B5 bonanza!

There aren't all that many places that sell B5 (at least, not in the UK) and those B5 notebooks that are reasonably easy to get (via eBay or Amazon) are often poor quality. These ones are okay, but just don't play nicely with fountain pen.

Well, despite the fact I'm deep into editing the fantasy trilogy I've been writing for a few years (hopefully published later this year... watch this space! Or watch my author website - I'm more likely to talk about it all there!), the next book is giving me the occasional poke. And so (naturally) I start thinking about new notebooks.

I've been through a variety of notebook sizes while writing (and even dabbled with a writing Filofax at one point, which didn't work out anything like as well as I hoped it would). But at the moment, I've settled on B5 as a good size for me. Partway between A5 and A4, it offers a decent amount of real-estate without taking up the entirety of my desk when lying open. I've also renovated an old Filofax Deskfax into a B5 traveller's notebook (to use as a writing TN).

This week was National Stationery Week and The Journal Shop did a site-wide 15% off. They sell quite a few B5 books, most of them Japanese and therefore amazing paper and so I treated myself to a small (ahem) selection.

The haul:
1x Life Kappan Note
2x Tsubame Notebooks
3x Penco Hightide Notebooks (purple, black, pink)

How do they compare and contrast?

Rosaliny Green World 4 Assorted Softcover B5 Composition Notebooks

I've been on a bit of notebook-buying spree. After renovating an old Filofax Deskfax to create a B5 sized Traveller's Notebook, I (naturally) needed to buy lots of B5 notebooks!

B5 is just about the perfect size for me, I think. I find A5 a little on the small side, but A4 a bit too large sometimes. B5 sits between those two sizes at 176mm x 250mm (c.f. A5 at 148mm x 210mm and A4 at 210mm x 297mm). And of course, it's the perfect size for my renovated Deskfax.

I use my Deskfax as a writing TN - if I'm travelling, it has enough cards and pockets and so on, that I don't really need to have anything else in my bag, and the covers are sturdy enough to lean on if there isn't a table. (You can see what features the writing TN has here.)

In the early stages of writing a book, I use small, slim notebooks to bounce ideas around. Some (most!) of these ideas may never make it to a full book, but I like to keep them anyway. Once I think an idea has enough legs to make it to being a full novel, I need a thicker book (like the Zhi Jin notebook, reviewed here). I quite like the slim books made by Penco or Stalogy but saw some slightly more attractive slim notebooks on Amazon, while I was looking at the Zhi Jin.

The Rosaliny Green World notebooks were £8.99 from Amazon with free delivery and looked like a nice set of notebooks, so I ordered a pack. They took forever to arrive, not helped by the first order getting lost. Once the seller sent a new set, they took about 10 days to get here and there were some very sweet post-it notes in the parcel too (which I forgot to take pictures of and have now given away).

The notebooks have a reasonably sturdy card cover with quite sweet designs of trees/leaves and cats.

Inside, there are 38 pages (76 sides) and they are sewn rather than stapled. 37 (74) of these are lined; the first/last sheet is plain.

On the lined pages, there is space at the top to note the date and also the day of the week. The very top and bottom lines also have small marks on them to facilitate drawing in columns, should you so desire. The spacing of the small marks is a slightly random 10.8mm (which doesn't seem to relate to a sensible fraction of an inch either). Line spacing is 8mm, with a top margin of 15.5mm and a bottom margin of 14.5mm. There are 28 lines (if you're happy enough to use the bottom line; it would be fine - the small marks are unobtrusive).

How well did they stand up to fountain pen? The paper is described as "100gsm acid-free high quality recyclable ivory paper". I'm not sure if they mean "recyclable" (which surely, all paper is?) or "recycled". The paper does feel as if it is 100gsm and is very smooth.

Amazingly, I don't have a zillion fountain pens inked up at the moment, but I tested the paper with what I had, and with a few other pens I had to hand. I used one of the plain pages at the back of the book to test the pages. I don't imagine the lined paper will perform differently.

The results are a bit mixed...
I tried a 1.1mm stub nib and wet ink combo (usually a bit of a killer in pen tests), plus another italic nib, a standard m nib and then some Pilot Hi-tecpoints and a ballpoint.

The good news...
There's no feathering of the fountain pen ink at all and the paper is smooth to write on.
There's no bleed-through of the stub nib or the italic.

