about my pen orientation so they both flew tip up, and again no leaks. Yay!





A Platinum Preppy Wa (Koi pattern) and Pilot Kakuno (purple) sitting on my notebook, which is open to a page with info about the Clapotis shawl I've started knitting, written in purple ink. The notebook is being held open with help from a golden clip/stencil ruler from Midori
Image Description: A Platinum Preppy Wa (Koi pattern) and Pilot Kakuno (purple) sitting on my notebook, which is open to a page with info about the Clapotis shawl I’ve started knitting, written in purple ink. The notebook is being held open with help from a brass clip/stencil ruler from Midori




In conclusion…





Both pens worked out great for writing, drawing, and even for amusing my kid. They both flew with no leaks and have tootled around town in my backpack being useful with no incidents before and after the trip. They weigh hardly anything because they’re plastic.





One mild surprise was that I used a lot more ink in the Kakuno than I expected, largely because I wrote more than expected. That does give me an excuse to look at pens with larger reservoirs if I’m planning to be gone for more than week or if I expect to take more notes. But with a larger reservoir would come more weight, so a vacuum filler might wind up in a different niche in my collection — airline travel and journalling at home rather than airline travel and backpack pen.





Though I still do want to try some fancier pens, I don’t feel like I need to get a vacuum filler or japanese eyedropper before I jump on a plane again. With the magic of zipped plastic bags I don’t really feel worried about taking these two on a plane. I don’t really expect leaks, but no harm in being cautious.





In short, these worked out well for both air travel and around town use! Almost too well because now I have less excuse to buy more pens, but I can live with that.

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.


Honestly, I mostly bought this pen because I wanted a glowing pen for October. I usually keep this one by my bed so I can see it glow, rather than in the case with the rest of the pens I intend to use for the month. Perhaps there is a deep psychological insight that can be gained from the fact that I choose to see a glowing fountain pen just before I fall asleep, but honestly glowing things are just cool and I like getting them for myself instead of just my kid. (I have some cool glowing stickers from an artist I like also near my bedside, and I’ve made two quilts that glow.)





TWSBI Eco Fountain pen, glowing just a little in half-shaded light.
Image Description: TWSBI Eco Fountain pen, glowing just a little in half-shaded light.




My daily journal setup is very similar to the travel stationery setup I showed in my travel bags post, so if I left it in the pen case it’d hardly ever get any light! It does mean I sometimes have to walk upstairs to get it if I decide that is the pen I need for the moment, but I can handle that in exchange for GLOW PEN.





From a functional writing perspective, there’s not much new to say about this versus my other TWSBI pens, except that I went with a medium nib this time so this could serve as a replacement for my mystery wood pen. Some kind folk made good suggestions on how I could fix the mystery wood pen when I’m ready, but I’m tired of fighting with it and decided I just wanted a pen that was easier to use. (I still intend to fix it eventually, but I’m waiting until I’m feeling more excited about the experience, so for now the pen is cleaned out and put away.)





The medium nib here is noticeably thicker than on my original pen (see image below), which is closer to the Pilot medium than the TWSBI medium. It might have been a fine nib if it had a label, but it didn’t, so I’m guessing. The bigger nib works for me: as I mentioned previously, it’s ergonomically easier for me if I write bigger and the wider nib helps encourage me to do so.





My green glow-in-the-dark TWSBI Eco sits on a small notebook open to a page where I've written samples from a bunch of different pens/inks.  The relevant part is that the TWSBI Eco sample at the bottom is thicker than the mystery wood pen writing at the top of the page, but you can also see samples from a couple of pilot medium nibs (both thinner than the glow pen), a pilot CM nib (similar width to the glow pen but more line variation), and the 1.1 stub nibs from my other TWSBI pens (both thicker than the glow pen).
Image Description: My green glow-in-the-dark TWSBI Eco sits on a small notebook open to a page where I’ve written samples from a bunch of different pens/inks. The relevant part is that the TWSBI Eco sample at the bottom is thicker than the mystery wood pen writing at the top of the page, but you can also see samples from a couple of pilot medium nibs (both thinner than the glow pen), a pilot CM nib (similar width to the glow pen but more line variation), and the 1.1 stub nibs from my other TWSBI pens (both thicker than the glow pen).




I’m really happy with this pen: I love the glow. I can write long journal entries with it just like I do with the stub nibs without any weird hand twinges, and I don’t have to be careful with it the way I have to with my Pilot <CM> to make sure I don’t lose the ink flow. (Though the Pilot Metropolitan <CM> is getting more instinctual as I practice now that I’ve got more compatible ink in it, so the difference in writing with it may be moot eventually.) I’m glad to focus more on what I’m writing than how I’m writing it. I don’t think I prefer the medium nib over my existing 1.1 stub ones, but I like having the variety available when I go to pull a pen out, especially for doodling, so I’m glad to have this one in my collection.





The Glow Pen is a lovely replacement for my original pen and what it lacks in history and character, it makes up in being incredibly easy to use and did I mention it glows? I don’t think I can mention that enough.





Fountain pens make me think a lot about Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things, the konmari “does it spark joy?” question and especially a follow-up study I read about the “pretty things are more usable” effect that I’m too lazy to find a link for right now but the gist of it was “sure, Japanese people find pretty things more usable, but surely Israeli users wouldn’t see this effect” but then the results of the study were that even their study participants found the pretty ATM interface more usable and I loved the way the researchers reported this faithfully with such gentle grumpiness about their results. Which is all to say that science says that my love of the glow probably makes this pen work better for me, and I’m happy to lean in to that effect!

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