I'm A Sad, Pathetic Stationery Junkie.

[webgeckos]

On 9/12/2022 at 2:43 PM, dragondazd said:

What kind of pen do you like to use on these?

i have only used Baron Fig roller ball. I haven't experimented wit fountain pens with them yet. Work has been crazy and time off has been occupied with leathercraft projects.

[dragondazd]

6 minutes ago, webgeckos said:

i have only used Baron Fig rollerball. I have t rxperiemented wit fountain pens with them yet. Work has been crazy and time off has been occupied with leathercraft projects.

Ah. FPs are unlikely to work on plastic. I'm still interested but thinking about how I would use it.

[ParramattaPaul]

2 hours ago, dragondazd said:

What kind of pen do you like to use on these?

They mimic paper as a writing surface but are non-absorbent.  I use a Gel pen. A fibre tip pen may work.

[txomsy]

10 hours ago, webgeckos said:

I found translucent sticky notes on Amazon. Also found them as 1 little stack for $3.00 each on Etsy (way over priced.) I bought the 600 3x3. They used to ship in a tidy cardstock box and now you get them as a sleeve. 

 

Those are cool. I can see how I could have made a huge profit from them when I was a student for many additional uses besides marking pages. Thanks for the pointer.

[Stompie]

Okay, so, someone on here, and I can not find the post, mentioned cheap notebooks at Flying Tiger.

 

I ordered 3 because at £4 a shot what can go wrong right! Each one comes with 3 insert booklets.

 

They have now arrived and although I have not tested them I am quite happy with my purchase so Thank you for the recommendation whoever you were!

 

My partner raised her eyebrows but, as the new office furniture arrives on Thursday I should have enough space!! 😂

[Stompie]

On 9/4/2022 at 2:30 PM, txomsy said:

Gives it another dimension. I mean, being a "sad, pathetic, stationary junkie".

 

 

This is a picture of Princess Marshal Lubomirska's Apartments, the anteroom, at the Wilanow Palace in Warsaw. Izabela Lubomirska, neé Czartoryska (1735-1816), a great lover or art, owned Wilanow between 1773 and 1799. The 18th century secretary desk from the Aubusson manufacture in France is stuffed with lots of notebooks, rolls, and all sorts of paraphernalia shows the like for stationery affects higher nobility and laypeople alike, and as much 250 years ago as now.

Thank you so much for these pictures! 

In the one with Marie Curies handwriting I see my name sake there, Stefan.

 

My daddy was from Poland but taken prisoner by the Germans then released into England at the end of the war. I have never been there but now, your pictures have stirred something inside.

I know I will never find where my dad came from, it is in what is now Ukraine and the Russians flattened his village many years ago, but still, there is a hankering you know.

[webgeckos]

19 hours ago, dragondazd said:

Ah. FPs are unlikely to work on plastic. I'm still interested but thinking about how I would use it.

Top is Baron fig, middle is mb 149 calligraphy, bottom is Justus 95z

[amberleadavis]

2 hours ago, webgeckos said:

Top is Baron fig, middle is mb 149 calligraphy, bottom is Justus 95z

 

OOO you pulled out the Birmingham inks.

[txomsy]

16 hours ago, Stompie said:

Thank you so much for these pictures! 

In the one with Marie Curies handwriting I see my name sake there, Stefan.

 

My daddy was from Poland but taken prisoner by the Germans then released into England at the end of the war. I have never been there but now, your pictures have stirred something inside.

I know I will never find where my dad came from, it is in what is now Ukraine and the Russians flattened his village many years ago, but still, there is a hankering you know.

 

You are mostly welcome. I am glad these pictures arose keen feelings beyond their curiosity value. And, if you can, Poland is a beautiful country to visit.

[webgeckos]

15 hours ago, amberleadavis said:

 

OOO you pulled out the Birmingham inks.

I really like their inks. And its kind of sentimental for me as I grew up there.  I've kept the MB filled with Tesla Coil. The Justus dances around. Got a shipment from them on Monday and a bottle of Blue Bonnet is next up.

[webgeckos]

On 9/12/2022 at 3:55 PM, dragondazd said:

Ah. FPs are unlikely to work on plastic. I'm still interested but thinking about how I would use it.

Although the link laid down properly, it gravitated to either side and makes it look like the nib was railroading. It was kind of fun watching the ink move around, like mercury on glass.

