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.
Trying something new: I haven’t been reviewing books because it takes a long time to write reviews on my phone, and I’d been working on reducing my phone screen time. But I’ve been using my computer more to write fanfic so I’m going to see if weekly book posts are more likely to happen now than they were last time I tried.
My books
(first one I own, other two from the library)
Kitemaster by Jim Hines. I accidentally pre-ordered this twice, which probably gives you some idea of how I felt about it. A young woman mourning her husband goes to release his spirit kite only to discover she has developed a rare magical gift, and she soon attracts the attention of some very powerful people… I loved the worldbuilding around kite magic (safety lines! The spirit kites!) and the sky serpents and the poetic legends about dragons and the evil queen and the sky pirates and the race of monkey-like people. Maybe it feels particularly good to me right now because I’ve been playing a game which includes a lot of gliding around in the sky, but I wanted to live in this world. There’s also a lot about grief and cultural traditions around mourning in there, in a way that I had to stop and let it sink in sometimes. In a good way.
Halfway There – A graphic novel about being half Japanese and half American, but mostly it was about finding yourself and depression. Her experience of people’s weird reactions to her being “hafu” resonated but the self-loathing not so much.
The Roommate by Rosie Danan – I’ve read a few from her and they’re all different. I find it kind of hilarious that I felt like this one was less believable than the werewolf one but honestly I love a kind of absurd premise as long as the characters are fun. And they are! Just… I’d recommend Fan Service (the werewolf book) over this one. It’s the most recent one and I think the characters are even better despite the premise being more absurd.
Kid books:
Catnapped is a repeat, so kiddo liked it enough to get it out again. Or he liked that it has a cat in it and he’s got this thing where he wants his allergic dad to fake sneeze for fake cats so my kid is extra motivated to get cat books out of the library.
Bob and Joss get lost – ok but no repeat requests on this one
Amazing Grace – never read it, kid wasn’t interested. (Recall: we get mystery bags from the library and not all of them are winners for him)
Storm Whale in Winter – spawned some good conversations about snow safety but no repeat requests
Little Blue Truck Makes a Friend – kid had fun with the animal noises but was mad I made him read some of this so it was slower going than it could have been.
Charlie Chooses – very cute, lots of dogs, we read this a few times.
Toby – another repeat. cute dog, kind of melancholy story so i was surprised he got it out again.
Board Game
Despite the giant box this is mostly a card/dice game where you build a little city and money based on dice roles hitting your numbers. None of the cards are secret held in your hand, so that was great for my kid’s reading level (he can read but it’s a lot of work and he gets tired of doing it), and the rounds are pretty fast and the rules not too complicated. We may buy a copy of this one.
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.
Let’s try getting this posted before the end of the month this time! Here’s what I’m using for journal/calendar stuff this month, with some mini reviews of the supplies I’ve used already.
Notebook
As I mentioned last month, I’m starting a new notebook for April even though my iroful one isn’t quite full, because I wasn’t loving the slower dry time for day to day journalling and decided to use the last pages for playing with new inks instead. The new notebook is a Clairefontaine Triomphe, which is blank inside. I used to prefer blank notebooks because I liked them better for doodling, but I’ve spent a few years using dot grid ones now so we’ll see how this goes. So far, the paper is nice and I like that I can use very differently sized pens and write in different sizes easily (in dot grid, my stub nib writing feels a bit cramped), and the dry times are short enough that I’m not constantly smearing my todo lists when I flip back and forth. I would like a slightly stiffer cover, but I’ve got a couple of pencil boards stuck in there the same way I did with the Iroful notebook, and it’s working well enough. I wish the Hobonichi one had a darker set of guide lines on it so I could use them (they’re too pale to show through this paper) but I can always print out my own guide lines if I decide I want them. For now I’m just letting my writing be what it is.
