Review: Hightide A5 foolscap notebook

I have been very remiss in my reviews! I have a heap of stuff to review but not so much time... LOTS more time after the end of September of course (when I leave purgatory work).

Anyway, I recently purchased a couple of A5 notebooks by Hightide (Penco), from The Journal Shop (no affiliation). The Journal Shop site describes the notebooks thus:

"Penco's Foolscap Notebooks are typical of high quality Japanese paper (the likes of which you may already be familiar with in other brands such as Life or Mnemosyne). Smooth, fountain pen friendly paper is a pleasure to write on, and the paper suffers very little showthrough and no bleed or feathering. The notebook lies open perfectly flat (with hardly any coaxing). Sewn and glue bound, not stapled."

I thought I would give them a try and a couple arrived the other day. [Click on any picture to enlarge]

Cover; first page:
The cover is card, with space on the front to write a title.

Front cover

The back of the notebook has a bit of information about the paper.

Back cover

The first page inside is a pale green (not coming out well in my pictures) for producing an index.

Index page

Evidently you are meant to write pages and pages about each thing as there are 20 spaces and there are 100 pages (200 sides) in the notebook. The reverse of the index is plain - it doesn't carry on overleaf.

Size and lines spacing:
As you can see from the information on the back cover, it is almost A5 size at 138 x 210mm. There is a blue line at the top and the bottom of the page and the other lines are in grey. Line spacing is 7mm and the top margin is 16mm and the bottom margin is 12mm. There are 26 lines per page.

Lines; line spacing

The photo shows the centre of the book and yes, it does lie flat. That said, now it has been opened out like that, the edge of the notebook is no longer smooth. There is a break where the very centre is (i.e. where I opened it out flat). This is much like what happened with the Quo Vadis APB2 (see here as long as you're not squeamish about stationery-abuse).

Pen tests!
I much prefer to write in fountain pen and so for a notebook to be worthy of further purchases, it has to be able to handle a fountain pen and for a) the ink not to bleed through, b) the ink not to feather, and c) the ink not to show through to the other side. So, how did this little notebook do?

Well, the surface is nice. It's a little 'grabby' but not too much. The pen doesn't glide in quite the same way as it would over Clairefontaine paper (for example) but it doesn't snag. The texture also allowed ink to dry quickly - faster than it does on Clairefontaine. There was no feathering and no bleed-through. However, there was show-through to the other side.

Fountain pen/ink tests

Reverse. It's actually worse than this picture indicates

Overall:
I quite like the book, though I'm disappointed at the level of show-through. It's enough to stop me wanting to use it for book plotting, but it's okay for me to use as a general notebook.

Supplies for the Stamford Traveller's Journal 1: Midori 007 and 008

I am well on my way to pimping my Stamford Traveller's Journal! So far I have bought for it:

• Midori 013 insert (128 pages, extra thin paper; see review here)
• Midori 007 refill (card holder)
• Midori 008 refill (zipper pocket)
• Rhodia cahier grid notebooks
• Rhodia cahier lined notebooks

[I also bought Moleskine cahiers but they are too shite to go on about and will never make it into the STJ! See here for details!]

I realise of all the extras, I have only reviewed the Midori 013 refill. Let me make amends!

Midori 007 refill (card holder)
This only arrived today and was bought in case I start to use my Stamford TJ as a wallet and carry-around planner (which I will... let me get 2015 out of the way!). I bought it from a Japanese store, via Amazon and although the delivery was a little slow it was free, the price of the refill was reasonable and they sent me an origami crane as a present!

Origami crane

The card holder holds 12 cards in total: each half of the insert holds 6 (3 in each side of the insert). The slots are a little bigger than the slots in a Filofax card holder insert but are not so roomy that the cards will fall out. The openings also face inwards so there is no chance of the cards falling out.

Still in wrapper

Opened out

As with all the Midori Traveller's inserts, they are designed to be held in place by elastic though they could also be put in so that they wrapped around a notebook and not need an elastic loop of their own. I've chosen not to do that as I would rather have all my cards together so I have replaced the leather thongs in the Stamford TJ with elastic and put 4 loops in - 1 for the zipped insert, 1 for the card holder and 2 for notebooks.

In situ at the back of the Traveller's Journal

There are no pictures of my cards in the holder as I would have to redact everything, but rest assured that they fit in easily. Top opening slots might be easier to access than the inward-facing openings but would be less secure. Get organised as you're standing in line to pay for things so you don't end up in a flap!

Midori 008 (zipped pocket)
I ordered this from The Journal Shop (no affiliation, just a happy customer). One side of it has a zipped pocket and the other has slip pockets.

