In Fountain Pen Review

Fountain Pen Review: Kaweco Perkeo Limited Edition Infrared

Author Laura CameronPosted on 1 Comment

As I think I’ve mentioned, I LOVE the Kaweco AL Sport. So when I was browsing JetPens a few weeks ago, the Kaweco Perkeo caught my eye. I don’t know how I missed it before, but the limited edition Infrared ($28.50) was too interesting not to order one!

The Perkeo is modeled after the ever popular Sport pen, just in full size. It generally comes with a plastic barrel and the faceted cap, and a steel nib. The Infrared edition has the additional feature of being translucent, so you can see your ink inside!

The biggest “perk” to the Perkeo (forgive me!) is that it is a full size pen so it can accommodate a full size converter. While there is a smaller converter for the Sport, most folks just use cartridges. And given that I have a drawer full of ink bottle, this seems like a good option.

The model seems red, but I admit I also think it looks awfully close to my Franklin Christoph Pocket 20 in Salmon Glow. Which coincidentally, is roughly between the Sport and Perkeo size-wise so I’ve included it here.

What happened next in my review is that the day got away from me and I didn’t have a chance to look at a writing sample until later in the evening. I admit the picture below is totally terrible and I debated even adding it here because many of you know how a Kaweco steel nib writes.

Suffice it to say, the Perkeo is easy to hold in the hand, very lightweight (15g capped) and kind of a fun pen. Pricing for this limited edition puts it nearer to a TWSBI Eco or Lamy Safari, and I think it holds its own in comparison to those two.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us free of charge for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

 

In Planners & Organizers

Mid-Year Replacement: Hobonichi April Start

Author AnaPosted on
Mid-Year Replacement: Hobonichi April Start

If you missed the opportunity to order a Hobonichi in the Fall or your current planner set-up is not quite what you hoped it would be, have you considered purchasing an April Start Hobonichi? According to JetPens: “The April Start Hobonichi Techo was originally made for Japanese students, who start school in April.” While you may not be starting school, an April Start Hobonichi may be just the thing to get you back on track with your journaling, planning or other note-keeping.

There are also special edition covers available at the April kick-off that were not available in the Fall. If you are browsing on the Hobonichi website, be sure to look for the “APR START” text in the details below the image.

 

If you are interested in purchasing the Hobonichi April Start Book,  it’s only available in Japanese. I know many people who do not speak Japanese who have done just fine with the Japanese language Hobonichi. You may have to use Google Translate for the quotes on each page but the days of the week and months are in English so you will be able to find your place pretty easily.

Many online shops still have January Start Hobonichis available. JetPens has the standard A6 2024 Hobonichi in English ($42) still in stock, for example. You can just doodle in January with ink tests and start in on February. Many US-based online shops (and UK and Europe) should be listing the April Start Hobonichi options in the next week or so as well so browse on the official web site and then make your purchases a little closer to home to save on postage.

Whatever you decided to do, its never too late to start over, start again or start fresh.

In photo

Celebrating Lunar New Year… with Pens!

Author Laura CameronPosted on

Lunar New Year is almost here (Saturday, February 10) and we know many of you are set to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. I’ve seen a few high-end, limited edition pens to commemorate the event so I thought I’d share a few today.

Visconti Year of the Dragon LE

Visconti Year of the Dragon 2024 LE Pen (€4.793,39 via Appelboom). No one does it like Visconti eh? This collection is limited to 224 pieces.

Caran D'Ache Straw Marquetry Dragon Pen

If you’re looking for something even more exclusive, I’m in love with the Caran D’Ache Straw Marquetry Dragon Limited Edition (only 20 pieces exist). But I love the story they’ve told.

Benu Euphoria Draco Dragon

On the other hand, for us mere mortals who are into a bit of whimsy there’s the Benu Euphoria Draco Dragon Edition ($280 via Pen Boutique).

Regardless of whether or not you add a dragon to your collection, I wish you a wonderful new year!