The bad news...
There is bleed-through with almost all the other pens except the ballpoint. The Tombow Object nib was the worst; the Hi-tecpoints were a bit better.
There is show-through for everything. Depending on how much that bugs you, this might be the deal-breaker. For me, the pens I use the most are 1.1mm stub nibs, so the fact these worked so well and show-through isn't too dire, means that I'm happy enough to use them, but might not buy them again to be honest.

Pictures (click to enlarge):

Pen tests

reverse, showing bleed- and show-through

zoom in on the reverse

Overall:
These are sweet little books which will definitely get used for initial notes on books or ideas. As for value for money, compared to the Penco notebooks, you get more pages (74 lined in this c.f. 60 in the Penco) for less money (£2.25 per book here, c.f. The Journal Shop selling Penco at £3.99). But... paper quality is significantly lower than the Penco.

As for comparing to Stalogy, the only UK seller I can find is Tokyo Bike (the listing for the Stalogy is here). They have 68 pages and are £5.50 (I originally got mine from somewhere else and they were £2.50. I wish now I'd bought more!). Again, paper quality on the Stalogy is better, but they are a lot more money per notebook. If you're US based, I think there are more options for purchasing them.

The covers are attractive and sturdy and I like that the pages are sewn rather than stapled. Paper quality lets them down, but at £2.25 each, I shouldn't really complain (I mean, Moleskine get away with charging a lot more money for notebooks and the paper is much worse!). I like the headers with the space for the date (and day), plus the marks to facilitate drawing columns. Line spacing suits me, though those with small writing or a penchant for fine nibs may find it a bit wide.

Overall, I quite like them!

Stationery box from Pocket Notebooks

Stuart, from Pocket Notebooks very kindly sent me the April box of stationery to play with. You can get these specially curated stationery boxes monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly for £21/box. This is what it says on the site:

Personally curated by Stuart, this is a blend of category leading brands and outliers. Each edition will be different and designed to delight. All packed into a letterbox-friendly box and sent through the post.
A box might contain two three-packs of pocket notebooks. It might contain a three pack and larger format book. It might contain all sort of stationery related 'extras'.
Limited Editions will be included in some of the subscription boxes.
Second payments and beyond are all taken on the 5th of each month, and boxes sent on or around the 15th. Normal shipping policies apply.
For every curated subscription box shipped, £1 will be donated to The National Literacy Trust.

 You can also buy the box as a one-off, which takes the price up to £22.50.

So, what's in the box? Is it worth it? Should you sign up for the box immediately? (the short answers are lots of goodies; absolutely; and absolutely!)

Washi

As many of you may already know, I'm not the kind of person to decorate my planner all that much. I like it fairly clear of decorations, stickers, washi etc. So it might seem surprising for me to be doing a post on washi tape.

I actually have huge numbers of rolls of washi tape! Some of it is patterned and could well be used to decorate a planner, but what I want to focus on today are the kinds of tapes that make up the majority of my collection and what I use them for. In the pictures below, there are some of my new purchases and some that I've had for a while.

Bullet journalling update: A5 for long-term goals

Just before I went away on holiday, I was experimenting with two bullet journalling things:

1. long-term planning in an A5 Leuchtturm
2. day to day planning in an A6 Clairefontaine grid book

I took both of them away with me; the long-term planning to get filled in (since I thought the perfect time to stand back and think about long-term goals was when I was relaxed) and the A6 day to day, to note things about the holiday so that I could write my journal up when I came back (to save me taking it away with me). I'll show you what happened with the long-term planning version here and save the A6 for another post.

Long-term planning:
A while back, I won a turquoise A5 Leuchtturm notebook, a turquoise pen-holder and a pencil as a set from Bureau Direct, and this was the set I chose to use.
The first thing I did was to set up the first few pages for goals relating to my life-areas. I wanted to make the pages of the book a little bit prettier but I'm not very artistic, so I used pennant washi for headers and wrote the life-area on top of it. I put year plans on the LHS and quarterly plans on the RHS; one double spread for each life-area. I shall be referring back to these pages over the year. The only one not too personal to show you, is the house/garden one.

I then drew up a list of things to get done in the remainder of April, again using the pennant washi for the title of the page. The contents are too personal to share, but here's a picture of the washi!

I try to do monthly reviews, so the RHS will be for reviewing how the end of April went (and may continue over the next pages too). I used more washi, but some small hearts rather than the pennant, and labelled it 'review'

The list of stuff to be done is partly drawn from the life-area lists and also just a dump of things in my head that I think I should be doing, following my bullet-journalling system of a dot for a task (crossed through when accomplished). A dot converted to an arrow will mean the task has been carried forward and rewritten on the next month's list, but I'm showing you the set up before I do my monthly review.

