Back to School!

How great is Back To School time for pen nuts like me? Target has an entire section devoted to markers, notebooks, and even lunch boxes. Man, it's pen heaven.

One of the finds I picked up the other day was this pack of Bic 730r rollerballs. Ok, so Pilot is still my favorite pen maker of all time, but these Bic's are really something else. Needle point, 5mm so my writing is very neat, and they are smooooth as butter. Plus there's a visible ink flow so I can track how much longer till I need to start another pen. I'm definitely a fan, and they were pretty cheap too.

I've also been picking up notebooks galore. Cuz you never know when there might be a massive Notebook Shortage. Best to stock up while you can (she says, with irony).

I wish every month was a back to school month!

I am currently journalling in this moleskin notebook, which I bought, overpriced I'm sure, at the Oakland airport when I realized I had a long flight delay and had no notebook. Hence, I paid $18.95 for this beauty, but to be honest, it really was worth it. Here's what I love about it:

1) The lines - It's narrow rule, which makes my handwriting look much neater. Also, there are lines on both sides of the page. I used to have a journal that had lines only on the right side of the page, which really confused me. I wanted to do clever things like make collages on the blank side, but I didn't feel like i was creative enough. So, I like lines on both sides of the page. Nice narrow lines, so I can fit in between them and look nice and neat and orderly. I like orderly.

2) It has a nice red ribbon for a page marker, which my cats love to eat, and it's withstood the abuse pretty well so far. It also has a red elastic thingy that holds it all together. Which I also love.

3) The binding is really quality. It's all sewn together, and sometimes in sewn notebooks pages start to tear out and thread starts to come loose. But not in this one. Which is why it cost $18.95 at the airport, I guess.

4) It has an expanding pocket in the back, so I can keep sentimental things from the time I'm journaling and they won't fall out. Like ticket stubs.

There's a lovely description and history of the moleskine notebooks on wikipedia. The sentence that particularly stuck out at me was:

Although Moleskine srl claims their notebook has been used by well-known artists and writers, such as Picasso, Matisse, Kurakin andHemingway, the brand Moleskine was officially registered only in 1996. Francesco Franceschi, head of Modo & Modo's marketing department, was quoted as saying, "It's an exaggeration. It's marketing, not science. It's not the absolute truth.

Those darn marketers!

Anyway, I'm quite happily writing in my marketed Moleskine with a uniball Signo .07mm gel pen with a beloved needle point. Oh, how I do love my needle points. The thing I love about this pen, though, is how the ink flows. Sometimes needle points don't allow the amount of ink I want to come through. This one is great, though.

The Pilot Precise V7 RT
I just finished this pen and I loved it. Here's what I like -
1) The needle point (in case you can't tell, I'm a big fan of needle points)
2) The cushion
3) That the ink actually comes out a little bit uneven. I liked that.
4) The colors are really bright.

The one thing I didn't like about it... it took forever to die. Seriously. I thought it was never going to end. And I can't just throw away a pencil if it still has some ink in it. So I just kept dragging it around all week, convinced it was on its last page, and it would last another five pages. Seriously - it did my head in.

I do really love pilot pens, though...

Awww shucks...

The comment someone made today about missing my blog posts made me smile, and then made me want to get off my lazy butt and tell you about this great pen I'm using right now. The Pentel Energel in violet, ,7mm needle point.

I first found these pens a few years ago when I worked in a tiny office off Third ave in New York and was the only person who seemed to enjoy getting stuff at Staples, so would always do the supply runs - the upside was that I got to get a rewards card and every six months or so they'd send me $20 gift certificates with which I would buy useless planners (I had a planner addiction for a while) and Pentel Energel pens. I kind of forgot about these beauties for a while, until I got this package of purple pens. I like purple pens. I mean, who doesn't? Why write with black when you can just as easily write with purple, right?

So anyway, I know it's probably cheating on my true love (Pilot) to wax poetic about Pentel, but these things just really make taking notes, journalling, and writing silly post-it-note lists and reminders to my hubby so pleasurable. The ink is sublime. And I don't use the word sublime very much. It's a really vibrant violet - but not all over-the-top in-your-face violet. A subtley vibrant. Is that possible? Somehow they make it so.

And the feel. The feel in my hands is exquisite. It fits my hands just perfectly. And the needle tip makes my handwriting look readable. So yeah, I'm a fan. Oh, and another note - I love the purple cushion, blue barrel and silver accents. It's like all my favorite stuff at once. If only I could get it to dispense a calorie-free chocolate.
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I read the comment about the pen giveaway, and I'm thinking something up! I'll post about it (and sooner than a month, I promise) as soon as I figure it out. Great idea---thanks for the suggestion.
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In other news, I'm STILL using the same journal I've been on since January, and it's driving me crazy, so that I don't want to journal, and thus the journal never gets filled up, and it's just a self-fulfilling ring of A.D.D.ness. I hate it when I fall in love with really big notebooks that just last too long.