Still in wrapper

Zipped pocket (L); slip pockets (R)

Slip pocket on each side of the RHS

It could be slipped into a Traveller's Journal so that it wrapped around a notebook, but again, I have put mine in on its own elastic so that it is at the front, rather than the slip pockets coming between the notebooks or having the slip pockets and the card slots all at the back.

In situ

In situ showing both sides of the insert

Both of these inserts are made of fairly sturdy plastic (polyethylene?). I haven't used them yet but they feel as if they will stand up to the rigours of use very well. I'll report back on their durability (and usefulness) after I've used the TJ more extensively.

I'm still LOVING the look of the TJ and itching to get into it. I love the fact that the cover is sturdy rather than floppy. The floppiness of Midori (and most 'fauxdori') put me off getting one but this one is pretty rigid. That, the colour and the fact that it is closer to A5 (and less tall and narrow looking than a Midori) are what made me buy this rather than any other brand and I'm not regretting the decision!

New Inks

Well, relatively new inks. I got them a while ago and haven't posted about them!
Click on any image to enlarge.

Review of the Midori MD A5 lined notebook

Two reviews in two days... At this rate, I might actually review all my new notebooks before buying some more...
[ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... who are you trying to kid ???????]

Anyway, today it is the turn of the Midori MD A5 lined notebook, bought in The Journal Shop’s 20% off everything sale. Again, no affiliation, just a happy customer. As ever, click on any picture for a bigger version.

I bought the Midori MD notebook because I was intrigued. I haven’t got a Midori Traveller Notebook but I have heard good things about the paper and it is the same paper used in these notebooks.

Overview:
It’s a good notebook. The paper is fabulous. I’m not convinced by the bold line across the middle. There are 176 non-numbered pages. The notebook is 149mm x 210mm.

Front cover

Detail:
Cover:
The notebook had a slip-cover of what feels like waxy tissue paper. I’m sure it has a proper name (tell me what it is in the comments if you know it!). Around the outside of that was a label, which was all in Japanese, so I can’t tell you what it says.

Back cover (still in the plastic wrapper)

Waxy tissue paper slip cover

Once you remove the slip cover and loose label, you see the cover of the notebook. It is made of thick cream card, with a small “MD paper Made in Japan” logo embossed in the middle of the RHS. The binding is hard to describe – it looks like an open-weave bandage that has been firmly glued to the spine. Again, this probably has a proper name and again, tell me in the comments what it is if you know it! The pages are bound with thread-stitching.

Front cover with slip-cover tissue paper reflected back

There is no pocket in the back – this is a basic notebook.

Inside:
The first page has a space for putting something – title, picture, whatever. Underneath the space is MD Notebook Made in Japan and the Midori logo. Inevitably, this page is glued to the next (the next being the first lined page of the book) so that the next page doesn’t open out fully. There were two labels (and a blank one) – ‘idea’ and ‘diary’ though I am not sure where they are supposed to go – they are too big for the box-space on the first page and I think the spine is too rough for them.

First page

Labels

The pages have 27 lines with a line-spacing of 7mm, a top margin of 16mm, a bottom margin of 12mm and an inner margin where the lines don’t reach the spine of 2mm. The 14th line down (in the centre of the page) is bold.
I do not know why. Nor do I much care for it. It remains to be seen how much this will piss me off when I use the notebook, but at first glance it’s annoyed me.
The page edges are all squared and extremely smooth-feeling.

Bold central line.

The paper is lovely to write on. Forgive the crumpled look to the pages – I didn’t extract them from the book very well (I was worrying more about the book than the removed pages to be honest!). The book also lies as flat as a bat! The open-weave bandage/thread-stitching binding works a treat! There is a page marker of narrow, dark green ribbon.

Fountain Pen Tests:
The paper was glorious to write on (as you might anticipate, it being Midori and all that). No feathering, nice crisp lines, smooth and not too ‘grabby’ but one of my inks took a while to dry as a consequence of the surface of the paper, so lefties may want to just test out their pen/ink combos.

Fountain pen tests - no feathering...

Almost no bleed-through. When I first did the test I thought there was none at all, but there is a smidgen. It’s better than the Leuchtturm books but still not as good as the Clairefontaine Age Bags (what is??).

...no bleed-through

Overall:
Hmm. Only 3 ½ (out of 5). The paper is delightful to write on, but they are more expensive than my go-to Clairefontaine A5 Age Bag notebooks (about twice the price) and without many more bells and whistles. And that bold line is more irritating than I thought it would be (though it might grow on me).

More stationery goodies!!!

Having succumbed to the three for two notebooks at The Paperie, I then succumbed to the 20% off everything sale at The Journal Shop.

What arrived today:

• Midori MD Notebook (A5, ruled)
• Large red Moleskine softback notebook (ruled)

Reviews soon!!

