Bits and pieces of life

My life got busier, so I’ve been racking up topics to write about, as well as totally failing to set aside time for writing. Here is a quick roundup of all the topics.

Purposely taking a break from a pen

I enjoy a bit of self-denial and since I didn’t bring my Pilot Custom 74 F on my summer travels, I used that as an excuse to put it away for maybe 6 months. I delayed longer and longer while looking forward to it more and more. In the end it wasn’t that exciting to pick it back up again, but it didn’t slip down from my #1 favourite spot either. It’s the same slippery, delicate, beautifully proportioned pen as always.

Giving a pen and ink a second chance

A few months back I was whining about how the TWSBI GO makes my hand hurt and I wanted to sell it. I couldn’t find a buyer so it sat in my drawer until recently, when I pulled it out at random and filled it with Diamine Chocolate Brown, an ink I don’t even like the colour of (I’ve tried and failed to give this one away too).

I don’t know if it’s because it’s a very lubricating ink or because I’ve changed my habits somehow, but writing with the GO doesn’t hurt my hand anymore, and I like how it makes Chocolate Brown look too! A double redemption.

A new reason to use my stationery

I started my first job, and naturally that means I started my first work bullet journal. I am still using the bullet journaling system from my last post and it is working very well for me.

The notebook I chose for this job was not super fountain pen-friendly, but it was the only A5-ish one I could find in the house at the time. It was mostly full already - I’m about to finish and move on to my next one, an Oxford A5 ring bound… again, the only suitable one I could find laying around. I am not sure what my ideal notebook for this purpose would be, although the white Midori Color comes to mind. I’ve already filled one as a journal before.

Pen cases

This summer I bought a Kokuyo ‘slish’ pencil case. It’s good for taking out and about because you do not need to unzip anything to take out or put away your pen. I will do a full post about mine another time, when it has developed a bit more of its own “story”. Nevertheless, I can already recommend it if you want a pencil case that’s minimalist but still a little quirky.

Another thing I bought back then was a tfdesign 5-pen case (which I did post a picture of on Mastodon). It’s been handy for me to leave open on my desk and, more recently, to transport a bunch of pens at once. But when I left my pale blue Lamy Safari clipped onto the inner section, the brown leather stained the plastic under the clip… So, that’s a minor horror story. The leather is thick and not designed for clips in the first place.

Custom notebooks?

I hand-bound my first sketchbook. It was a nice tactile experience, sewing with a thick blunt needle and a sturdy linen thread, and it was surprisingly easy to turn those loose sheets of paper into something useful and aesthetically appealing. The sketchbooks I can find in art supply stores don’t suit my needs these days, and I’m excited to bind more of my own going forward. (I’m lucky because I have a thing for single-signature notebooks, the easiest kind to bind.)

I wonder if I can bind my own own fountain pen-friendly notebooks as well? It seems less novice-friendly - thinner paper and I would have less tolerance for wrinkles or misaligned lines/grids. But the payoff would be amazing if I could use different specialty papers without having to shell out or accept their particular notebook formats. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Photography!?

Apart from the first one, all the images in this post were taken with a DSLR camera and macro lens¹ which I am lucky enough to be borrowing. I’m a mega novice who has only used a point-and-shoot camera before, but it’s already a relief to be able to get such a wide depth of field and to use manual focus without my phone’s finicky touch screen. I’m tempted to get my own DSLR since I do enjoy photography… and it would vastly improve the photos on this blog… We’ll see!

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1. A Canon EOS 6D and a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM. ↩︎