Watercolour Doodling
Quite pleased with the colour blending, the tones &c less so (the darker parts of the wash are a bit random). Also, I shouldn't have added highlights to his tail with a gel pen, it looks wrong.
Quite pleased with the colour blending, the tones &c less so (the darker parts of the wash are a bit random). Also, I shouldn't have added highlights to his tail with a gel pen, it looks wrong.
It is, apparently, national stationery day today, so here's what came with me to work in the Carradice today;
Some Paper, Today.
Top left - on top, a Rhodia No.11 pad, with 5x5 bloc paper (in a Rhodia e-Pure cover), my pocket Filofax, & plain Moleskine pocket reporter (being used up for pencil sketches &c). Rightmost is my Nomadic PE-10 pencil case. Bottom left is a square WH Smith sketchpad, and underneath them all is an A5 Black 'n' Red notebook (that actually stays at work).
The No.11 Rhodia pads are great for sticking in a back pocket & carrying about for quick notes &c. They have really nice, fountain pen friendly paper too.
I use the Filofax for organising both calendar, and, in the notes pages at the back, tasks (using a modified GtD type system). I find the Pocket is better than the Personal (slightly too large) or mini (much to small) for bike carriage, personally.
You might think it odd that I carry a Moleskine, given my much tweeted disdain for their paper - having paid for the thing before I knew better, I'm determined to use it up. Besides, pencil works ok on it, after all.
The WH Smith sketchpad isn't normally resident in this bag, but I had an idea I'd hoped to work on at lunch today that its square format is perfect for.
Some pens, pencils &c Today.
Most of these live in the Nomadic case - the exception is the leftmost pen, a Pelikan Steno that resides in the pen loop of my pocket Filofax. Sadly discontinued, this is a terrific little pen with an interesting extra fine flexible nib. Its intended use is shorthand notation (Pitman), and the flex allows the line variation this script relies on to convey meanings. This pen is filled with the businesslike Pelikan Blue/Black ink, this, and the EF nib are a great combination for the small spaces in my planner.
Next along the line is a Staedtler Marsmicro mechanical pencil. This is the 0.9mm version, with Pentel AIN lead (B grade).
Then we have the Uni Ball Signo Broad, with white Pigment ink. A lot of fun on dark papers, and one of the few white ink pens to lay down a nicely opaque line.
Next to the Signo is my old Staedtler Marsmatic (0.5mm). I filled this in a fit of nostalgia, having forgotten just how scratchy it is - once I've run the ink down, I think it'll go back in the pen drawer.
A trio of Stainless Steel Parker Jotters is next. Ballpoint (with a Parker Gel ink refill, much nicer than the standard one), fountain pen (filled with Parker Quink Black, this writes a wet, medium width line), and pencil (0.5mm Pentel AIN lead, in 2H grade).
Lastly, a Staedtler Rasoplast eraser, and a cartridge that's probably Diamine Dark Brown, and one that definitely is.
Some stuff, today.
At the top of the picture are my post-it index tabs. I find these really useful for marking pages.
Below those are three cartridges, Parker Quink black, Lamy black, and Lamy purple.
Next is my blue Worther Shorty clutch pencil. I love these little things, and have three - they take a soft (7B) 3.15mm lead, and are great for quick, loose sketches.
Below that is my Rotring Esprit - an interesting telescopic mini pen (although not as compact as something like the Kaweco Sport). Long discontinued under the Rotring name, they were briefly sold as the Parker Esprit (also discontinued). They still turn up "new old stock" on eBay from time to time. Mine is filled with Monteverde Burgundy ink at the moment.
Then we have my Schneider Base - despite the limitation of coming in medium (or left handed medium) only, this is an inexpensive, reliable daily writer. At the moment, it has Diamine Turquoise in, a colour just the right side of business like, but fun nonetheless. It's my only "left handed" pen.
Lastly, a Lamy Vista. Essentially a transparent Safari, this is a wonderfully reliable workhorse pen. Mine has an EF nib (again, those small planner spaces), but the beauty of the Lamy Safari, Vista and AL-Star is that nibs are readily swapped in and out, right up to the wide calligraphy nibs used by the Lamy Joy pens. I'd recommend getting your Safari or Vista from the link (I get no kickback from that) as The Writing Desk will ship with the nib width you request (even the calligraphy nib) saving you £4 buying the nib separately. Their price for Vistas, Safaris and Al-Stars with convertors (for using bottled ink) is excellent too.
This is one of Mrs. M's latest projects;
Both bears, the large bear's clothes (dungarees, a jumper & shoes) and a shoulder bag that the small bear goes in are hand knitted by Mrs Monkey, who really is a much cleverer simian than me.