Reviews of the Ohto Tasche fountain pen and J Herbin Poussiere de Lune ink

More stationery reviews! This time it's the turn of the Ohto Tasche pen and the J Herbin Poussiere de Lune ink. Click on any picture to enlarge.

I got the Ohto Tasche pen from Cult Pens and the Poussiere de Lune arrived as a consequence of some of the most fantastic customer service!
In a previous post, I had described the J Herbin diabolo menthe ink, which I got from The Journal Shop. I posted my review and then Tweeted its emergence into the world. The Journal Shop saw the post and noticed that I had bought two tins of the diabolo menthe ink (and hadn't much liked it). They asked if I wanted to swap one of the tins for another colour. There followed some brilliant, late-Friday-night tweet-exchanges, discussing the pros and cons of different colours and The Journal Shop pointed me in the direction of some ink reviews. The upshot of all this was that I decided I would swap the diabolo menthe for a tin of poussiere de lune. They promptly sent me out a tin of the cartridges and a pre-paid return envelope for the return of the diabolo menthe. How fantastic is that!!??

So, now I had a new fountain pen (the Ohto Tasche) and a new colour of ink to play with. Happy, happy, happy.

The Ohto Tasche
The pen came in a plastic presentation box, which I have to say looks cheap and nasty. And it is also about twenty times the size of the pen. I won't use it.

Nasty plastic box (bottom); gorgeous pen (top)

The pen itself is small and narrow-barrelled. The barrel is made of aluminium with the lower barrel in a natural finish and the other parts in a lacquered, glossy finish in a range of colours. I bought the blue barrel, but it is also available (from Cult Pens) in silver, black or pink. Capped/closed, it is tiny (just under 10 cm). It takes international standard cartridges (small) and they disappear into the nib part.

The nib+cartridge part has a base which screws on, covering the end of the cartridge and which the cap of the pen gets posted onto, to make the posted pen the full height. Posted, it is actually a little long in my hand and I almost prefer it un-posted, but then, maybe I'm a bit odd! Or maybe it's because my first favourite fountain pen was a platignum petite and it's ruined me for life!

L-R: cap, screw-on bit, nib+cartridge

Top: cap; bottom nib+cartridge with screw-on bit screwed on

All together!

All together plus ruler for scale

Un-posted plus ruler for scale

The nib is made of polished steel and is very smooth. It lays down quite a wet line (at least, it does with J Herbin ink) so left-handers may find they end up smudging their writing (depending on the ink used). The pen is light in the hand and lovely and smooth to write with.

J Herbin Poussiere de Lune ink
I think I should just give up doing reviews of ink as I am rubbish at being able to describe the colours accurately! The poussiere de lune is grey-purple. Dusk-coloured (which, as a physiologist I know is cobblers as the colour-detecting bits of the retina don't work at dusk!). What I mean is, it's the 'colour' that things look at dusk. And so I suppose it is perfectly named (moon dust)!

Although the (white!) paper is showing as dark, the ink colour isn't far off

Trying to show 'colour' and shading

Pretty close (on my monitor). Sorry it's blurred!

Another close-up. This is SO hard to photograph!

The 'colour' is gorgeous and quite dense for a greyish ink, with just enough purple/mauve in there to make it not exactly grey. Very beautiful!

All in all, both of them are fabulous!

[I have no affiliation to either Cult Pens or The Journal Shop; I'm just a very happy customer]

Review of the C.OVER diary/notebook

C.OVER notebook system

Well, this is a quirky little thing. I've been wanting to have a proper look at one for a while and so when The Journal Shop had a 25% off offer and it was also already reduced, I decided to get one. There was limited stock (understandably) so I ended up with a green one that is a shade too close to snot for my comfort, but there we go. [Still not affiliated to TJS. Still an exceedingly happy customer btw]

So what's so special about this little thing? Well, it has a nifty way of holding bound books in the cover, similar to the Midori Travellers Notebook in technique, but with a better fastener (in my opinion. I realise a Midori aficionado will disagree in all likelihood.)

What came in the package?
The cover (made from a soft plastic) (15.6 cm x 9.3 cm)
A 2013 diary, split into two 6 month-long booklets (14.5 cm x 8.8 cm)
A 32 page address book (14.5 cm x 8.8 cm)
A 32 page blank notebook (14.5 cm x 8.8 cm)
Credit card holders
A teensy pen
3 spare bands for connecting the booklets to the cover
An outer band to hold the whole thing closed

Top: cover plus the two diary sections;
Bottom: address booklet, notebook, credit card holder, pen and band

Card with three spare bands and instructions for fitting

The blurb says it will hold up to three different booklets (so, three types of notebook, or a notebook and the diaries, or the diaries and the address book etc. etc. etc.). However, if you use the credit card holder, this allows you to have four booklets in it.