That reminds me of this girl I knew in high school, who was dramatic and artsy, and spritely and loved by everyone, myself included. She was two years older than me, but I was always in school plays with her, and I remember sitting on the stage after a rehearsal once, getting ready to leave for the night, looking at her, like, totally cool keyring (it was loaded with ironic keychain thingys like those trolls with the crazy hair, and framed ticket stubs from Violent Femmes concerts) with all kinds of awesome keys for things like cars, which I didn't have yet. But she also had this keyring sitting on top of a Mead Grad notebook, college rule. It was just messy and beat-up enough to know that she used it - the proper amount of beating up, as far as I'm concerned - but wasn't all ratty and destroyed yet. On the back cover she had lyrics from Pixies songs written down next to homework assignments, all in pencil, and slightly smudgey. I so much wanted to be like her that I ran out to CVS (well, I asked my dad to drive me) and bought me a Mead Grad notebook and wrote down poetic Paul Simon lyrics in the covers (I didn't like the Pixies much) and proudly carried it around to play rehearsal where I promptly spilled a can of coke all over it. This was an early lesson in not copying other spritely juniors, and I went back to my looseleaf system, which was protected by a binder, thus usually avoiding coke mishaps.

I really need to stop using the journal I'm on right now. It makes me think of my mead grad notebooks, and that just upsets me.

Anyway, that's my stationary update. I promise I'll think up a decluttering pen giveaway, and not be so distant again...

Pilot Hi-Tec-C Material Grip Gel Ink Pens

I had this pen come in the big batch I got from JetPens a little while ago (and I know, I stink at regular blogging...). I have started using it, and have to say, I'm really bummed that they appear to be sold out now because they're GREAT! They are a little bit skinny, but not enough to make me not like them, and the writing is amazingly smooth. The tip is just scratchy enough to feel textur-y, but not enough to scratch the paper. It has a fine point, and makes my handwriting really neat and clean. So I'm totally loving on this pen right now.

I'm in a bit of a decluttering mode and am planning a big yard sale in a few weeks. I'm thinking about getting rid of some of my pens. On one hand this seems crazy to me. But on the other hand, the sheer amount of pens I have is slightly overwhelming, and I feel like I'd write more if I got rid of all the ones I am never going to use, and just kept half of the ones I had. I'm thinking about it. Will see what happens...

In other news, has anyone checked out the stationary section of Target lately? Man, they are really rocking. They have a bunch of new notebooks, especially, that are really boutique-y and fun. I love that I can get great stationary and cat food at the same place.

Yay! New Pens!

Got my order from JetPens today, and I'm totally excited. It also prompted a big pen-clear-out as I was growing out of my pen storage containers, and I couldn't bring myself to admit that I needed more. So I went through and tried out every pen I own to make sure they still write, and with the ones that didn't, I stuck them in the garbage, unless they had some huge amount of sentimental value. It felt a little sacrilegious to be throwing away pens, but I thought it was a step forward in decluttering my life, and freeing up space for the stuff, and pens, that really matter.

So I got these new pens - a bunch of Japanese Pilot pens that are all different, and I'm really digging on them. The ones I got are mostly needle points and really fine points - like .3mm - and I'm finding that they're really great for writing on scratchy paper, with really fine lines. And I think, though I'm not certain yet, that they make me write more carefully, because I'm afraid of breaking off the tip of the pen if I press down too hard.

I'll write some reviews on them soon, but for now, this was the package I got in the mail today and I'm oh-so-happy with pen-packages!

Penmanship, Tony Stewart, and Sharpie pens

NPR featured an interview with Kitty Burns, an author who writes about the decline of penmanship in our digital age. There is a big debate on the NPR blog about whether penmanship is important or not. Of course I'm of the mind that it is. I suppose it's just an aesthetic sort of thing. I want for my kids, grandkids, and great-grand-kids to have real pieces of paper that I wrote on someday when I'm long gone, and not just bytes and things I typed that ultimately come down to codes made up of 1's and 0's. So I suppose it's the history of it that appeals to me. The being able to hold on to something, to save something, that someone else has touched. Which is one reason I'm not into ecards. They seem like a lazy-person's way out. I mean, if you want to send me a card, that's great, and I'll keep it, and remember that you were thinking of me when you held it in your hand and wrote it out, and put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox. If you send me an ecard, it's like, "oh, they thought about me for the thirty seconds it took to put my email address into the 'to' field" and it doesn't quite mean as much. Also, I can't paste it into my journal and remember it forever.

So yes, I'm a big fan of penmanship, and refuse to accept that digital greetings mean as much, especially in personal settings, as ones written out by hand.
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When going to big-box stores for stationary I'm going to have to stick to Office Depot these days, since they are now sponsoring Tony Stewart in Nascar. While I liked Carl Edwards, and thought he was super-cute, I never felt guilty going to another store, nor did I fear that it might make him lose the race. But who knows what kind of weird energy vibes I might be sending Tony's way if I go into an Office Max? When he was sponsored by the Home Depot, my hubby never set foot in Lowes, fearing that it could bring harm to him. Now he gets to go to Lowes, and I'm stuck with Office Depot. It's ok, though. Out of all the big-box stores, Office Depot is my favorite, so I'm all right with it.
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Finally, I have started using a sharpie pen. I really love sharpie markers, but I have so little use for them, it's really quite wasteful for me to get them. However, Sharpie has introduced this great line of pens, available in all the big-box stores. They have a fine line, and do not bleed through paper, which is the main reason I don't use Sharpie markers, even the fine point ones. I just can't take the bleeding. But these pens - no bleeding. And yet they feel and write like a real Sharpie - just with a smaller tip. They come in a two-pack of either black or blue.

There is a great review on them already, on the Pen Addict website, and they had a great conversation going on over the merits of the pen. The only thing I would add that they don't, is that the pen itself is very thin. I prefer a bit more to hold on to when writing. It makes my own lines steadier, and is more comfortable to me. So I won't be using this as my everyday pen simply because it's not very comfortable for me.