Bye Bye Moleskine!

Ah the beloved and classic Moleskine, how I wanted to know thee. Before I bought my first one, I read numerous accounts of people feeling very strongly one way or another about their place in paperdom. The complaints ranged from the paper being the most horrible ever made, to the best ever made and everything in between. I tend to research my paper purchases heavily but when you see something as visual pleasing as the Moleskine and the seemingly 50/50 split on the quality, I simply have to try it myself.

Review: Molecover Moletape

When Molecover put out the request for bloggers to review their Moletape, I jumped at the chance and I didn’t even own a Moleskine at the time. I think we all like getting free products, even if it carries the stipulation that we do some work for it. As soon as they confirmed they were sending me one, I ran out and bought a ruled Moleskine to test.

Molecover created this tape to strengthen the binding of the Moleskine which they claim is the weakest point of the notebook. A quick search on Google lead me to several pages where people have created home-brew fixes very similar to the Moletape to fix broken bindings so I assumed these notebooks were quite fragile. In order to give a good review, I wanted to break the spine on my Moleskine and promptly set out to do so. Despite spending a lot of time bending the notebook back and forth, from full closed to both covers open until they touched each other, I couldn’t get any more than a crease in my binding. Maybe I was doing something wrong or I got a strong one, but try as I might, I could not get the binding to crack or split at all. Finally I gave up, I know the problem exists, I just couldn’t manage to break this particular Moleskine.

On being a pen snob

I spent the entire weekend watching Fringe so today’s post is A. late, and B. quite lame. Maybe if I didn’t put myself under pressure to post every single week day, I’d have better content.

I’m going to admit to being a pen snob. No, I’m not one of those people with a whole collection of (insert high end brand name here) who act as if every other pen is below them, but I was close. I spent the better part of 2 years using fountain pens for 98% of my writing and looking down on pens I perceived to be farther down the food chain. Recently, I’ve begun to address this little problem by adding Sharpie pens and a large number of gel pens to my collection.

Pen Hack: G-2 meets Signo

Normally I try to do a review of something on Fridays and I had intended to review the Piccadilly Primo journal, but I don’t feel my review is properly ready. I’ve been a bit under the weather lately and it has me moving a bit slower than normal. I will have that review ready for next Friday or perhaps even a bit earlier during the week.

I’ve been a big fan of the Pilot G-2 for a while, as you saw earlier this week, I have 3 of the different editions. Unfortunately I’ve been having a few problems with them; Of the 3 I have at my desk, 2 have a nasty habit of skipping more than they should and they’re not the smoothest pen I’ve ever felt. Of course, if you haven’t tried anything else, you don’t know what you’re missing. Last night I picked up a Uni-Ball Signo 207 from my local Walgreens as I had heard good things about them and the special ink they use. To my surprise, it was an incredibly smooth writing experience and I even had better luck with the ink drying in my Moleskine (although it still takes a while).

QOTW: What’s your favorite writing instrument?

If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a LOT of writing utensils. Some of us prefer pens, some prefer pencils, and we all have that one favorite instrument that we can’t help but keep near us at all times.

So what’s yours? Maybe you don’t like to play favorites but I bet deep down in your brain, you have a favorite. But if you can’t pick one, at least tell us if it’s a fountain pen, a gel pen, or a pencil.

Failure IS an option!

This week, I coined a new term: “Temporary Failure Environment”. This is an idea I came up with while trying to work through some creative issues. This process most likely isn’t anything new but I stumbled onto it by my own accord so I’ll act like it’s mine for the duration of this entry. I think it will prove to be quite helpful for people suffering from the same creative fright I’ve been paralyzed by.

Mass of links

There’s always something great to read on the pen blogs so, I figure I’ll share some links that I found particularly interesting.

Inkyjournal — Montblanc Meisterstück no 149 (fine) review

Inkophile — The Rhodia Webnotebook vs Moleskine Journal Showdown

Pocket Blonde — Favorite New York Stationery Store

Office Supply Geek — Noodler’s Forest Green Fountain Pen Ink Review

BiffyBeans — My Trip to NYC: Exaclair, Art Brown, Mr. Nagahara Pen Tweaks & the new Sailor Realo

The G2 family keeps growing

This is probably old news for you Pilot G-2 fanatics, but there’s a G-2 “Limited” out there. When I saw one in person, I decided I had to have one for my very own.

The popular G-2 pen is cheap and that’s the draw, it’s a fantastic writer, very low priced, and it’s comfortable. Pilot definitely hit a home run when they designed this pen. Then, as if they knew there might be a portion of the world who wanted something a little bit fancier, they released the G-2 Pro. This was the same gel refill wrapped in a larger diameter plastic body with metal accents. If you found the original G-2 to be a bit too skinny, this one was perfect. I very much enjoyed mine when I wasn’t being a fountain pen snob.

Review: Black n’ Red notebooks

Update 2014-03-27: I’ve revisited this review after 5 years, see if I still love these notebooks by clicking this sentence

If you’re like me, you love collecting paper. Notebooks, journals, reams of paper, these are things that a lot of us have squirreled away somewhere in our home. And in my case, most of them are blank but that’s a subject for another day. 🙂

Today I am reviewing the Black n’ Red brand notebooks. They come in a variety of styles and sizes and I know you will love them if you haven’t tried them yet. These have been my go-to notebooks ever since I discovered them and the fact that most of my local major office supply chains, as well as Rite Aid carry them… well that just makes them all the more perfect!