 

In Pen Review

Pen Review: Primrosia Fauna Dual-Tip Watercolor Brush Markers

Author AnaPosted on 2 Comments
Pen Review: Primrosia Fauna Dual-Tip Watercolor Brush Markers

The Primrosia Fauna Dual-Tip Markers (Set of 60 for $33.99) is one of those pen sets that kept showing up in my “recommended for you” list on Amazon so I decided to take a chance on them to find out if they are gems or garbage. Simply based on the fact that the set comes with 60 dual-tip brush markers for less than $34 makes me suspect. But the packaging for the set looked decent and functional as a storage container so I was willing to take a chance.

I like to think I’m above being lured in by good packaging but in this case, I completely fell for the packaging. The cylinder container, accented with cute florals and gold foil details looked like a good, functional container.

Unfortunately, in order to fit all 60 pens into the container, they can’t all be face-up. Or face down. To fit all the pens into the container, some have to be brush tip up and others felt tip end up. This makes my OCD itchy. Also, the seam and inner lip are higher than is useful to access the pens as a storage container. It’s pretty but functionally, it makes me sad it’s not as usable as I’d hoped.

On the plus side, the set includes replacement tips and instructions on how to swap out the tips. There is also a bookmark with information to access a swatch template. I think the only way to access these downloadable sheets is to sign up for their newsletter.

These markers look like they were designed to compete with the beloved Tombow Dual Brush Pens, with a fet-tip brush point at one end and a finer tip at the other. The biggest difference, at first glance, is that the Primrosia pens have a fine tip more akin to a Marvy LePen rathe than a fine bullet tip like the Tombow Dual Brush.

Pricewise, a set of ten Tombow Dual Brush Pens are about $27 ($2.70 per pen, review next week!) while the Primrosia Dual-Tip Markers are about $0.57 per pen in the set I purchased. That’s a $2 per pen price difference!

This set is specifically cottage-core with a name like “Fauna” so there are some notable colors missing: no black, no dark jewel tones like burgundy, navy or forest green. If those are colors you are specifically looking for, consider a different set. There are lots of pinks, blues, browns and light colors.

I noted, with dashes, the colors I thought were too light to be usable. Shown below are the colors though based on the caps, they look much darker than they appeared on paper. Seven markers out of a set of 60 is a lot to be unusable. If the set was more expensive, I would have been really mad. As it is, removing seven markers is just about how many I need to remove to be able to store them all brush tip up.

The other thing I noticed was that several of the colors were highlighter bright. I marked the swatches with an (F) for fluorescent. I initially thought there were three but two of the pinks were bright enough to make me reconsider. I think there are four.

The yellow, orange and green are unquestionably fluoroescent. You can decide if the pink is really fluorescent. To me, in a set of “Fauna” markers, fluorescent colors seema little out of place.

In writing samples, I found the brush tips odd. I couldn’t decide if they were too stiff or too flexible but they didn’t react in a way I was comfortable with. I had a bit of trouble maintaining thicks and thins when I expect them. The tips also seem to fray quickly so the extra tips will definitely come in handy.

The felt tip end behaved similarly to a Marvy LePen, if a little bit wider. Hopefully, the felt tip end will be more durable.

Overall, the set is kind of fun but if you have previous experience with Tombow Dual Brush Pens or similar tools, the Primrosia set may be a bit disappointing. A wise man once said, you get what you pay for and in this case, the pens are not as high a quality as some of the name brand options. I think I will gift this set to my preteen neighbor as (hopefully) a gateway pen set.

DISCLAIMER: The item in this review include affiliate links. The Well-Appointed Desk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. Please see the About page for more details.

In Link Love

Link Love: 600 Episodes and Ink Love

Author AnaPosted on 1 Comment

First, I’d like to shoutout congratulations to Brad and Myke at Pen Addict podcast for 600 episodes in the proverbial can. Its a feat for any podcast to have managed to continue for 10 years but for it to be a podcast about PENS?!?! Pretty amazing. Congrats and thanks for making the pen community a better place.

Now, on to ink love in the form of new designs from our good friend, Calvin at Ink-a-Pet. For Valentine’s Day, Calvin has created new accessories for his ink sample vial holders. I couldn’t resist  decking out my Inktopus with a heart crown ($2). Be sure to check out the whole collection. These are my must haves to keep from tipping over my ink samples. Ready for February to be a month of hearts and flowers, chocolates and ink samples!