[Runnin_Ute]

Just ordered two Apica CD15 (B5) notebooks and a new bottle of KWZI Pine Green as my current one is almost empty. 

[N1003U]

Sad, pathetic stationery junkie? I just climbed into a dusty construction dumpster to salvage a few sheets of cream-colored Rössler A4 writing paper and two (almost) pristine Clairefontaine A5 notebooks (Seyès-ruled).

 

I am thinking next maybe I can fashion a sign written on a scrap of corrugated box cardboard and stand on a corner begging for note cards…with winter coming, I wonder if maybe there are shelters for people like us…

 

Are we down on our luck, oppressed by the bourgeoisie, or have I come to this state as a result of my own poor choices?

[inkypete]

6 hours ago, Runnin_Ute said:

Just ordered two Apica CD15 (B5) notebooks and a new bottle of KWZI Pine Green as my current one is almost empty. 

Apica CD range is fantastic value and very nice notebooks. Love the paper. Hope you enjoy them.

[glittergreen8]

On 10/6/2022 at 5:42 AM, N1003U said:

Sad, pathetic stationery junkie? I just climbed into a dusty construction dumpster to salvage a few sheets of cream-colored Rössler A4 writing paper and two (almost) pristine Clairefontaine A5 notebooks (Seyès-ruled).

 

I am thinking next maybe I can fashion a sign written on a scrap of corrugated box cardboard and stand on a corner begging for note cards…with winter coming, I wonder if maybe there are shelters for people like us…

 

Are we down on our luck, oppressed by the bourgeoisie, or have I come to this state as a result of my own poor choices?

I'd say it was worth it

[A Smug Dill]

(Edit: Since I suppose this is already the bulk of a review of the product, just absent some evidence to substantiate my conclusion that the paper is not nearly as “fountain pen friendly” as the supplier claims, I've expanded into a full review with photos over in the proper forum section for such.)

 

 

I was killing time in Kinokuniya last week, and came across a big pile of A5 notebooks priced at A$4.95 each. That's atypically low for paper products that Kinokuniya chooses to carry, to put it mildly; and these notebooks are not exactly thin, have covers of some material that is seems stiffer and more ‘premium’ than (kraft or other) paper or card, and weren't marked as clearance stock or otherwise discounted that I could see. Every book is sealed in a clear cellophane pocket with a resealable flap; and, being Kinokuniya, its staff were sure to additionally tape the flap down over the store's price sticker, which in turn sits on top of and obscures the human-readable information on the manufacturer's barcode sticker. On only some of the notebooks, which come in three different colourways, there are see-through stickers that describe the product features less-than-comprehensively thus:

 

Notebook

8 page index

numbered pages

 

100gsm

acid free paper

fountain pen fantastic

soft touch cover

 

Lined

 

without disclosing the actual page count, how far apart the ruled lines are, or where the product (or paper) was made.

 

Between the incredibly low price and the claim of being “fountain pen fantastic”, I just could not contain my curiosity; and so I took one unit to the counter in the stationery department and asked for more information. The lady there didn't know; and so she offered to open one up to show me, which necessitated cutting the pocket along a seam with a knife, given the additional measures to ensure customers cannot easily unseal the retail packaging themselves (in-store or at home).

 

Each book has 150 numbered pages, and additionally 8 index pages titled Index 2017. (I have now looked inside two out of the all three colourways, and both they are stuck equally far in the past. I'll check the third colourway in the morning.) Upon my drawing her attention to it, the lady remarked, “No wonder they're cheap.” The horizontal guidelines on regular pages are ruled 6mm apart; and there is space marked out, with virgules as field separators but no year number preprinted, in the outside-edge corner at the top for the date; so the format is perfectly usable with no distracting outdated markings. The paper itself does not look or feel coated, and the cover material is somewhat rubbery to the touch and stiffer than, say, a latex oven mitt. All nice enough features to raise its standing above the average notebook one'd find in the MUJI store downstairs or Officeworks across the road. The Internet domain name (which is not exactly a ‘web page’ or URL) printed on the top sheet alludes to the brand being Australian, but I cannot find any explicit statement of where the product was made or from where the paper was sourced.

 

All the same, it all seems too good to be true, so I just had to risk $5 (but be also mentally prepared to return to the store and buy $100 ‘worth’ of the remaining stock).

