Writer's Bloc Blog

I really love the creative design of the Fabrica Pocket-in-a-Pocket notepads by Yukihiro Kaneuchi of Japan. They have several unique features derived from the fashion industry that makes them both fun and memorable.

These notepads are pocket-size in a very literal sense: not only are they shaped like a pocket, they are sized to fit perfectly inside a classic men’s shirt pocket. They also are a great fit for the back pocket on a pair of jeans. Women’s fashion tends to have a greater number of variables, but I’m guessing the Pocket-in-a-Pocket notebook would also fit into some women’s pockets too. The size of the notepad is about 4” x 4.5” and it is less than 0.25” thick so you can check to see if it’ll fit your own favorite pockets.

The white paper inside the Pocket-in-a-Pocket notepad is quite interesting. Each of the notepads in the set of 3 has a unique page texture that imitates the textures of weaves found in fabric. I’m no fashion expert so pardon my descriptions – one notepad’s paper has a herringbone texture, another has a check pattern and the third has a diagonal texture that looks like gabardine to me. Even though the paper has texture, it is subtle and I felt that it did not interfere with my writing. It’s really hard to show the texture in a photo, but if you click on the photo above, enlarge it and then squint you might be able to make out the checkered pattern inside the aqua blue notebook.

(Writing Test - Front)

(Writing Test - Back)

From this writing test, it’s fairly obvious that this is not the notebook to use with fountain pens unless you only plan on using one side of the page. A fair amount of the fountain pen ink bled through the paper. It works well with both ballpoint and gel pens and the texture of the paper does not interfere with their performance. The texture of the paper makes me think it would be interesting to try some pencil sketches in these.

The Fabrica Pocket-in-a-Pocket notepads come in a set of 3, with one set featuring the Cool colors shown in the photo above, and the other set featuring Warm colors. It has a flexible cardboard cover with a subtle embossed Fabrica logo, is top stitch-bound and has 52 pages. What a great gift for the man in your life!

Have you tried any of Fabrica’s innovative products? If so, what is your favorite?

Posted by Cheryl at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It never ceases to amaze me just how fast a year flies by, and it was a busy year for us here at Writer’s Bloc!

One year ago the new Clairefontaine catalog appeared online and left us greatly anticipating the arrival of many new products from Exaclair France. Rhodia brought us R by Rhodia, a new line of notepads with premium satin finish Clairefontaine ivory paper. The ever popular Webnotebooks arrived with blank and dot grid paper and Rhodia pad holders came in four new formats. Habana Journals switched over from white to 85g ivory paper and the Habana limited edition artist collection came to us with cover designs by Keith Haring, Matisse and Picasso. Clairefontaine limited edition notebooks arrived with Courants d’Arts, Ladies Who Love Life, Catitudes and Les Cakes de Bertrand cover designs.

(Clairefontaine A4 Size 4-Ring Binder)

We chose to special order a few things from Exaclair France to round out the selection in our store. Clairefontaine A4 size 4-ring binders complement perfectly our selection of Clairefontaine loose sheets. Our French ruled collection expanded to include the A4 size Clairefontaine Pupitre Top Staple Bound Notepad and the Clairing notebook. We even got some pretty stationary sets featuring handbags or violets from the Ladies Who Love Life and Les Cakes de Bertrand collections.

What new things will Clairefontaine bring us in 2012? Take a look at their 2012 catalog (coming soon) and let us know if you have any special requests!

We love the flexibility that disc bound notebooks provide so were happy to welcome the Myndology family of notebooks and journals including their eco-friendly Bare series. We also special ordered from France four A4 size notebooks from the Clairefontaine Clairing notebook collection.

(TWSBI Diamond 540 Fountain Pen)

The stagnant economy and the sky-high price of gold seems to have had its effect on the world of fountain pens. The cost of luxurious fountain pens with beautiful gold nibs has become out of reach for many of us and steel nibbed fountain pens have grown in popularity. We are excited about the arrival of two great steel nib demonstrator fountain pens to our store: the TWSBI Diamond 540 and Pilot Prera. The TWSBI Diamond 540 is a large pen with features often found only in pens many times its price such as its piston filling mechanism and fabulous ink capacity! Interestingly this pen can completely be disassembled for cleaning or repairs. The Pilot Prera demonstrator is a classy fountain pen with a wonderful Japanese nib. The fine nib size is great for tiny handwriting or detailed drawing and is about equivalent to a European-made extra-fine nib. LAMY released its special edition Safari in Aqua Blue and an Al-Star in Ruby Red.