This isn't 'pure' bullet journalling (if there even is such a thing), but my way of trying to keep track of the bigger picture. It's a list of goals and is essentially the 'goals to projects to next actions' of my planning system, relocated to a book. By breaking things down into life areas, I'm hoping it will help me to balance everything a bit better (and not just focus on writing, writing and a bit more writing...). I will (since I bought the pens...) use different coloured Staedtler Triplus fineliners for the different life areas, to give me a visual breakdown of the balance (but I only took a pencil away with me! May will be more colour-coded than April was...).

A more 'traditional' use of bullet journalling with a combination of tasks, notes, waiting on etc. is going on in the A6! More on that in the next post.

It's still a work in progress but has surely got to be better than no real system at all (which is how 2016 has been so far!). In time, I may move all of what's currently in the A5 and what's in the A6 into one book, but the A6 is working too well for me at the moment (in an 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' kind of way!).

What do people think? Hints and tips from anyone? Is anyone using a bullet journalling type system to deal with long-term plans? Let me know in the comments?

Spotlight on Spotlight Stationery

Spotlight Stationery is a stationery subscription service. You can order a one-off box to see if you'd like their stuff (you will), a bi-monthly subscription, or a monthly subscription. The boxes cost £25 plus p+p (£2 for the UK).
Each month, the team at Spotlight Stationery put together a collection of stationery, using only premium brands and including things you may not find on your high street. They also include postcards by new illustrators, helping to support young artists once they've left university. The box of stationery is a surprise - you don't know what you'll get before it arrives - but they offer a no-quibble, money-back guarantee. If you really don't like what you get, you can get in touch with them.

Intrigued by all this, I ordered a box. I have to confess, it arrived a few days ago but this is the first chance I've had to do a post on it! Apologies for the poor lighting in the photos... it's Scotland and winter and never stops raining and I really struggled with or without flash to get decent pictures!

The box is approximately 235 x 165 x 23mm, or just bigger and thicker than an A5 notebook. When you open the box, inside you find your goodies wrapped in tissue paper, tied with string and with a card saying Thank You on one side and information about the support for National Star, a charity for young people with disabilities.

Box, showing the message on the lid!

Thank you card, attached with pretty string

Reverse of the card, showing the message about supporting
National Star

Once I peeled the sticker and string off (as carefully as I could!), inside was revealed a notebook and an envelope with my name on:

I opened the envelope first, and discovered a set of postcards, some information about the illustrators and 6 spiral paperclips:

The four postcards, an information card and 6 spiral paperclips

These are all lovely designs (especially the cat one) and the information card was extremely helpful.

The red and black A6 notebook is by Paper-Oh. Inside was a leaflet explaining that the notebook was a product of their passion for book binding and their obsession to make things better than what already exists. I haven't road-tested the notebook (detailed reviews of the stationery in the box will follow!) but it lies very flat and seems like a fantastic little notebook. I will of course extract a page and do the usual pen-test on it, but if the paper is good, then this will be a super little notebook.

Delving deeper into the box, I found another A6 sized notebook, with the same design on the cover as one of the postcards:

A6 size notebook with dog and crow (front)

back of the notebook

The notebook has 18 pages (36 sides) of plain paper. Again, I haven't had a chance to pen-test it and a more detailed review is to come!

Beneath the two A6 notebooks was another Paper-Oh notebook in A5 size. This one is lined rather than plain:

A5 Paper-Oh notebook (front)

A5 PAper-Oh notebook (back)

I must be utterly honest and say that I haven't had time this week to even take the wrapper off, but I'm fully expecting another great notebook, given the quality of the A6 version.

As well as the three notebooks, the postcards and the paperclips, there were two Palomino Blackwing Pearl pencils and a Stabilo worker rollerball:

Palomino pencils

Stabilo worker pen

I've been using one of the Palomino pencils all week. Full review to follow but if I'm honest, this was my least favourite thing in the box. I'd heard so much about Palomino Blackwing pencils and I was excited to try them but I am far keener on propelling pencils than ones that need sharpening and probably because I almost always use a propelling pencil, I found the Palomino not great at keeping a sharp point. I've already sharpened about 3 cm off the pencil in just a week. If you sketched rather than used it for writing, it may be much better. It was certainly good to try it out though (and at least I know I don't need to buy myself a box!).

