HUGE pen test on pocket size notebooks!!

This post was born out of writing a post for Nero's Notes on whether my dislike of Moleskine and Field Notes was justified (spoiler alert... it is). They really don't play nicely with fountain pens, but then I wondered which pocket notebooks actually did.

Enter the biggest test I've done yet, with 10 notebooks getting tested. I used 5 fountain pens and I also tested 11 non-fountain pens too.
Warning! Post is very picture heavy!

The Notebooks:
Field Notes
Moleskine
Whitelines
Story Supply
Word.
Rhodia Webby
Clairefontaine 1951
Darkstar
Pebble Stationery
Telegraph

The Fountain Pens:

(top to bottom)
Parker Vector with calligraphy nib. Ink = Iroshizuku Shin kai
Tombow Object m nib. Ink = Iroshizuku Ku jaku
TWSBI Eco m nib. Ink = Diamine Burnt sienna
TWSBI Diamond 540, 1.1 mm stub nib. Ink = Sailor Yama dori
Conklin Durograph, 1.1 mmstub nib. Ink = Iroshizuku Shin kai
Platinum Preppy - UF nib. No idea what the ink was and anyway, it ran out...

The Other Pens:

(top to bottom)
Pilot V5 hi-tecpoint 0.5
Uniball vision needle micro
Scheider slider memo XB
Uniball signo RT 0.7
Uniball Jetsream 1.0
Stabilo worker medium 0.5
Zebra J roller RX 0.5
Zebra Z-grip medium (biro)
Uni jetstream 0.7 (biro)
Calepino bic biro
Field Notes bic biro

The results:
A lot of pictures... left side of the picture shows the pen test; right side of the picture shows the reverse of the page.

Rhodia Rhodiarama - review

Stuart from PocketNotebooks kindly sent me a Rhodia Rhodiarama A6 Webbie to review. The notebooks have 192 pages of 90g ivory brushed vellum paper. The hard cover is leatherette in a series of bright colours. There is an expanding pocket inside the back cover, an orange ribbon bookmark, and an orange elastic closure. They are available on the Pocketnotebooks site for £7.50.

The one I was sent was turquoise and the contrast between the turquoise and the orange was very appealing. Where is it on the pretty/functional grid? The bright colours are attractive and the contrast with the ribbon/elastic is also good with the turquoise. That said, the orange doesn't go well with a lot of the other colours (the pink/orange combo is especially horrible!).

Front cover

Back cover

There is the Rhodia logo blind embossed in the middle of the cover (picture from Pocketnotebooks.co.uk as I forgot to take one and it's now rubbish lighting in Scotland!)

When you open the cover, there's a zebra!

Inside

The notebooks is 9.5 x 14.5cm, the paper is cream and paper size is 8.8 x 13.9cm with rounded corners. Line spacing is 6mm with a top margin of 6.5mm and 22 lines per page. Ruling stops about 4mm from the outer edge of the paper and 8mm from the inner edge.

The ruling is a bit narrow for me (as you'll see in the pen tests where my letters almost overlap) but then, I'm using stub nibs! One thing that did annoy me though was the shortness of the ribbon. It's only just longer than the page.

Woefully short ribbon!

In the back of the book is a pocket for slipping small items in, with more zebra patterning.

Back pocket

So, what's the paper like? Well, it's Rhodia so it's going to be better than many, but as Stuart has kindly pointed out in the past, I can be really picky!

General writing feel:
The paper is very smooth and fountain pens glide easily over it. Drying time is a little longer than many papers so if you're a left-hander who tends to smudge their writing, be aware of this. It's not too bad but if you write very quickly there's a possibility of smudges.

Feathering:
None. And there's some fabulous shading going on there too!

Show-through:
There is some ghosting to be honest. I wasn't expecting any but there's some.
4*/5

Bleed-through:
Again, I wasn't expecting any but there is some. Not so bad it would stop me using the page, but not none either. It's more noticeable with a light backing to the page than my desk (which is brown).
4*/5 

White background to the page

Dark background to the page

Flattability:
It's a hard back book so naturally won't lie as flat as soft-backed books with many fewer pages. The pages are sewn (I pulled one out to do the pen tests and have managed to pull the stitch undone, though the pages are still holding well). It can be persuaded to lie flat but won't lie flat on its own. It doesn't however need as much effort to hold it flat as the Write Notepad & Co. books I reviewed in the last post. 
3*/5

Overall:
This is a nice, robust little notebook. It isn't one for the back pocket (at least, don't sit on it and end up giving yourself sciatica!). The writing experience is good and there are lots of pages to the book. The ribbon marker could have done with being a bit longer - it feels stingy - and I'm personally not a fan of leatherette but otherwise, it's great.

My thanks to Stuart at Pocketnotebooks for sending it to me to review.

Disclaimer:
I was given this notebook free to review. However, this is an honest review and not influenced by it being a gift.