Fountain Pens & Inks
I impulse bought an “Ooly Writer’s Duo” set for US $13 from Powell’s when I was getting the new Seanen McGuire InCryptid book. These are fountain pens on one side and highlighters on the other. The fountain pen side uses a cartridge, I don’t think the highligher side is as easily refillable. I don’t know if they’re a standard size and I haven’t bothered to look it up since it’ll take me a few months to use each cartridge. I’m currently only using the pink/orange one since I don’t want to have too many cartridges open at once and I already have a few pens in rotation that have them. It’s approximately a fine nib, but thankfully not too scratchy. The fountain pen colour is less bright than the pen and the highlighter is more bright, but both are nice enough. Maybe I’ll remember to take more photos later, but so far I’d say they’re a nice deal for $13 and will likely find a niche as todo list or calendar pens, though I think they’re smooth enough that they’ll be ok for longer journal entries too if I want.
The other pen ink combos are repeats from last month:
TWSBI Eco <medium> – Diamine Noble Fir (bright green with shimmer)
Nahvalur Original+ <stub> – Diamine Aurora Borealis (dark teal with red sheen)
Pilot E95S <medium> – Pilot Iroshizuku ama iro (sky blue)
We’re a week in to the month and I’ve already had to pull the Nahvalur out of rotation for cleaning because it went from “occasional hard start” to “annoying to use” pretty quickly. I’ve replaced it with a new pen:
This is my first time using this M1 and I don’t love it. It’s got a scratchy nib that feels like writing with a mechanical pencil, which isn’t great for me ergonomically so it makes my hand ache after a while. I’ll give it at least a few more tries but it may get pulled from the rotation before the end of the month too. The ink is lovely as always, though!
Stickers
All from stickii again! Flower party dogs, snail stamps, and cute little critter icons. The last one I’m using for calendar tracking. I need more sources of tiny stickers for that!
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’ve started following more pen/planner blogs and a few of them mentioned the concept of “Techo Kaigi” which apparently translates roughly to “Planner meeting” and the idea seems to be that you take some time to evaluate how a system is working for you. I’ve seen people doing it more as an annual review, but since I’m using small notebooks and mine’s 2/3 done I think now’s as good a time as any to reflect on how the “new” setup is working for me.
Image description: All the things in my journal/planner set up laid out: two pouches, a Travler’s notebook calendar with a zipper pouch attached to the back, a pencil + lead + eraser, a blue A5 notebook, and 6 fountain pens.
Current setup:
A5 dot journal (nominally a bullet journal but at this point I’m mostly using my own personal system)
Monthly calendar Traveler’s Notebook standard size (A5 slim)
Traveler’s Notebook zipper pocket for storing stickers (attached to calendar)
Fabric Zipper pouches: one for notebooks, one for pens
~6 fountain pens
Pencil with my name lasered onto the side, eraser (in a penguin-shaped case) and a box of pencil lead
The Traveler’s Notebook calendar turned out to be a great choice, and despite my worries it seems to be (just barely) big enough for me. I really love it with the zipper pouch attached for sticker management. I was worried that the thinner paper might bug me, but it’s working ok with the pencil I use since I tend to move things on the calendar sometimes. I’m getting into the habit of using washi since a lot of my stickers are too big to really fit in there. I suspect the calendar is going to really shine as I start to swap the bullet journal notebooks out more quickly for the next while. But it’s already been handy for an overview of school and kid related stuff!
Image Description: The inside of my calendar notebook, showing a few upcoming days and some cute hedgehog stickers I got at Powell’s.
I’ve been using my remaining monthly calendar stickers to make smaller spreads in the bullet journal because they’re too big for the Traveler’s notebook. But I don’t really *need* those calendar spreads in two places and I don’t want to keep more than one paper calendar updated. I’m debating some sort of art page as a month section break, or maybe this is time for some of my bigger stickers to shine?
Thinner A5 Journal
The smaller size of my new tiny softcover sewn-spine Rhodia notebook has meant that I carry the journal around a lot more than my old corgi journal. It lives in my knitting bag and even came on my last trip. So the smaller size has worked exactly as I hoped: big success!