How do the booklets fix to the cover?
In the same way as the Midori Travellers Notebook has elastic slotting into the centre of the notebooks, the C.OVER has elastic strands that attach the booklets to the cover. How it differs is that the elastic strands have bobbles on the end which slot into notches on the spine of the cover. There are three elastic fasteners and three notches, but... the credit card holders are designed to have the card holder in one side and a slot in the other so you can slot the cover of a notebook into each side and then add the credit card holder to the cover with one of the bands. The teensy pen slots into the top of the credit card holder too. You can hold up to 6 credit cards in the slots.

All booklets removed and one elastic strand unhooked to show you the bobble

Diary re-attached. Elastic goes up the centre of the booklet and
attaches top and bottom with the bobble

Credit card holder with one booklet slotted into the left hand side

Booklets slotted into both sides, plus some business cards in the holder to show them

Credit card holder about to be re-attached to the cover

All re-attached, including the pen

The cover
As I said, the cover is made of a soft plastic. It's soft to the touch in a way I'm a bit ambivalent about to be honest – it's a bit too soft but not quite so soft that it's truly unpleasant! It does smell quite plasticky though. The spine is a silver-coloured plastic with the brand 'Greenwitch'  embossed on it. The inside has (on the reverse of the front cover) 'C.OVER project Aldo Petillo Italy' The reverse of the back cover is plain. Both the front and back cover came with a harder piece of plastic in the full-height pocket to add some stability/stiffness to the cover I assume, but these could easily be removed to put papers/money/receipts in I suppose. I would have to carry a wallet with me as well as this little book though as there is no way of carrying coins in it.

Bit hard to see but this is the back cover with the stiffening plastic pulled out slightly

The diary:
It comes in two separate booklets, which somewhat randomly (and irritatingly for me) run as a week to view from 31 December 2012 to 7th July 2013 in the first booklet with the second one starting on 8th July. I know! Why would you not start on the 1st? It's a Monday after all.
After the cover, there is a page for putting your details. After that is a double spread with the year to view (6 months in open boxes down each page), called 'dates to be remembered'. I wouldn't find it all that useful, partly because the boxes are quite small and mostly because I would never look at it, regardless of size.

Page for personal details

Small month boxes for date to remember

After that comes a year to view whose sole purpose appears to be to tell you what day of the week each date falls on, though I guess you could circle important dates.

Next up is a list of public holidays and country dialling codes for a selection of countries.

Then is the diary itself. It is a horizontal, week per view, with Saturday and Sunday sharing the same space as a weekday gets to itself. The line spacing is minute (3mm) and there are lines for the hours from 8am to 7pm with some spare lines underneath. The month is given along the header in a variety of languages and the footer on the left-hand page has a list of the dates of the month with Sundays in bold.

After July 7th there is a double-spread of 2014 to view and the very last page is a page for notes.

Both diaries follow the same pattern except the second half runs to January 12th 2014 (making it doubly annoying that it started part-way into July. It isn't as if there isn't enough space to have started later and just had more notes pages at the back of the first one.).

The address book:
This has one side per letter and then six pages for notes at the back. The letters are laminated to make them a little stronger.

The notebook:
The one that came in the package was plain. There are apparently other refills but I don't know where you can buy them The Journal Shop doesn't have them (though they do stock the diary refills).

Paper Quality:
I would put the paper thickness at 70 gsm. Here are the results of the pen tests!

With most of the fountain pens it felt like the ink 'sat up' a bit on the paper. That said, there's not much feathering, even with my wettest combo of italic nib and Waterman's violet tendresse.

But ye gods look at the bleed-through! It makes filofax paper look half-decent! The other side is completely unusable. Not so disastrous in the notebook but in the diary this would be a nightmare. Pencil is okay!

The pen:
Throw it away. It's horrid. (the last line of the pen test was the pen that it came with. My pen-test text says 'The scratchy, unpleasant pen it came with')

The elastic closure:
Throw that away too. It's also horrid and doesn't have quite enough ping in it for my liking. Use a horizontal band and slot a decent pen into it (like with a Ciak notebook).

All in all?
Well, it's quirky and quite well designed but perhaps not so well finished. The idea is great – multiple, easily swappable notebooks/diaries/address books etc. but it's more than a little let down by paper quality and odd things like the second half of the year starting a week into July. My picky tendencies are also irritated that the cover has rounded corners but the notebooks and diary etc. all have squared corners. That lack of care for detail bugs me.

The good news is that Field Notes booklets fit in quite well without too much overhang (despite being a teensy bit wider).