What will I be using in 2017?

I've pretty much settled into a system now and so I'm all set up, ready to go for 2017. In this post, I'll tell you about the components of the system; in the next post, I'll show you how it all fits together.

The System:
One carry-around. This is my Meadowgate TN and it contains a week + notes diary, a monthly insert and a notebook
An A6 daily planner
A separate notebook with Goals to Projects to Next Actions.
An A5 day per page diary to write up my day in

Creating a week + notes diary for my Traveller's Journal

In my last post I said I had been trialling a week + notes diary, mocked up in a (hateful) Moleskine cahier, to ultimately use the system in my glorious Stamford Notebook Company's Traveller's Journal. The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that I hate Moleskine cahiers as the paper is stupendously terrible. Instead, I have used a Rhodia cahier. Infinitely better and cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines. I got mine from Cult Pens (no affiliation, just a happy customer) and reviewed them here.

There are 48 pages (96 sheets) per booklet - not enough for a full year, so I opened the staples at the centre of two books, removed some sheets from one and slipped them onto the staples of the other, so that there were 54 pages in the book, then closed the staples back up. Then I trimmed the whole booklet to 12.5cm using a rotary cutter.

After trimming (R) - clip is just to hold the book closed for the photo

Now, call me picky, but the Traveller's Journal has rounded corners and now that I had trimmed the book, it had squared edges, so I bought a cheap 10mm diameter corner cutter and punched all of the pages and the cover so that the book now has rounded corners.

After the corners have been rounded

Inside, I will divide each page into 8 blocks and on the LHS have the 7 days of the week plus a 'tracking' block (as indicated in the trial version - see here). On the RHS I will have 6 of the blocks labelled with life-areas and the next actions for that life-area noted in the block; plus an 'other' block and a 'next week' block (again, as in the trial version). The week + notes diary is to be used in conjunction with a day per page plan and I will use either another squared Rhodia cahier or a lined one for that. I have trimmed all the Rhodia cahiers I bought and rounded their corners, in readiness!

What do people think?

Supplies for the Stamford Traveller's Journal 2: Rhodia cahiers

I've already blogged about the hateful Moleskine cahiers and how they will never make it into the glory that is my Stamford Traveller's Journal, but what else might go in there? (I was especially alarmed when I checked the Stamford Notebook Co. site and saw that they were only listing grid refills, and I know that the paper mill where they get their fabulous paper from has gone into receivership - very sad as it is fairly local to me! Are Stamford Notebook Company going to be short of fabulous paper????)

Anyway, in my last post, I said that I had bought some Rhodia cahiers for the TJ so let me review them with no further delay.

I bought both lined and squared versions and I got them from Cult Pens (no affiliation, just always had great service). At £1.63 they are even cheaper than the hateful Moleskines and much, much better!

The notebooks are simple stapled books with 48 sheets (96 pages). The size is 14.8cm x 21cm. The cover is vinyl and quite sturdy. I bought black covers but they also come in orange. The front has the Rhodia logo printed on it. On the back there is the logo again with underneath a description of the size and pages and at the bottom right, a bar-code. The outer corners are rounded and the paper is smooth, 80gsm glory. None of the pages are perforated, there is no envelope in the back and no page marker.

Front. It's actually black not grey!

Back. Again, black not grey

Lined:
Line spacing is 8mm with a 19mm top margin and a 15mm bottom margin. There are no side margins. The paper is crisp white and the lines are purple-grey. With a little persuasion, the books lie flat.

Grid:
Grid spacing is 5mm. The paper is crisp white and the lines are purple-grey. Again, with a little persuasion, the books lie flat.

Ink tests:
As ever, I tested how well the paper stood up to fountain pen. Read this and WEEP Moleskine. THIS is what paper should be like.
I only tested the lined paper and have assumed that the grid paper will have similar (if not identical) results.
The paper was very smooth to write on, there was no feathering, no bleed-through and almost no show-through/ghosting to the other side. My only criticism was that it was a bit too shiny/smooth for some of my pens that prefer the paper to be a bit more 'grabby' but generally, it was an absolute dream to write on.

Pen tests: front

Pen tests: reverse

Now, the observant amongst you will have spotted that the Stamford refills are 12.5cm x 21cm; the Moleskine cahiers are 13cm x 21cm and that these are 14.8cm x 21cm. The Stamford TJ is 14cm wide and so these hang out as they stand. However, following the advice given by Ray about cutting up Moleskine cahiers to fit in a Midori TN, I sliced up a Rhodia with a rotary cutter so that it was 12.5cm wide. My advice would be similar to his: take it slow and steady and do not move the hand holding the ruler over the book!

Here's the result with the grid booklet:

Original (L); trimmed (R) (clip is just to hold it closed)

All in all, these make excellent replacement booklets for the Traveller's Journal (and sliced a little narrower, would be excellent in a Midori TN too).