(Pilot Vanishing Point Retractable Fountain Pen in Yellow)

If you still prefer the feel of a gold nib against the page, one option for a reasonably priced pen is the Pilot Vanishing Point retractable fountain pen. The size of the nib is kept relatively small to enable it to retract into the pen barrel so the amount of gold required is less than other larger gold nibs. Another new reasonably priced fountain pen with a gold nib is Pilot’s Custom 74 demonstrator in clear, blue or black smoke.

(Caran d'Ache Fountain Pen Ink - Storm)

New fountain pen inks that showed up on our doorstep included Pilot’s Iroshizuku series inspired by the beauty of nature and Platinum’s Mix Free inks for making your own custom colors. Noodler’s Ink continues to expand their already extensive selection of ink and we added the Black Swan, Bernanke fast-drying and V-mail series of inks. We love smooth flowing Caran d'Ache fountain pen ink and their rich, dark Carbon black and deep purple Storm and were happy to add these to our ink line-up. We also welcomed the interesting bottle design of Omas fountain pen ink and their popular dark blue ink color.

(Fabrica Bookband in Green)

If you love paper and pens no doubt you also have a few pen and pencil cases lying around and we are no exception. We expanded our selection of Aston genuine leather pen cases and added some fun pencil cases like the Fabrica Bookband, PlePle Wrap and Vintage PDX canvas pencil case.

We especially want to take this opportunity to thank our loyal customers – we appreciate you a lot! Please continue to interact with us by Facebook, Twitter or email and feel free to let us know what new pens, pencils and paper you’d like us to add in 2012. Without all of you, this past year would not have been possible.

‎Now that 2011 has come to an end, what is your most memorable moment of the past year?

(One of my memorable moments from 2011 - a trip to the Oregon coast)

Posted by Cheryl at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While reviewing the events of the past year we compiled a list of our top 10 blog posts from 2011. The results are based on page views, comments, emails and a few other things and they are listed in chronological order. We enjoyed taking a look at the past year and hope you do too!

Refillable Felt-Tip Highlighters

Seems a lot of our readers are concerned about the environment, reusing, recycling and perhaps even saving a little money. This post focuses on highlighters that are specifically made to be refilled.

If Fountain Pens Were Cars

Do you “drive” a fountain pen? If so, what kind of driver are you? Find out in this comparison of fountain pens and cars.

We Love Pencil Pouches!

Anyone that writes needs a place to store and organize their pens and pencils. Spread the pencil pouch love!

Does Fountain Pen Ink Fade With Time?

Fountain pen ink does fade with time, so find out what choices you can make to minimize the fading.

Get Organized with Multiple Subject Notebooks

With my personality I’ll always feel that being organized is a challenge, but it’s nice to know that there are notebooks out there designed to help!

Do I need a left-handed nib on my fountain pen if I’m a left-handed writer?

Left-handed writers certainly have a variety of writing methods, hand positions and paper orientation. Here’s my personal experience with using both left and right-handed nibs.

Dual-Purpose Planners With Room For Notes

Combine two books into one by using a planner that gives you extra space for writing notes.

Fountain Pen Friendly Planners

Here’s a list of all the Rhodia, Exacompta and Quo Vadis planners that contain premium 90g Clairefontaine paper. There’s a pretty good chance that if you’re a Writer that uses a fountain pen you’re going to love these planners!

Myndology Bare Memo Pad Review

The most eco-friendly notepads and journals from Myndology are those from their Bare series - find out why in this blog post. As a bonus, they work great with fountain pens!

What is Fountain Pen Friendly Paper?

Do you use a fountain pen? How would you define fountain pen friendly paper? Give us a list of your favorites here.

We’re looking forward to a new year of blogging as well as to a new year of insightful, thoughtful and creative posts from the pen and paper blogging community. Thanks everyone for a great year!

Posted by Cheryl at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

R by Rhodia was a new addition to the Rhodia family of notebooks in 2011. What features do these new Rhodia notebooks have to offer?

The paper inside R by Rhodia notebooks is an ivory colored high grade vellum paper. It is made by Clairefontaine and as expected it has that luxuriously smooth finish that is so wonderful to write on. From what I can see, the paper is either the same or very similar to the paper inside the Rhodia Webnotebook. The paper is PEFC Certified so we know it comes from sustainably managed forests and only uses water-based, non-toxic inks. It is 90g and most writers will agree that it works very well with fountain pens.

R by Rhodia notepads have a “soft touch” cover which is coated with a matte finish. It’s a little hard to explain what the “soft touch” finish is exactly – it’s not hard and slippery feeling, but instead feels soft to the touch and gives you a little bit of extra grip. When you flip one of the orange covers over, the reverse side is matte black and when you flip one of the black covers over, the reverse side is matte orange.