But it’s maybe a bit more of a success than I was planned for: between the fact that the book is always close at hand *and* my new collection of fountain pens that makes it more fun to write, I’m filling this up faster than I realized I would. The notebook is only going to last 2 months instead of the 5 I estimated when I bought it many months ago before finishing my old journal. And that’s even though I moved a lot of tracking into the calendar notebook! If I add in stuff like a daily drawing challenge I’m quickly going to wind up with 1 notebook per month.
Image Description: A stack of notebooks in different thicknesses. On the bottom is my original corgi journal that lasted two years which is the thickest of the 4 notebooks. Above that is my current 2-month journal which is the thinnest. On top are two more notebooks both about twice as thick as my current book. The red one says “Clairfontaine” on the spine and the teal one says “Rhodia”
I don’t know if that bothers me that the notebooks won’t last too long. I like the convenience of the lighter weight little notebooks, and I’m not too sad to have an excuse to switch notebooks multiple times a year and get that “fresh start” feeling. I guess it’s more expensive, but not enough to be a problem for me.
I’ve already picked up a few similarly sized notebooks, and also a few that are around double the thickness. (Thank you sales; you can see a few of the thicker ones in the picture above.) It might be logical to swap between thin and thick so I never wind up carrying two thick ones, but I think given the success of this notebook, I’m going to plan for another thin one next and see how the switchover goes.
I picked up one of those Iroful books that have paper designed to show off fancy ink and I think it might be fun to use that one next in conjunction with the Diamine Inkvent calendar since I’ll be using new inks every day for most of the month. But I’m going to swatch some of my current pens in there first to see how the whole thing feels before I decide for sure. I did decide that I’m going to start swatching pens in the *back* of notebooks because then there’s space to grow.
Inks
I did have my first pen + ink + paper combo complete fail with Octopus Sheening in Fairy. It worked beautifully in my dip pen on the sheets I bought for doing swatches (A white Rhodia pad), but was a disaster in my TWSBI Eco on the Rhodia ivory paper and it bled through everything. It was even worse in Tomoe River S notebook I sometimes use for pen testing and scribbles when I don’t want to break up a journal entry. (It was nice on my old journal with the 120gsm paper, but that’s not very helpful since there are no blank pages left in there!) I wound up clearing out the Eco and put a tiny amount in a Platinum Preppy and the fine nib has made the Fairy usable, but I’m not really getting sheen. Thankfully it’s a really nice colour so I’m happy to use what little is in there, but I’ll probably try it again when I switch paper.
Image Description: A pair of images side-by-side showing the front and back of a page in a Tomoe River S notebook. At the top you can see a bunch of scribbles in Wearingeul 1984 in a Nahvalur Original Plus, including some thick blobs. On the bottom is some Octopus Fairy ink also with some blobs and writing. On the reverse side of the page, you can see that the 1984 does not show through although it has made some wet waves on the page, but the Fairy has bled right through the paper in a lot of places.
Overall, I’ve learned that while I’m usually team sparkle, the shimmer inks tend to either unpleasant to use (my Robert Oster Rose Gold Antiqua sample *squeaked* on paper in my Eco and caused a lot of hand strain) or underwhelming with only occasional peeks of shimmer in the first few lines (such as Robert Oster Emerald of Chivor, which was also at the edge of bleedthrough sometimes, and Ferris Wheel Press Crystal Blue Legacy which is 90% boring with occasional spectacular blue). I did like the Wearingeul Frankenstein and 1984 even without much luck on the shimmer actually showing on the page, at least. I’m slowly learning which pens go best with which inks and how carefully and slowly I have to write for shimmer inks to get the best effect, but it’s a slow learning process. I don’t think I’m ready to give up on shimmer inks entirely, but I think the annoying factor is going to change how I plan to use shimmer inks — more ornamentation, less journalling, and maybe not too many inked at a time.
