terriko

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.

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.

I took these pictures back at the beginning of March and never posted them, so you get them on the last day instead!

Stickers

• The cat calendar sticker, as always, is from By Mossy Pine.





• The dino stickers are all from an old stickii pack I grabbed during a sale called “Rawr!” or something similar.

March’s Fountain Pen/Ink Combos:

• Kaweco sport <medium> filled with Diamine Twilight, a dark blue-black ink. This ink was a present!





• Nahvalur Original+ <stub> filled with Diamine Aurora Borealis, a dark teal ink with a very tiny amount of red sheen. This ink was also a present!





• TWSBI Eco <medium> filled with Diamine Noble Fir from the 2024 inkvent calendar, a bright green ink with shimmer. This one carried over from last month’s palette.





• Pilot Metropolitan <CM> filled with Pilot Iroshizuku yama-budo, a dark fuschia ink with some green sheen. I’m using a refilled cartridge to see if I like it better than the included converter, and it *is* nice to be able to see how much ink is left, but it means I’m reluctant to change the ink (and potentially wear out the cartridge faster).





• Pilot E95S <medium> filled with Pilot Iroshizuku ama-iro, a bright sky-blue ink.

Since this is the end of the month, I’ll say that all of these worked out pretty well, but I did have a bunch of hard starts on the Nahvalur pen, likely due to my inexperience using a vacuum pen (I’ve had this since the fall but haven’t always had it in rotation). I’d hoped to maybe use this as a travel pen eventually but I probably should have gotten a thinner nib on it for that to work better, I don’t know. It’s kind of a moot point as travel has become unappealing at the moment.

I’m also realizing that I *really* appreciate the converters when it comes to changing inks every month, and the piston fillers can be kind of a chore in comparison. I may need to rethink how often I change inks and plan my palettes differently so more colours carry over depending on which pen they’re in. I’ve slowed in my pen acquisitions now that I’ve got a range of nibs and such to try, but I did pick up a small box of cartridge-filled ones as an impulse buy at Powell’s so you’ll see at least one of those next month.

I haven’t finished this iroful journal yet, but I’ve decided to leave the rest of the pages for pen testing and ink swatches since I like the paper for that but don’t love it for writing journal entries or todo lists. The plan is to pull out a notebook with faster drying paper for April.

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.

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

Previous posts talked about choosing the bullet journal itself (A Rhodia sewn spine softcover) and also switching to use a smaller calendar (Traveler’s notebook Monthly).

Calendar

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.