The rollerball is very nice. It has a soft-grip feel and the line is quite wet when laid down. It certainly kept up with my speed of writing and was incredibly smooth to write with.

Group photo!

All in All:
This was a fabulous collection of stationery, beautifully presented and worth at least £25 to my mind. The Paper-Oh notebooks are certainly not easily available to me and the inclusion of new illustrators is a great touch. I love the fact that some of the money is going to charity (though I would have liked to know a little more about what kind of amount - a penny? a pound? more?) and the surprise aspect was fun. You don't have to sign up for a subscription - you can try a box out and you get contacted in advance to check that you want the next box, even if you have opted for the subscription service.

If you love stationery, like a surprise and to discover new products and artists, go and sign up for February's box!

Birthday delights!

It's my birthday and although I am dismayed by the passing of another year (how have I got to this age?? When did that happen???) I am having a delightful afternoon with a pot of tea and a heap of new stationery to play with! I have some new pens, ink and paper to play with! How well people know me!
Here's some of the haul:

• a Conklin stub nib pen
• a selection of Iroshizuku inks
• a little leather-bound notebook with Tomoe River paper
• a writing set made from recycled elephant dung and recycled paper (no, it doesn't smell!)

Thank you everyone!!

Hema Haul!

Well, I managed to waste spend quite a while on the Hema site the other day, and this is my haul:

• Some C6 stripy envelopes
• Some self-inking stamps
• A5 notebook with ziplock
• Stickers of cartoon jungle animals
• A 2015-16 academic diary
• Some stick-on envelopes
• Storage tin

[but no, Steve, it did not include a selfie-stick...]

I'm not going to review each of these in detail (because I haven't had time to play with them all yet!) but I'll show you each of them and also give a bit of feedback about using the site.

Feedback about the site:
There's a lot of stuff on the site and it's easy to spend HOURS on there! A lot of things are pretty cheap and there is a danger that you then chuck a load of things in the basket that you don't really need (I know - is that phrase actually applicable to stationery??). There is also a slight oddity in that some items have a minimum order of two (or three) of the item. This doesn't seem to be related to price - there are some things that are £1 on there and you can order one of them; there are things that are £2.50 and you have to order at least two. For many things, that's all fine but on some of them I was thinking that I didn't really need two of them and was a bit irritated by being forced into getting two.
When the parcel arrived, the items were bundled into a carrier bag which then rattled around inside the much larger cardboard box which wasn't the best packing in the world.

1. Stripy C6 envelopes:

Stripy envelopes.
With hindsight, should have bought some address labels too!

For those who aren't used to the sizing of envelopes, C6 takes an A4 sheet folded in half, then half again (i.e. takes A6 paper). I write zillions of letters and so am always in search of envelopes and these were a bit different from the plain white ones you can generally get. I probably should have bought some labels for writing the address on.

2. Self-inking stamps:

Self-inking stamps

I only really wanted the lower one but they came as a two-pack and were only £2.50 so I ended up with both of them. I'll stamp envelopes with the other one probably. I've been using the lower one to stamp my home-made week + notes to note my 'two most important things to do today'.

3. A5 notebook with ziplock:

A5 notebook with ziplock
(Sorry about the shadows!)

I've seen much more expensive versions of this (Mark's Tokyo for example) but this was a pretty reasonable price. In essence, it is an A5 notebook in a plastic/polyethylene cover and the back cover has a zip-lock pocket, card slots and a pen holder. The front cover has slip pockets too. The idea is that you carry this around and slip things into the pocket as you collect them. I'm not sure if I will use it quite like that as I would use my Traveller's Journal instead, but if I was off to do research on something and wanted something cheap and cheerful and useful I would give it a go. I've yet to try the paper out in the notebook but I'm not expecting anything good. The bonus is that you can slip any A5 notebook in it if it's slim enough so you're not restricted to the one that comes with it.

4. Stickers of cartoon jungle animals:

Jungle animal stickers

There are two pages of stickers - the other page has different ones but I only took pictures of one lot - sorry! These were one of the 'you must buy two' items but I can always use cartoon jungle animals stickers and they were only 75p per pack. The chameleons alone will always make me smile!