I’m not too worried about having a few lousy ink experiences, though. That’s the point of trying samples! But also, most of these aren’t going on my list of full-sized bottles to buy.
One sparkle success story, though: I tried the Diamine Red Lustre that I hated in my Metropolitan again in November, this time in the TWSBI Swipe. I did have to dilute the ink a bit and I still don’t think it’s a nice journalling pen, but it’s been fun for section headers and drawings.
Image Description: A drawing of a cartoon polar bear holding a heart. All the inks used have shimmer, but the gold shimmer on the red heart stands out particularly well.
And I have been enjoying a lot of inks, though! I finally swatched all my samples (maybe more on that in a future post) and I’m down to only 6 that haven’t made it into my journal rotation. At this point those will likely wait until January or later, since I’m going to be playing with inkvent inks in December.
Stickers
I picked up a Halloween countdown from Stickii and have been having a lot of fun using those stickers! I also dug out some other stickers I had around and have been using them in the journal. I do think it means I tend not to draw as much on my own when I have art to just paste in, but the stickers delight me regularly and it’s nice to have art *especially* when I’ve been making my hands sore from ink experiments and I wasn’t going to doodle with a pen/ink combo that’s making me cranky. Plus, it’s nice to have a relatively inexpensive way to support artists without winding up with piles of prints building up in my house. I have a substantial box of prints I don’t even have space to display, so it’s nice to use up sticker sheets every few weeks.
I’m debating getting a regular sticker subscription from stickii for my birthday, but I might wait until spring since I’ve got their advent binder to open in December and I’m definitely not going to finish all of that in one month!
Image Description: Zipper pouch attached to to traveler’s notebook calendar. This shows the front of the calendar with the zipper pouch sticking out to one side. There’s a sticker from BSides PDX featuring a sasquatch holding a jack-o-lantern, and stamp-shaped one from Oblation Press with a dog in fall scene on it in the zippered pouch. On the front cover of the calendar there is a big round shiny sticker with an aurora over mountains, and a smaller sticker with a orange hat wearing a witch’s hat that reads “today is a good day to get cozy”
Sticker storage was a bit of an issue because sometimes they got a bit rumpled from me pulling the other notebooks in and out of my pouch, but I got a Traveler’s notebook add-on that I’ve slipped over the back cover of the notebook that gives me a couple of pockets that are the right size for the sheets I have from a few different people.
Image Description: View of zipper pouch attachment on back of my notebook, flipped “open” so you can see that some loose stickers are in the pouch and sheets are held in a pocket against the back cover.
Pens
I now officially have “enough” pens for my usual needs: I wanted 4-6 for journalling, 2 for my backpack, and I added a couple to my desk for work todo lists. I used to do the work todo stuff digitally but it wasn’t working well so I decided to go analog to help myself break out of a rut. So far it’s helping!
From starting in May with my 1 wood pen, I’ve acquired about 2 more per month so I’ve amassed more than a dozen pens. Most of these are under $30 (often a lot less) so they’re in that “I don’t really have to think too hard about this purchase” level of things for me. I’ve tried to focus on trying different brands and different nibs and making sure I think about the ergonomics and use them a fair bit before letting my feelings about them really gel.
Thoughts on nibs:
Not a fan of Fine or Extra Fine for long-form writing, but being able to use them on cheap old notebooks is kind of great so they’re still useful to me.
Medium is convenient for maintaining some form of legibility when I want to write a little faster. It’s often my go-to on nights where I only have maybe 5-10 minutes to journal and don’t want to think about how I write.
I don’t own any Broad or extra/double broads myself, but I tried a few in store and decided they weren’t as much fun as stub nibs or as convenient as mediums. Maybe I’ll get some and change my mind eventually but it didn’t seem worth prioritizing.
I’m still loving stub nibs: the line variation is fun, they force me to write big, and as long as I’m a bit careful about my in choices of ink and how I write they can be pretty smooth.
I only just got a flex nib and have written with it twice, but it seems nice? I think the pen is too heavy for me though.
