In Link Love

Link Love: A Farewell to Susan

Author AnaPosted on 1 Comment

This week marks the departure of Susan Pigott from The Pen Addict as she forges ahead in a new life challenge. I was amused when reading her post that many of her favorite reviews and posts over the years were also products I have also loved reviewing. While Susan may be leaving The Pen Addict for now, I don’t think she is leaving the pen community forever.  Best of luck to you in your new adventures. Your beautiful photos and posts will be missed.

Hey Susan, if you ever want to guest post here on The Desk, you are always welcome!

Post of the Week:

Saying Goodbye to The Pen Addict (via The Pen Addict)

Pens:

Another ink collecgtion post by The Gentleman Stationer. I love seeing these swatches all collected together. I think I need to do this.

Ink:

Pencils:

Notebooks & Paper:

Art & Creativity:

The Raven Story stamp just released by the USPS.

Other Interesting Things:

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In photo

Yarn + Ink Palette: Bold and graphic!

Author Laura CameronPosted on 2 Comments

Another project off my needles and another ink palette. What’s funny is that when the yarn arrived, I didn’t think the colors would work well together. But they do!

The Pattern: Lady Fingers Sweater by Morgan Woltersdorf (Ravelry link)

The Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Superfine DK in Red, Silver, Teal, Yellow and Orange

The Inks:

In Paper Review

Notebook Review: Puggy’s Best High Stationer Note Book

Author AnaPosted on 1 Comment
Notebook Review: Puggy’s Best High Stationer Note Book

The Puggy’s Best High Stationer Notebook from Hightide had a lot to recommend it when I found it. It’s approximately A6 sized (4.1×5.7″), it was filled with blank, recycled paper, and cost just $7 (600¥). It has a kraft paperstock cover and has a smooth, glue-bound spine. Everything about it says “understated Japanese stationery”.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

The notebook I ordered has 100 sheets of paper but the Hightide web site indicates the “small” notebook only has 66 pages now. Either way, at $7 it’s still a steal. But remember that old adage “you get what you pay for”? In this case, it very much applies.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Upon opening the notebook, I cracked/tore the spine from the text block. Clearly there was too much glue along the spine.

In testing the paper, most of my favorite writing tools did not perform well on the slightly toothy, natural white paper.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

I tested several pages using a range of tools. Above, you can see on the left that the page behind it can been seen through the paper. Even though the paper feels fairly thick (no paper weight info was given), there is still evidence of show through.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

The page above is the back side of the righthand page from the previous photo. Most fountain pens bleed through but worse than that, fountain pen ink splines! I haven’t tested a notebook in a long time that had this level of bleeding and feathering that the Puggy’s Best suffers from.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Even brush markers look splotchy in the way color is absorbed into the paper.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

This close-up above will more clearly show the splining issue. At the bottom of the photo is a fine nib that looks slightly spline-y and splotchy. The TWSBI 1.1mm stub really shows the issue.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Above is a fine nib WingSung S and you can see where the ink travels through the fibers creating the splines. This is my biggest pet peeve with paper. Bleed through and show through I can live with as long as the ink does not spline. It’s a travesty.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Shown above is the back of the tests with the TWSBI, Traveler’s Notebook FP and the WingSung. Two are fine nib pens and the other is a 1.1mm and all resulted in dots of show through.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Not wanting to completely write this notebook off , I thought I’d try some brush pens to see if the notebook might be used with pencils, gel or rollerball pen and pencil — a budget travel sketchbook.

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Puggy's Best High Stationer Notebook

Unfortunately, I noticed the same blotchy color when using brush pens that I had noticed earlier.

Puggy’s Best, despite the name, really isn’t the best for much. If you exclusively use pencils, ballpoint or gel pens, then you may get some use out of this notebook but I prefer a notebook that can at least tolerate a larger array of tools. Save your money and put it towards a better notebook.

Purchased with my own money.

In Paper Review

Notebook Review: Profolio Oasis Notebook

Author AnaPosted on 2 Comments
Notebook Review: Profolio Oasis Notebook

I was wandering around my local art supply shop recently and stumbled across the Profolio Oasis Notebook. It must have been kismet but the same week, several reviews popped up about the new Profolio Oasis Summit notebook. This Oasis is the simpler, cheaper cousin of the Summit.

I grabbed the standard A5 size with a blue/teal cover. I can’t remember but it may have been the only one they had left. Never fear, our friends over at Pen Boutique have it in stock and the color is called Wintergreen ($9.99).