5. 2015-2016 academic diary:

Cover of the 2015-16 academic diary

Layout (plus LURID page marker)

Okay. This was only £1. The size of the diary is 12.5cm x 18cm which is a nice size. It's a school diary so there are several pages of class schedule and some pages for recording grades. Considering the page size is fairly small, the layout isn't bad, though Saturday and Sunday are, as ever, squashed into a smaller space and there is that pointless month summary taking up some of Sunday. I don't know what the numbering of 1-9 is for on each day - things to do? It's obviously not for recording appointments, even given some students' semi-nocturnal lifestyle. Anyway, I quite liked the clean font and size but I'm not sure, now I've got it, that I will use it. But it was only £1 so I don't feel too bad!

6. 6-pack sticky envelopes:

Stick-on envelopes

Another item that had a minimum purchase of two but again, I didn't mind (and they weren't horrendously expensive). I got them so that I could stick them on the home-made diary in my Traveller's Journal or in notebooks I use for writing. There are three of each size: 10cm x 6cm (holds a card 9cm x 5.5cm) and 16cm x 11cm (holds a card 14.5cm x 10.3cm). As you can see from the picture, the backings are a bit lurid (pink, orange and red) but bearable.

7. Storage tin:

Storage tin

I just liked this. I got it for putting ink cartridges in but it's a useful size at 7cm x 9.8cm. It also has a very positive click when it closes. Some other tins can have quite a loose lid that easily comes off, but this tin could rattle around in your bag without the lid coming off.

Anyway, there we go - that was my haul. I could probably have bought a LOT more stuff but I managed (just) to restrain myself.

Oh no...

...I've just discovered Hema.

I may be some time...

Poorly... therefore I've been buying stationery!

I do it every time! I see that I'm doing it. I know that I am reaching for the washi and the rubber stamps and another Filofax and all that simply because I am feeling dreadful, but I just can't stop!

So, after a(nother) health shocker at the end of last week, I have felt pretty rubbish and so bought:
a new (to me) compact Filofax
a set of 25 small rubber stamps
some coloured ink pads

Why??

I mean, why other than because I felt shite?

Well, as I said in my last post, I like my compact de Villiers but it's getting worn and I like the compact Cavendish but it doesn't lie flat enough for me and so I thought I'd give another compact a whirl. I know a willing recipient in Dublin who will no doubt take it off my hands if it doesn't work out (hey, G! *wave*).

As for the stamps and ink pads - I realised that my diary can sometimes look dull on the days when I do manage to get a good writing day in, because all that is written on the left-hand side of the page is "writing day". The right-hand side of the day gets filled up with the day's to-do, but the left-hand side is kept for appointments and I only tend to get good writing days when I don't have my days broken up by appointments. So I bought the rubber stamps and inks so that at the end of the day, when I am reviewing and ticking off things, I can stamp the page. If I stamp the pages before the end of the day, my diary will look too cluttered!
[by the way, at the moment, a 'good writing day' is one in which I write anything]

This week - dull 'writing day' on the left
(busy on the RHS!)

When the stamps and ink arrive I will see how the day looks with a giant book stamped in gold across it! Something's got to cheer me up!

Lovely things from The Lovely Desk

[no affiliation - just wanting to share a great company and their lovely products!]

Lovely haul from The Lovely Desk

Last week I posted about getting some gorgeous washi tape from The Lovely Desk and said that I may (i.e. HAD) put in another order from them.

Well, it arrived yesterday morning, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and with a little note saying thank you. It couldn't have arrived on a better day as I had a bit of a shocker of a day on Monday, so some new stationery was definitely what the doctor ordered!

So, what did I order?

Some small diary stickers, with largely a food/tea/cakes theme; some decoration tape (again with a cake and tea and biscuits theme); some wide washi (28mm) with a variety of things on it, but again a bit of a tea theme and some washi tape with some cute cartoon animals on.

[pictures from The Lovely Desk website are all reproduced with permission; click on any image to enlarge]

So, here they are in detail:

1. The diary stickers

Image from The Lovely Desk, with permission

I have difficulty over decorating my diary in that I love to see decorated pages but when I do them myself they look too cluttered/messy and I can't see the wood for the trees. However, these little stickers are lovely and very small (most of them are less than 1cm in even the longest dimension). There are several of each design and quite a few different designs. I'm not sure how I will use 5 frying pan stickers (or 6 sauce bottles for that matter) but most of them will be useful and small enough to add a little bit of decoration to the diary without being bigger than the writing for the event.