I really liked the fude nib on my dip pen, so I may have to invest in a regular pen that has one.
Thoughts on pen aesthetics:
Other people seem to care a lot about clips but I don’t think I’d miss them with my current setup. In fact I think the clips might be what scratched up one of my smaller plastic pens!
I do love sparkle on the outside even if I have mixed feelings about it on the inside.
I really like having at least a small window to view ink. (Especially the sparkly inks!)
I can handle much heavier pens than I might have guessed. Only one of my pens seems to be too heavy for longer use and I was well-warned about it (but decided to try it anyhow because it was on sale).
I do like the light weight ones, though! I was worried because I saw people talking about pens feeling “cheap” but so far only one of my plastic pens feels not great to me and it’s far from the cheapest of the lot.
Thoughts on filling mechanisms:
I often switch ink at the end of the month before pens would naturally run out of ink, so huge reservoirs aren’t super important to me right now. They might matter more when I’m not operating mostly off samples, but I suspect not because picking palettes for each month is something I really enjoy *and* because it’s good to be in a habit of cleaning the pens monthly.
It’s really convenient to use a syringe + converter to use the last of any sample vial rather than tryign to use a piston pen.
The converter pens are also pretty fast to clean compared to the piston ones. But my kid enjoyed cleaning my piston pen anyhow.
I haven’t tried to clean my one vacuum pen so no thoughts there yet. I’m intending to run it right out of ink which may take a while even though I tried not to fill it too much.
It takes me forever to empty a cartridge (in part because they’re such boring colours) so I haven’t tried refilling those yet.
I think it’s safe to say that I have an actual *collection* of fountain pens now. It’s not just the 6 you see but the other 8? or so scattered around my house. Maybe I could have saved some money by testing more pens in store, but I wouldn’t feel as confident about my choices if I hadn’t forced myself to use each pen in rotation for a month before moving on. And tester pens don’t tell you much about filling mechanisms, which I wanted to learn too. I’ve covered a lot of the things I wanted to try and I’ll probably give away a few of the pens that don’t suit me well as I replace them with ones that suit me better. I do think I’ll buy more pens: they’re smaller than yarn! But I think have a reasonable variety now and that’ll be perfect for experimenting with inks in December. And maybe I’m at the tipping point where I’m ready to be more picky about my choices which may help me resist overdoing it in the sales to come! (Well, one can hope.)
Bags
I remain a ridiculous Tom Bihn devotee and like being able to clip this whole thing into my knitting bag for easy retrieval. I spent a lot of time looking at notebook covers seeing if I could find something I’d like better than the A5 pouch and so far the answer is no. This cover has protected my setup really well and I’m really happy with how it worked out.
The small pouch works well as a pencil case, but I did notice that one of my smaller pens did get a tiny bit scratched up and the position of the scratch makes me think that it came from another pen’s clip. It’s not a big deal, but I will probably use this as an excuse to shop for pretty fountain-pen padded cases (or make my own). For now the one pen that’s prone to scratching has been moved to another pocket of my knitting bag but I may make a tiny sleeve for it so I don’t take up brain space thinking about it.
I am debating adding a second small pouch so I can have scissors and washi tape on hand too, but sometimes the washi tape gets kind of banged up if I carry it around. Since I usually only want those things at the beginning of the month when I’m setting stuff up, it’s just as well to have them live elsewhere in the house, but maybe I’ll find a tin of the right size in my knitting stash to solve the problem.
Overall
The pouches + notebooks + pens setup is working better for me than the larger planner in an organizer bag was. The new pouch comes around the house with my knitting, it’s easy to grab and throw into my suitcase, or even just to take out and put on my lap so I have my usual tools at hand. I did have to add some sticker storage but otherwise it’s pretty much as I’d planned before I started using it.
We’ll be testing how I handle more rapid journal swaps sooner than I expected, but I’m excited to try more paper and the calendar should help with continuity, so hopefully that’ll be fun instead of annoying.