 

Well, it is. The paper is not bad, but (very loosely speaking) there is visible bleed-through to the other side of the 100gsm sheet from eight or nine out of every ten inks I have tested, although not to the extent of being greatly distracting if there is handwritten text in front of the spots of ink bleed. There is also noticeable, albeit sparse, feathering with maybe half of the inks; and, by that, I mean ink travelling in awkward directions along fibres on the paper surface away from the ink marks, not woolly outlines. Lines of ink tend to spread more than on Rhodia, but may be on par with the recto side of Exacompta FAF 70g/m² paper.

 

If I'm to keep a journal or subject-specific notebook, in which I would typically write with several, or even many, different pens and different inks, I probably won't enjoy writing in this type of notebook, or subsequently rereading what I'd written. In terms of paper quality, I'd say it's on par with the 100gsm paper used in Paperblanks Flexis softcover journals. The Flexis paper is more apt to exhibit bleed-through, but more resistant to feathering; and it's off-white in colour, whereas the paper in this 2017 notebook is a cool white in spite of the coloured edges on three sides.

 

I've subsequently found that the aforementioned domain name, when used as a partial URL (absent the https:// protocol part), does not bring up a website of the same name; it redirects to the website of a different brand/company, although that company seems to sell some similar products (priced at A$19.95 each) of which the description does not match the details of this notebook exactly.

 

The brand is Memmo, the product is called FP Soft Touch Cover Notebook, and the website claims it is “fountain pen friendly” (as opposed to “fountain pen fantastic”). I'm not going to order one at that price to see if it uses the same paper, or is in fact the same product; but for now I strongly suspect it is the case, and just that the details listed are inaccurate in more ways than one and cannot be trusted.

 

Which means (I'll happily wager) it is not all that “fountain pen friendly” after all.

 

So, being a sad, pathetic stationery junkie, what did I do today? Return to Kinokuniya and buy another, of course, since the first book has been ‘ruined’ with my testing so far.

 

I won't use it for journalling — and I already have many dozen new Paperblanks and (better than that) Peter Pauper Press journals here anyway — but there is probably one particular application for which this Memmo FP paper is suitable, in spite (or specifically because) of its minor flaws: an inking log book.

 

I'm not going to see which inks are more likely to produce feathering and bleed-through, if I keep using Apica notebooks or switch to Clairefontaine ‘Age Bag’ notebooks for my inking log book. On the other hand, keeping an inking log book on this flawed paper would not only tell me the colour of the ink, but also warn me which inks could spell trouble on inferior paper.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by A Smug Dill
Added link to product review

[XYZZY]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

[snip]

Every book is sealed in a clear cellophane pocket with a resealable flap; and, being Kinokuniya, its staff were sure to additionally tape the flap down over the store's price sticker, which in turn sits on top of and obscures the human-readable information on the manufacturer's barcode sticker.

[snip]

and so she offered to open one up to show me, which necessitated cutting the pocket along a seam with a knife, given the additional measures to ensure customers cannot easily unseal the retail packaging themselves (in-store or at home).

[snip]

 

 

You made me laugh twice.  The Seattle Kinokuniya does similar wrapping.  They must share their best-practices.🙂

[Runnin_Ute]

On 10/6/2022 at 2:44 AM, inkypete said:

Apica CD range is fantastic value and very nice notebooks. Love the paper. Hope you enjoy them.

I really do like them. Fairly new to the B5 size though. But I have a specific use in mind that this size seems to work better than say A5. They arrived today.

[midnightblues]

Oh hi 🖐 it's been a while! Back on the FP horse after house moves and job changes blah blah. I just had a pleasant surprise - in my ongoing mission to seek out discbound dot grid in the UK, I happened across Novel Notes. I wanted some aluminium discs and threw a pack of their recycled mushroom punched dot grid in the basket. It's really nice! Coped with my TWSBI stub and Rouge Hematite perfectly, and didn't even ghost. Cheaper than William Hannah, nicer to write on than most of Citrus Bookbindery's papers and ready to go unlike my preferred Rhodia which I have to disassemble. This weekend I shall pick my most badly behaved ink / pen combos and really give it a workout. Any other discbound suggestions warmly received!

[amberleadavis]

Oh the cruelty.  My dad looks at me and says, you know, the big Office Depot is closing down for a new smaller location ....

 

OMG, I have more stuff than an office supply store now.  BUT it's such a great deal...