2.The decoration tape

Image from The Lovely Desk, with permission

Image from The Lovely Desk, with permission

As you'll see in the post on washi tape, I have used narrow washi tape to separate off the memo space on my diary pages from the days. The decoration tape will do something very similar (as depicted below) or could be used to note meeting a friend for a tea/coffee in the diary (instead of using a sticker). The tape comes on a roller, like the roll-on correction tape (Tippex on a tape). There is a covering cap and it takes a bit of bravery to bend it back on itself to reveal the tape and pop the cover into the space in the casing for the cover but it does fold back okay (without snapping off) and does slot into the space!

Decoration tape used to separate off a section in my filofax

Plastic cover protecting the tape

Plastic cover folded back into its space

3. Tea time washi tape

Image from The Lovely Desk, with permission

This washi tape is absolutely delightful! I will use it to decorate letters to friends (it's a bit big for my filofax pages...). The designs are fabulous!

All of the designs on the tape

4. The cartoon animals washi tape

Image from The Lovely Desk, with permission

Again, these designs are just gorgeous and again, they will probably get used in letters to friends (we all know that I am in that rare breed of people who send hand-written letters!). Here is a picture of all of the designs on the tape:

Fantastic little animals on the tape

I'm not sure if my favourite is the giraffe or the cat. They are all wonderful! The donkey reminds me a bit of a tiny embroidery of a donkey on the Bayeaux Tapestry!

Anyway, that was my haul from The Lovely Desk. Jessica also popped a couple of other things in the parcel (as you can see in the picture at the top) - a couple of post-it note samples and some other washi tape samples on small labels.

As I say, no affiliation - I bought all of these for myself and have not been asked to do this blog post - but I always like to share new finds and excellent companies! If you have not yet checked them out, go and have a look now. You can find them at: The Lovely Desk.

Anyone else got some good finds to share?

Stationery prize: World Cup bundle from Bureau Direct

A few weeks ago, I saw that Bureau Direct were running a competition to win a World Cup Stationery bundle and I entered it. I then thought nothing more about it (in fact I had actually forgotten all about it, as I was on holiday!). Then one day I was checking my emails and there was one from Dominic at Bureau Direct to say that I had won Spain 2010 in the Classic World Cup bundles. It was duly posted off to me and was there waiting for me when I arrived back from my holiday.

The bundle comprised:

• A medium lined Leuchtturm notebook in red
• A Leuchtturm pen loop in yellow
• A Lamy Logo ballpoint pen in blue

The Leuchturrm Notebook:
I assume the interior is identical to the interior of the berry red one I reviewed in May (read that review here) so I won’t review it again. The red of the cover is a nicer red than the equivalent Moleskine (which has a hint of orange to it) and the elastic closure is a darker red (which matches well).  The ribbon marker matches the cover well, but is lighter than the elastic closure. In many ways, it would have been nicer if the elastic and the ribbon had matched (even if they were slightly different from the cover), but then, I am ridiculously picky about things like that. I will certainly use the book for book-plotting!

The Leuchtturm pen loop in yellow:
I’ve had several of these pen-loops. I have a black one in my Leuchturrm Line a Day 5 year diary, another black one in my de Villiers slimline binder, a red one in the Moleskine diary (the diary I hated) and a pale blue one in another filofax. They are great – make sure you stick them in exactly the right place because the adhesive could hold an elephant up and you won’t be able to reposition it if you get it wrong!
My main gripes with them is that 1) there is always, always adhesive inside the elastic loop which then gets all over the pen you have in the loop and 2) the loop is really quite small – only a pen with a diameter of about <1cm will fit in it. The sticky adhesive inside the elastic eventually runs out but the one I had in my diary got glue on my biro for at least half the year. It rubs off okay (in a sticky sort of way) but it’s annoying that it does it.

The Lamy ballpoint biro:
I got a heap of despair from a good friend when I told him that the only pens I took on holiday with me were some bic crystal biros (I don’t trust my fountain pens to play nicely in bags). Anyway, the Lamy is lovely. It’s heavier than a bic crystal and has a very satisfying click to pop the ballpoint bit in and out. I haven’t written screeds with it yet, but it doesn’t (so far) seem to bleb anything like as badly as a bic crystal does, so maybe I will have to upgrade as the blebbing does annoy me!

The colour combination between the book, the pen-loop and the pen is delightful. Bright and summery!

All in all, this was a lovely little bundle to get! Thank you Bureau Direct!
[no affiliation, just a perpetually happy customer]