I’m really delighted with having such a tangible way to show how fountain pens are changing my habits in an enjoyable way. So much more writing and a bit more drawing! And I’m also happy to be having fun with stickers, which I’ve always enjoyed but there’s only so much room on my laptop and the like. It’s funny to think that when I started journaling, I was thinking a lot about doing a gratitude journal because my grandmother had been keeping one to help with her mental health. But even when I wind up using the journal to grump about work or whatever, I’m getting a lot of joy from the process of picking up a pen and making the ink flow. It’s been a grumpy couple of months and I’m glad to lean in to stuff that’s fun and low-key creative.
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’s a fountain pen shaped like a shark! It’s made by Jinhao, who are known for making cheap but often decent fountain pens. It sounds like not all of their pens are winners because quality control isn’t great but if you’re willing to roll the dice and don’t mind that the design may be a total knockoff, sometimes you get a pretty decent pen at a discount price.
Image description: A shark-inspired fountain pen sits on my desk with two kitty pencil sharpeners. The shark pen has a shark shaped head with eyes, gills and a small dorsal fin. There is no tail on the other end of the pen; it tapers to a slightly smaller cylinder. The pen is made of a silvery blue/grey plastic with a clear section in the middle so you can see the ink. This section is a bit thinner than the rest of the pen and has some dents to support a triangular grip.
My shark pen cost $4 and was an impulse add to hit free shipping or something, but you can get them considerably cheaper from Ali Express or Amazon — search for Jinhao 993 or Jinhao shark pen. If you buy a pack of them I think they’re less than $2 each, which is pretty sweet for a pen with an included converter. It’s a bit longer than most of my other pens. Here’s a photo showing it with the Platinum Preppy and Pilot Varsity, both similar pens appreciated for their cheap prices.
Image Description: Jinhao Shark Pen, Platinum Preppy Wa, and Pilot Varsity. The shark pen is longer than the Preppy which is in turn longer than the Varsity.
I’m impressed at how nicely it writes. It’s got a very fine tip, so it’s not ergonomically great for *me* but as long as I’m not writing pages of stuff it’s pretty decent for notes and todo lists, and still a bit easier on my hands than a ballpoint. It’s thin enough that it works nicely without show-through on my thin-paged calendar and on cheaper notebooks without fancy paper. Well, it doesn’t show through in normal use: my kid definitely managed to get it to bleed, but that was very intentional on his part as he was exploring how the pen worked.
Image Description: Shark pen sitting on my Field Notes (larger size) notebook that I carry around. It has been filled with kid doodles while my kid was playing with the pen, including a stick dog which has been labelled “dog” a butteryfly, a rainbow, a happy face and more. Most has been drawn with the shark pen although he’s added some accents in purple (using my Pilot Kakuno)
I bought it with the intention of it being a fun pen to have in my backpack for kid entertainment, and I particularly appreciate that it’s got a bit of plastic covering most of the nib, which makes it considerably less messy to hand to my child. (I’m not sure all versions of the pen have this, but mine does.).
Image Description: Shark pen unchapped on my book. You can see that there is a black “hood” over the fountain pen nib. It is sitting on a notebook where you can see that my kid was delighted to discover that if he held the pen at the right angle he could get the ink to bleed through. Hands on learning!
It is worth $4 for me but I’m mildly regretting not shopping around and getting a set instead, especially since there’s a good chance my one pen will wind up meeting an ignoble end while providing child entertainment. Oh well, maybe I’ll get a set next time if that happens!
Image Description: Jinhao Shark Pen in blue/grey. It’s a pen with a shark head shaped cap.
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 had a little bit of solo time on my way home from BSidesPDX in October, so I stopped by Oblation Papers. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever visited before — maybe once when I was visiting before we moved to the area? Anyhow, it’s very pretty:
Image Description: The inside of Oblation Papers, a stationary shop in Portland. There are calendars and notecards arranged on a table in front, a mobile made of white paper flowers (?) hanging from the ceiling, an ink bar barely visible on the right, and more products including wrapping paper visible in the room beyond.