Pens:

Ink:

Pencils:

Notebooks & Paper:

Art & Creativity:

Other Interesting Things:

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In Paper Review

Notebook Review: Rhodia Greenbook

Author Laura CameronPosted on 3 Comments

As a lover of things analog, I do sometimes wonder about my carbon footprint with all my notebooks and scratch paper. While I love jotting down notes more in pen and paper than digital, I do wonder what the real cost of that habit is? So when I was perusing new products at JetPens, I was interested in the Rhodia Greenbook Notebook (A5, $13.00)

Now let me get a few biases/preconceived notions out of the way. I LOVE Rhodia notebooks. That’s definitely a point in this notebooks favor. On the other hand, in general, I’ve found recycled paper to be kind of crappy, particularly with fountain pens. Let’s see what I think of this!

The Greenbook Notebook is an A5 notebooks that is made of recycled materials. The hard plastic covers are made of recycled polypropylene, and the 80 sheets (160 pages) are made of 100% Clairefontaine 90gsm FSC-recertified recycled paper. The paper itself is white with blue graph paper.

As you can see this is a spiral notebook, and the paper is perforated for easy tear out sheets. The sheets are pre-punched for a European 2-ring binder or an A5 4-ring binder if you wish to store them that way. There are no frills on this one – just the plastic covers and the paper.

So how is the paper? Honestly it’s pretty darn good. It’s a little toothy and more porous than some other papers, but that is sort of how I expect recycled paper to feel. However, there’s no bleeding or feathering, even with medium wetter nibs and brush pens. I got a smidge of puckering on the backside when I used the highlighter, meaning this paper is not going to be good for any mixed media, and there was just a hint of bleed through there as well, but not with any other ink/pen. . I don’t have anything bad to say about the paper itself.

However, I find the grid to be kind of dark and it’s distracting as I write. I could see using this book to plot out knitting motifs or the like, but I don’t see it as a favorite everyday notebook because of that. But if graph paper is your jam, and you like the idea of using recycled materials as much as I do, this might be a great notebook for you!

DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us free of charge for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In Planners & Organizers

Setting up my Planner for February

Author AnaPosted on 2 Comments
Setting up my Planner for February

Inspired by last week’s color-coordination of my pens, I decided to pro-actively set-up supplies for my journal for February. I am embracing the Valentine’s Day vibe with an all-red-and-pink palette with pink floral washi and flower stickers as well as color matching my pens and inks.

I picked out two inks for the month:

and three pens:

I also dumped out my jar of pink and red pens to see what I have available:

I went through my collection of washi tape and pulled out some that were pink, red, green and floral. The roll in the plastic container is the Bande Washi Tape Sticker Roll in Pink Roses ($6). The rest of the rolls have been collected over years so I don’t have links to share but JetPens has lots of fun options in the pink color family.

I also purchased some new washi date stickers ($6.99 for a pack of 12-monthly sheets) to use on my pages since my notebook is a plain Stalogy and the pages are not dated.

From my sticker stash, I picked out some flowers, cupids, leaves and other elements that felt Valentine appropriate. Most of the washi stickers came from Flowers, Fairies and Plants washi sticker set ($9.99 for 120-stickers) I found on Amazon last year and the Botanist’s Sticker Anthology Book ($14.49). I carefully razored out a few pages from the book that I will put into a folder so I have quick access to stickers as I want them.

For Clarity:

The only purchase I made this month for my planning was the washi date stickers. Everything else was collected from my existing stash of products. I like this activity of pre-selecting inks, pens, colors, washi and stickers at the beginning of the month. IT pares down my massive collection to a more manageable kit and makes it easier when I sit down to plan or add a little flash to my notebook.

I’ll probably streamline the pens a little bit more so they fit in my travel pen case that I take with me to and from work. The rest will stay in my home office for my weekly prep sessions.

I used a similar, curated collection for January and it worked really well. In January I focused on blues, snowflakes, and a wintry feeling. Using a curated portion of my collection meant I had fewer decisions to make when I got my journal out but enough different pieces to create nice little embellishments to my pages. For both January and February, curating my tools has helped me stay inspired and excited to use my planner and, really, for me, that’s the most important thing.

What kind of system do you use to keep you excited about journaling or planning?