There is a piece of stiff cardboard inside the back cover to add support while you’re writing or sketching. The front of the cover is thoughtfully scored so that you can neatly fold it back over the top of your notepad. Each page is microperforated so that you can easily and cleanly remove pages when you want to.

At the time of writing this post, R by Rhodia is only available in the top staple-bound format and comes in three sizes: 3 3/8” x 4 3/4”, 6” x 8 1/4” and 8 1/4” x 11 3/4”. The covers come in either orange or black and the 70 sheets of paper are either blank or lined. We can’t help but feel that the large size notepad’s beautiful ivory colored paper would be great coupled with a fountain pen for use as stationery!

This paper performed well with all of the pens I tried, and I would have to say it performed exceptionally well with fountain pens! Fountain pen ink takes a little while to dry on this smooth finish paper, so because I’m a lefty I smeared the ink a little bit. There was little if any ink feathering, ink bleeding through or ink showing through the paper (except for the Sharpie pen). A very fine quality paper indeed!

(R by Rhodia Ink Test - Front)

(R by Rhodia Ink Test - Back)

Have you tried R by Rhodia yet? What do you think of these premium Rhodia notepads?

Posted by Cheryl at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are a writer that uses fountain pens you may have noticed that not all paper is created equal. The performance of your fountain pen may be spectacular on some paper, but less than desirable on others. How do you determine what paper is fountain pen friendly – that will give you the performance you want with your fountain pens? 

The answer to this question is kind of like the answer to the question, “What is a comfortable pair of shoes?” Everyone has their own opinions and not all of them are the same, but there are some similarities in the answers. If you ask the question, “What is the most comfortable pair of shoes in your closet?”, then the answers will vary even more!

Many opinions of what fountain pen friendly paper is will include the following (but not necessarily limited to these things or in this order of importance):

1) The fountain pen ink does not bleed through the paper excessively.

2) The ink is not overly visible from the back side of the page.

3) The ink does not feather or has minimal feathering on the paper.

4) And for the lefties of the world I will add the ink must dry within a reasonable amount of time on the paper! In fact, this personally is my highest priority, otherwise I cannot use the paper with a fountain pen. I’m hoping the use of fast-drying ink will expand my fountain pen friendly paper selection.

If you ask the question, “What fountain pen friendly paper is on your desk?”, you’re likely to get a variety of different answers! Each fountain pen nib, each brand of ink, each color of ink and the paper in each notebook or journal will interact differently when used with each other. The equation pen + paper + ink = good/bad results changes each time you change a component of the equation. This is why in our online store we cannot say for certain which paper is fountain pen friendly and which is not. There are brands of paper that in general are known for good performance with fountain pens, but within a brand there may be several types and grades of paper, some of which may not be so fountain pen friendly.

There are many online reviews of various paper products that can be very helpful in making your choices. The Writer’s Bloc blog has a number of reviews with writing tests showing the performance of a limited number of fountain pen inks on specific paper and notebooks. Before purchasing your journal or notebook, why not do a search on our blog or use any search engine to find some reviews? From our own experience, experimenting yourself with pens, ink and paper will help you to find what you personally like the best.

So I must ask, “What fountain pen friendly paper is on your desk?”

Posted by Cheryl at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m a lefty, and unless I use just the right fountain pen, ink and paper combinations I have trouble with smearing ink all over the paper with my hand. I’ve been thinking of getting some fast-drying fountain pen ink to see if this will allow me to expand my regularly used paper selection. Online reviews of this type of ink sometimes mention that whatever changes are made to the formula of this ink to make it dry more quickly also cause more problems with feathering. Since Noodler’s Bernanke Black and Bernanke Blue just arrived in our shop I thought I’d do a very quick test of this ink on several types of paper to see the results. For this test I used both a J. Herbin glass pen which laid down a ton of ink with the Bernanke inks (the bold and broad writing) and a Platinum Preppy fountain pen with a fine nib. Here are some scans of the results:

Clairefontaine French Ruled Paper - the gold standard. Under a magnifying glass I could see an eensy bit of feathering using a Platinum Preppy fine nib fountain pen, but unmagnified it looks fine. Not shown in this scan, the plentiful ink flowing from the glass pen did cause feathering.

Rhodia grid paper. The abundant flow of ink from the glass pen feathered some, but the Preppy pen writing looked just as good as on the Clairefontaine French ruled paper.

Compendium Live Inspired “Her Words” paper. Same results as the Rhodia paper – the broad line with lots of ink has a bit of feathering, the writing from the fine nib looks good.

Exacompta Basics Forum Journal with blank paper. Bernanke inks behave quite well on this paper, even the broad line from the glass pen had only a little feathering (there is some bleed through, but that is typical of this paper – perhaps this reduces the feathering?).

Leuchtturm1917 blank paper. Some feathering with both the broad and fine tip pens.