The Oasis Notebook is a fairly common cardstock cover style notebook with paper tape on the spine. It has  sewn signatures hidden under the tape so when the book is open the pages lay flat.

Profolio Oasis Notebook

Profolio Oasis Notebook

Inside the paper features an unusual multi-divided line-dot-grid-Seyes structure. Unless your paper preference is blank, this paper pretty much has it all. The dark lines are 7mm and the dotted lines are one-third of that — so, every 2.33mm. The vertical ticks are also every 7mm.

Profolio Oasis Notebook

The paper is on the ivory side making it very challenging to photograph. (My camera kept trying to make it more peachy or whiter than it was.) The color is a warm ivory like the inside color of a fresh croissant.

Profolio Oasis Notebook

The paper is smooth and great for all pen types I tried. It wasn’t glassy. I often think Clairefontaine can feel a little glassy — like too slick. The Oasis paper was just smooth. It’s weird. To my hands, the Oasis paper feels slicker but to my pens there’s a bit more bite. It’s very enjoyable to write on this paper.

Profolio Oasis Notebook

This is a view of the reverse of my test writing page and a full view of the page with the top margin (place for date and description) and notation ticks at the top and bottom of the page for center and quarters (dots) and eighths (ticks).

This is a reasonably priced notebook with good paper — really good paper — that would fit into many covers that would be perfect for journaling, bullet journaling or work notes. If I were to make a new top 5 notebooks list, this would probably be on it.

 

 

 

In Link Love

Link Love: Don’t Believe the Cat (Photo)

Author AnaPosted on 3 Comments
Link Love: Don’t Believe the Cat (Photo)

This week brings us FAKE cat photos (Really? Do we need fake cat photos? If the world is seriously lacking in cat photos, I can certainly start posting more photos of the Cats That Run The Desk but honestly I thought we’d reached cat-capacity on the internet… but no. Now we have FAKE CAT NEWS! What is the world coming to?), lots of BENU pens, Van Diemans inks and news from the London Pen Show.  Ooh, yeah, and the Tokyo Olympics. That’s happening too. I watched badminton, table tennis and surfing last night. Are you watching the Olympics?

Pens:

All the Green Inks from The Gentleman Stationer

Ink:

Pencils:

Notebooks & Paper:

Art & Creativity:

Other Interesting Things:

We need each other. Please support our sponsors and affiliates. Your patronage will let them know you appreciate their support of the pen community. Without them, and without you, we could not continue to do what we do. Thank you!

In Fountain Pen Review, photo

First Look: Sailor Pro Gear Slim Sound of Rain, Spring Rain

Author Laura CameronPosted on 11 Comments

I’m generally pretty happy with my collection of fountain pens. Truly, I have more than I need since I can only write with one at a time and I’m at the point where adding to the collection usually means I vote one off the island. The pandemic has also been a good time to explore those frenzied moments at pen shows, FOMO, and making intentional choices about what I purchase. Unlike many, I don’t have a holy grail pen I’m working up to. I have dreams of one day owning a Nakaya, but I haven’t played with enough of them to even know what model, what finish or anything like that.

I am almost exclusively a modern pen collector. While I do love the look of the Parker Vacumatics and of course I have an Esterbrook from Jessie, the remainder of my collection is modern. I love the modern acrylics and I have quite a few demonstrators. I was discussing with someone recently that I love the look of7 the Aurora 88 Demonstrator, and I do believe Aurora’s are fine quality pens, but that I can’t wrap my head around spending $700-900 on a plastic demonstrator.

So I realize that it is entirely illogical that when I saw the Sailor Sound of Rain series I plunked my money down on a pre-order. When I got the email, I absolutely could not decide which one I wanted. They are each so gorgeous in their own right. If I had enough money, I know I’d just buy all four and not make myself choose.

I selected the Spring Rain. Sound of Rain is offered only in the Pro Gear Slim model, which happens to be my favorite. The barrels are matte finish, and two in the series are translucent while the other two are opaque. All have gold hardware, and a 21k gold bi-color nib. Nibs are only available in MF, which suits me just fine.

L to R: Spring Rain, Purple Cosmos

I haven’t had a chance to play with the pen too much; it just arrived on Friday. But it writes super smoothly – gotta love those Sailor nibs. Since Spring Rain is a mint green with purple finials I tried for a complementary ink and ended up with J. Herbin’s Violet Pensees. I also think something with a bit of iridescence or sheen would be fun to play on the light on droplets of water theme.

So now I need to vote someone off the island, and zip up my wallet tight. Until the next Sailor special edition that catches my eye?