I may have a less-than-loving relationship with the Pilot Varisty pen but my friend Flora loves hers so much she drew a darling picture of it.
(via Happy Doodle Land)
Scout Books Giveaway Winners!
Today, everyone is a winner! Scout Books has kindly offered discounts for everyone.
All my awesome readers can take $25 off a custom order of Make Your Own Books or Notebooks with the promo code AWESOME. So that lightbulb, Keep Calm and Make Lists and all the other wonderful suggestions can be made for $25 less. There is currently no expiration date on this offer so start planning your custom design and then get a deal when you’re ready to make it. How awesome!
If you’re not ready to go all DIY, you can take $10 off any order over $50 from the Bookstore by entering the code WELLAPPTDESK. This offers expire on 4/11/13.
Winners of the Rainbow Composition Set or the 3-pack of blank books are:
First up:
Thetech207 is the first number drawn. He will have the right to pick between the two offers and then I will contact winner #2 who will get the alternate prize.
Allie is the second winner and I will be contacting both winners today to claim their prizes.
Congrats to everyone!!!
Fountain Pen Exhibit Prep
On Friday, I helped two of my co-workers set up a display in our gallery area of fountain pens. I didn’t have nearly as many to add to the collection as they did but it was fun to see all the pens and touch them. There are vintage hard rubber pens, a TON of Esterbrooks, Parker, Sheaffer and many others. I have one case filled with modern fountain pens (most featured here on the blog).
The show will be in the gallery at Hallmark HQ for the month of March. If you are in the KC area and would like to see the show during regular business hours, let me know and I can give you a tour. If not, I’ll be posting photos soon of the show once it’s all set up.
Uni Kura Toga Mechanical Pencil
My pal Brad over at Pen Addict always refers to the Uni Kuru Toga mechanical pencil as his pencil of choice so I finally decided I’d give it a try. The feature that makes this mechanical pencil unique is a automatic lead rotation so that you do not have to continually alter your grip to avoid getting a wide chisel effect.
The pencil body is plastic painted to look metallic and the grip area is clear plastic with some ridges to aid in gripping. There is a small ring of rubber just above the tip that must be designed to keep your fingers from slipping on the plastic body into the tip writing area. Overall, I love the color but this is not the most comfortable pencil for long session writing. For that, I would prefer the Pilot Opt with its large rubberized grip area.
The Kuru Toga pencil includes a small white plastic eraser under the translucent cap which works well and the cap keeps the eraser clean and free from bottom-of-the-bag debris.
There is a spring-loaded clutch in the pencil that is triggered every time you lift the pencil helping to rotate the lead to a perfect point as you write. I test drove the 0.5mm green model though there are 0.3mm lead versions of the pencil as well for an even finer line which would be good to tight technical drawings or other detailed work.
The image above is a writing sample from the Kuru Toga. There does seem to be an overall consistency in the line widths. I worked hard not to adjust my grip on the pencil while I was writing. Its a hard habit to break.
This is a sample of my writing using a standard big-box mechanical pencil with a 0.5mm lead. I wrote with this without rotating the pencil while I wrote an lo and behold, the writing does get much thicker and more indistinct as a result of the pencil lead wearing into a chisel point.
If a consistent line width with your pencil is an issue, then the Kuru Toga line is definitely the answer. Available from JetPens for $7.50 for either the 0.5mm or 0.3mm versions.
Word Notebook Winners!
Let’s get right to the winners:
The first winner is #2 and our letter loving friend, Derrick Dodson and he is getting the orange book. The second winner is the dark lord of pens, Ivan R and I’ll be sending him the camo version. Expect an email soon so you can send me your address.
Thanks to everyone who left comments and I can’t wait to hear what Derrick and Ivan think of the notebooks when they receive them.
Scout Books
Do you love those little pocket notebooks but wish you could customize them, stick your logo on them or otherwise create your own book? If so, Scout Books is what you need. You can customize the front of the kraft paper covers with your 1- or 2-color logo and then select between dot grid, blank, grid or lined paper (sturdy 70# white text, 100% recycled). Minimum order is 50 notebooks.
The books are a tiny bit smaller (3.5″wide x 5″ tall) than the ubiquitous Field Notes (3.5″x5.5″) but the paper is excellent. The lines and grids are light and fine so as to not be distracting but enough to keep your lines straight when needed.
In writing tests, the 70# text was fabulous. None of the pens I used had any show through at all. I did not bring out the pen heavy artillery but I suspect a Sharpie marker would get some show through but not bleed through.
I like you’all so much I have a set of three kraft notebooks to giveaway (one lined, one grid and one dot gird) to one lucky winner. (One notebook has a tiny grease stain on the cover. I blame myself for getting the mail and the pizza at the same time — a well-placed sticker will disguise this blemish).
UPDATE!!!: Scout Books has kindly offered a set of their Rainbow Composition Books for the giveaway as well so I’ll draw two winners. The first will get to choose between the 3-pack of blank books or the Rainbow Set. Second winner will get the other.
Leave a note in the comments telling me what you’d get custom printed on your own stash of Scout Books to be entered to win.
FINE PRINT: Giveaway ends at 10pm on Monday, March 11, 2013 (US Central Time). All comment must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Friday. Winner will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear.
Washable Blues
I was thumbing through the Miquelrius medium flexible 300 grid paper book I use for all my pen and ink testing, when I stumbled across this comparison between the vintage Sheaffer Scrip Washable Blue and the more recent Diamine Washable Blue. I think the Sheaffer Scrip Blue looks more like a blue-black and the Diamine is a brighter blue. Just thought it was interesting… which do you prefer?