I mostly went to look around, but I did have one intended purchase: I wanted to take a look at the Traveler’s Notebook line they had to see if I could find a nice way to hold my Stickii sticker sheets with one of their folder-y things. It was really nice to see the options in person. I decided to grab the zippered pouch and after a bit of experimentation have hooked it over the back cover of my calendar and stuffed the stickers inside like so:
Image description: A Traveler’s Notebook regular size monthly planner with a “zipper pouch” slipped over the back cover and stickers slipped inside. The zipper pouch itself is empty but has a large knitting/crochet “progress keeper” shaped like a lollipop sitting on it to hold it open for a picture. There is a sticker sheet with magical cats and fountain pens (designed by Yudoart) sitting on the top of the small stack of stickers stuffed into the pocket.
I’m glad to report that it fits both the stickii halloween stickers I got and just barely fits the pipsticks ones I use for some tracking since the sheet they’re on is a bit wider. The new A5 bullet journal I switched to in October doesn’t have a pocket, so this is my new solution! I actually like it better than the pocket of my old journal because the stickers are visible which helps me remember to use them and also adds some fun to the back of my calendar without me having to commit to seeing the same stickers all year. Although I did finally choose a couple for the front!
Image Description: A beige traveler’s notebook monthly planner in the regular size. You can see the zippered edge of the pouch sticking out on one side. On the front there are two stickers: a sleepy orange cat with a witch’s hat that reads “today is a good day for getting cozy” (from The Latest Kate) and a large circular sticker with mountains, stars, a moon, and a purple to blue aurora that practically glows due to the reflective nature of the sticker. It’s even prettier in person, and was made by Tonkai / Fireside Textiles.
I did debate getting an actual Traveler’s Notebook leather cover to go with my calendar and took some time to feel the ones they had on display and think about it. I *think* they’re a bit too heavy and thick for what I want at the moment. I love the idea so much that I might try it someday anyhow, but I have to be fairly careful about adding too much weight to what I carry on the regular, so I settled for the cover and a shop souvenir sticker instead.
I also took some time to try out some oft-recommended beginner pens that were on my potential to-buy list as well as whatever else they had out. It turns out that I don’t actually love the feel of the Lamy Safaris, which isn’t too disheartening since I also don’t love most of their designs. Plus, some weeks after the day I was shopping they went and announced their new pens in partnership with the transphobe fantasy marketing machine (aka, HP) so I’m not feeling bad about taking them off the shopping list.
I had more luck with the Kaweco Sport: I do indeed like the feel of the pen, and after experimenting with the testers they had out, I’ve decided that double broad and broad are probably a bit too much for me, especially if I wanted to use it as a pocket pen. I don’t know that it’ll replace my space pen, but it seems like a viable contender. I wasn’t up for paying full retail the day I tried them but I did keep an eye out and later snagged one during the Fountain Pen Day sales so I might have more to say about that after it gets here. I did try a few other pens but none of them stood out enough to buy one.
Image Description: Another view inside Oblation Papers, this time showing a different table with 2025 calendars and a large display of cards near the front windows.
I did debate getting a bottle of one of their 4 shop-exclusive inks, but it was pretty busy that evening so I talked myself out of getting someone to get a bottle for me while I was waiting to check out. I feel like I have very little ink left because my sample vials are mostly empty, but I’ve bought a Diamine inkvent calendar so I’m going to have more than I can use next month.
Oblation papers was a lovely place to visit. Unfortunately, it’s more than an hour on the train and their prices and shipping are more expensive than some of the places I shop online, so I don’t think I’m going to suddenly become a regular customer even though it’s “local” to me. I do think being able to look through their ink swatch book in person might be handy for some ink purchases, but a few dollars for an ink sample seems like something I’m much more likely to do than a 3hr shopping trip. But I could see myself going down for an event or stopping by on those rare occasions where I’m down near the Pearl on my own!
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