(Sorry, I couldn’t resist a click bait title.) MIKE ROHDE!!!!!!!!
If you are in Kansas City, and you read this blog, you are probably going to want to hop over to the KC Coffee & Design and register to attend the Friday lecture (FREE!) and the Saturday Sketchnotes Workshop ($75) coming at the end of August. And if you happen to attend either of this events, be sure to look for me and say hello. I’ll be the one trying to hug Mike.
This Fashionable Friday was just way too much and there were way too many options to choose from. So many ink brands offer a huge rainbow of colors or many notebook manufacturers offer a rainbow of cover options (I’m looking at you, Rhodiarama and Leuchtturm1917) that it was hard to fit everything on one page.
Pens:
Ink:
Pencils:
Notebooks & Paper:
Planners & Organizers:
Other interesting things:
I found a great collection of pen-and-pencil-centric How Its Made videos. Some you may seen but I thought this would make for great lunchtime viewing. Enjoy!
This next video is how Aurora Fountain Pens are made:
This is the manufacturing process of Caran d’Ache colored pencils:
This next video is in Japanese subtitles with no spoken dialogue but its how Pilot makes its fountain pens so I thought it would be fun to watch even without narration. The first eight minutes is all about how the nibs are constructed which is a little slow to watch but fascinating!
(From left to right, top to bottom: Better Homes & Gardens, Brownstoner, Jeremy Bittermann for The New York Times, Danielle de Lange.)
I hope these spaces feel colorful and inspiring. So many of the images I find around the internet of workspaces lately have been stark white and barren and don’t feel like inviting workspaces. These spaces felt tidy but productive with evidence of people actually utilizing the space for a variety of tasks.
Big shout out to Lori at Franklin-Christoph for the steampunk idea. Smart and beautiful, that one.
What can I say about the Caran d’Ache Swiss Wood 348 HB pencil? Its beautiful. It also costs $5.45 per pencil. Who pays $5.45 for a pencil? I do. Why? Curiosity. And its pretty.
Aside: Caran d’Ache is known for producing some of the best colored pencils and watercolor pencils in the world that can also cost upwards of $5 per pencil and I’m considering investing in those too. Does that make me crazy? Maybe.
The Caran d’Ache Swiss Wood pencil is a beautiful beech wood pencil, stained dark with no additional shellac. It smells like a campfire. (Yes, I sniffed the pencil). The end is dip-sealed with glossy red enamel and the white Swiss cross is printed on the end. The lettering is printed in a crisp white foil along one fact of this hexagonal pencil.
I love hex pencils and the Swiss Wood is slightly wider than a standard hex pencil. It may be too wide to fit some standard sharpeners but it fit fine in my Palomino/KUM two-step long point sharpener.
The experience writing with this pencil seemed to be “oh, this is how a pencil should feel.” It was smooth and silent on the paper. When scratching back and forth, I got a good dense color. The Swiss Wood just coasted along on the paper and kept a good point in the process. With some effort, I could smudge it but while writing I did not notice any graphite on the heel of my hand which is a true test for any lefty.
It erased with almost no trace of the previous scribblings with my “oops!” eraser that lives on my desk.
When compared to the Field Notes pencil, it was so apparent how much grittier the FN pencil was than the Swiss Wood. Of course, the FN pencil is a freebie but I assume most of my fine readers own at least one of these pencils so when I say the Swiss Wood is leaps and bounds better to write with than most pencils, you have basis for comparison. I also compared the Swiss Wodd to my favorite go-to pencil, the Faber-Castell Grip 2001 HB. The Grip 2001 was definitely a lighter graphite and scratchier than the Caran d’Ache Swiss Wood. Am I going to have to throw it over for a gross of Swiss Woods? Maybe!
I’m inclined to think that, if you’re a bit of a pencil snob, its worth it to add a few of these Swiss Wood pencils to your collection. I think I might like the writing experience better than the Palomino Blackwings (blasphemous, I know.) but the Blackwings actually look like a bargain-priced pencil next to the Caran d’Ache Swiss Wood.
But, even at $5.45 (comparable to the cost of your average Venti Vanilla Latte), the Swiss Wood is worth trying. Just skip the latte today.