The paper is a cheap "Boldmere" sketchbook, the ink is Monteverde Burgundy.
Well, it's the last day of advent, and here we are at the big double door for the 24th.
Surely something VERY special waits for us behind this, you cry, and you would not be wrong.
It's Otis Redding's version of White Christmas, backed by the incomparable Stax house band. This tune is a perennial Christmas favourite of mine, and I hope you enjoy it too.
Have a very Happy Christmas everyone, and all the best to you and yours for a happy and prosperous 2012.
Nearly there, everyone. I suspect we're all a bit overexcited now, so here's something upbeat with which to work off some energy.
One of the habits I've tried to sustain this year is writing *something* about my day, each day. A diary (as in a proper diary sometimes called a daily planner, with printed dates on each page) makes this a bit easier for me - an unprinted book would doubtless lead me into the most terrible backsliding.
So far, I've used Moleskine Daily Planners (2009, 2010, pocket size - they've been surprisingly ok, given how poor the paper is in their notebooks, but are expensive) and a Ciak Daily Planner (2011). The Ciak was a bit disappointing, with thin paper that had a lot of show & bleedthrough through for some inks.
For 2012, I bought a Black N Red Day to Page diary in the A5 size. UK readers with decent stationery cupboards will be familiar with Black N Red, who make a series of spiral bound and casebound notebooks that are generally well regarded. The diaries use a 90gsm "Optik" paper, and come in a range of sizes up to A4 (which seems to me to be massive - even I would struggle to fill an A4 page with my pointless wibbling each day).
The diary is casebound, with stitched signatures, and the cover is a nicely textured cloth over board. The contrasting spine appears taped, although it isn't. A red woven ribbon is glued into the binding for use as a place marker. All of the pages (save the end papers) have perforated corners, which you can remove to allow quick location of the current day (assuming you remove the corners after each day, of course).
The diary begins with a page for contact details, followed by a two page year planner for 2012. After the planner, it's straight into the daily pages, an example of which is above. Note that Black N Red don't put Saturday and Sunday on one page, which some daily planners do to save space. At the end of the diary (the last dated page is 3rd January 2013) is another two page year planner (for 2013), a page of country information, a page of weights and measures and mileages, a page of international telephone codes and time zones and then 6 pages for notes. It's fairly restrained in this respect, (no tube map, for example) and I quite like that, having never really appreciated the pages and pages of junk I never use that crops up at the beginning and end of some dairies.
The main diary pages have three months of calendar on the top left hand side, showing the previous month, current month and coming month. The main part of the page has appointment times from 07:00 to 20:00, split into half hours. Below this are "Quick Note" spaces. (I should say that I don't use these planning features, I just write on the pages, so can't really comment on how useful it is). Lines are dark ruled, at a fairly narrow 5mm spacing - the paper is a bright white that ink shows up very nicely on.
The amount of writing space is slightly larger than my medium Ciak planner (much larger if one writes beyond the lines and into the notes spaces on the Black N Red pages), despite the Black N Red being a larger book. This is because of the rather busier page layout in the Black N Red diary - I don't think it's fair to criticise that, because the product is, I think, intended to be a planner rather than a journal or personal diary.
I bought my diary from Ryman, for £9.99, although they're fairly widely available, and the price doesn't seem to vary much between stockists.
Note that I've done my ink tests on the "Notes" pages at the back of the diary - I'm assuming the paper quality is consistent throughout.
INK TESTS
Showthrough (how visible your writing is with a blank page over it).
On showthrough, I think the diary is slightly less impressive than this scan shows - not terrible, but there is some ghosting through the facing page.
It's a similar story on bleedthrough, although the scan gives a fairer (possibly *slightly* unfair) picture here. There's a small amount of ghosting, with the beginnings of bleedthrough at a couple of points from Amazing Amethyst and Pousserie De Lune ink.
I think the ink tests tell the best story of this paper though - compare inks like Amazing Amethyst, Pousserie De Lune and Havana Brown with their performance in previous reviews, and the superiority of Black N Red's paper is evident. I can't make out any feathering, even from problem inks in close ups, and for that, I'll put up with the small amount of ghosting on facing and reverse pages.
IN SUMMARY
For the page count, and the cost, I think the Black N Red diary is a great buy - the paper is better than any day per page diary I've used, and it costs less than a lot of premium daily planners/diaries. If you can live with the slightly utilitarian styling (these books always remind me of being at work, but that could just be an association I have), busy page layout, and lack of premium notebook fripperies (soft cover, rounded corners, elastic closure &c) you'll not regret getting one.
Behind door 22, it's a song with everything - trendy melancholic version of a popular standard (at least to start with), alternative words we used to sing as kids, and an accordion.