Myndology Luna Note paper. More feathering with the broad tip glass pen, less feathering with the fine nib.

Office Max generic top-stapled notepad paper. I imagined that this paper would perform the worst, but it’s actually not too bad. The broad tip glass pen feathered some, but the fine nib is pretty good.

Rhodia Webnotebook lined paper. Under magnification I could see a tiny bit of feathering with the black, but without magnification it looks great! I have not been able to use the Rhodia Webnotebook with a fountain pen because ink usually takes too long to dry on this paper and I smear it. In this test I tried smearing the ink immediately after I wrote with it – probably within one second or less – and the results were pretty good. Bernanke fast-drying ink definitely reduces the smear factor!

My conclusion so far is that fast-drying fountain pen ink does seem to feather more than regular ink, however, I will probably do very well using Noodler’s Bernanke ink with a fine nib fountain pen. It also made me wonder – do the Noodler’s Bernanke inks would work well in dry-writing pens? Does anyone know?

Do you use fast-drying fountain pen ink? What results have you had with feathering? Do you have any favorite fast-drying ink, paper and pen combinations you’d like to share?

Posted by Cheryl at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Journal 21 by Exacompta Paris is a refillable daily planner made with delightfully smooth Clairefontaine paper. The format of Journal 21 is ideal for both advance planning or as a diary recording each day’s thoughts one day at a time. Each day has twenty-seven 6mm narrow ruled lines with time increments listed on the far left. The Clairefontaine paper inside Journal 21 is 72g and it is tinted a very soft green color with blue and grey/black print.

Journal 21 measures about 5 1/4” x 8 1/4” - similar in size to the large Rhodia Webnotebook but it’s thicker and a the pages are about 1/4” less wide. It has a stitched binding to keep it from falling apart and to help it to open flat. The bottom corner of each page is perforated and can be torn off after each day is completed so that you can easily find your place. If you buy Journal 21 with a Club or Soya cover it also comes with an elastic Quo Vadis bookmark which comes in handy to mark your place and keep your planner securely closed. An additional feature to help you navigate this planner is that the names of the months are printed in blue boxes that are visible on the page edges and they are staggered from top to bottom like tabs would be.

(Journal 21 with a blue Club cover)

Journal 21 comes with a few different durable and refillable cover options. There is the stitched, grained leatherette Club cover that comes in nine different colors (black, blue, cherry red, teal, saddle brown, bamboo, spring green, powder pink and lilac).

(Journal 21 with black Soya cover)

The Soya cover has six different color choices (black, red, saddle brown, jade, orange and lavender blue) and it is also saddle stitched, but this leather-like material has a smooth finish.

There is a Vinyl cover that comes in eight colors (black, navy blue, burgundy, brown, sapphire blue, red, fuchsia and apple green) and it has a smooth, matte finish. Of course, you can always make your own cover or just use the Journal 21 refill as it is with its plain, white cardboard cover.

Journal 21 begins with a title page followed by a page that records useful personal information including emergency contact info and where the planner can be returned to if it happens to get lost. There is a list of dates for US holidays during the current planner year and the following year, as well as major world holidays of the current year (covers 11 countries: Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland). There’s a page with a whole bunch of international telephone access codes and another page showing a map of the US with time zones.

Following all of that there is a semi-annual planner that spans 6 pages and covers a year and a half of plans – for the 2012 planner it includes July 2011 through December 2012.

Next comes a monthly plan that covers 16 months – for 2012 it covers November 2011 all the way through February of 2013. Each month shows the previous month and following month on the bottom of the page. Saturdays and Sundays are combined into one column on the right to save space.

The daily calendar has one day per page and covers 8am to 9pm plans broken down into half hour increments. The page on the left shows the current month with the current week in a bold font, and the right page displays the following month. Each day also shows which day number it is out of 365, and which week number of the year it is. The very top of the page lists the current date and day of the week.

The back of Journal 21 includes a yearly planner for the following year, in this case it is for 2013.

Lastly, there is a fourteen page alphabetical address, phone number and email section.

The paper performed pretty well with all types of pens including fountain pens (minus the Sharpie pen ink bleed-through). In order to prevent this diary from being too thick and heavy, the paper weight is 72g which does allow some of the ink to show through to the back side of the page, although I personally did not feel that it was overly bad. Journal 21’s soft green paper has the beautifully smooth finish that most Clairefontaine paper has which means that fountain pen ink does take a little while to dry. Take a look at the writing test and see what you think:

(Writing test – front)

(Writing test – back)

Journal 21 has a lot of great features to help you plan a successful year. Do you use Exacompta Journal 21? What’s your favorite daily planner?

Posted by Cheryl at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)