I Love Notebooks

I love notebooks. Who doesn't? The scent and feel of fresh paper is just heavenly. In kindergarten, I remember asking people (my teachers, mostly) for notebooks in exchange for my artworks: sketches, colored cliparts, etc. A pocket Golden Gate Bridge* notebook was a delight at that time. Or a writing notebook with a cartoon character on the cover. My favorite notebooks then were those with Little Twin Stars and Rainbow Brite covers. Sadly I wasn't able to keep any of these notebooks.

Through time, my love for notebooks did not wane. I became more enamored with them, together with other paper products. Recently, as I read and follow various pen and paper blogs, I marvel at how many people love notebooks as much as I do. Most particular are the writeups by Jackie Flaherty on pens and paper, Okami's 37 notebooks, and many others as featured in the site Notebook Stories.

Inspired by these, I gathered all of my (known) notebooks, took a couple of photos, and here they are: all 55 of them. (Gasp.) Yes, 55. And no, I'm not aware I had that much. There are still a lot that didn't make it to the photo because they're hidden somewhere and I just couldn't find them. (These photos are also in my Flickr account. Check them out!)

There are 55 notebooks in this photo. Details on the photos below.

First stack of notebooks on the top row. There are 5 notebooks in this stack, but only the Merit Fat Notebook on top is in use. The colorful Eagle notebook below it has fountain pen friendly paper.



Second and third stacks on the top row. There are 6 notebooks in the second stack, the Corona stack has 6. In the second stack, in use are the blue notebook written with "Promise of Summer" and the one with red cover and colored dividers. In the third stack, the one written with "2009" and the other with colored post-its are both in use.

Fourth and fifth stacks on the top row. There are 7 notebooks in the fourth stack, the fifth has 2. In the Blue Feather (fourth) stack, the third from top is in use - I write in this notebook all the details of the postcards I send. In the last stack, I use the James Dean Sterling notebook to take down notes during staff meetings.

First and second stacks in the middle row. The stack with Sterling on top has the most notebooks - there are 11 notebooks on this stack! Notice that I have a lot of Sterling notebooks. These are very fountain pen friendly and I just love hoarding them. The other stack has two Eagle notebooks from Office Warehouse. These notebooks are fountain pen friendly too.

Second and third stacks in the middle row. The Army notebook on the second stack is from Vietnam, a friend brought it home for me. The Black notebook on the same stack is very unique - it is meant for pens with metallic gel inks only. The two notebooks on the third stack are both very special. The purple Windy Season is a friend's gift from Singapore, and the orange Oxford ActiveBook is also a gift - it's from Slovenian photographer Robert Reich whom I met through Postcrossing.

The last stack in the middle row - my black notebooks. The two thick black notebooks at the bottom are Paperchase Journals I got from Booksale for P170 each (around $3.50). On top of them is my battered-but-scotch-taped Moleskine that I am using as my personal Journal. The one on top of my Molie is the Page One notebook I'm using as my Bucket List. The small blue notebook topmost is Korean made and I use it for jotting down random notes.

Bottom row, first and second stacks. Left: A small notebook from Indonesia. It has plain paper inside, but the cover is made from colorful Indonesian Batik and beads. Right: The black Diamond Memo is a Midori notebook from Japan. The colorful notebook underneath is from India.

The last stacks in the bottow row, left to right: Leather-covered Cusco Peru notebook, this was featured in Notebookism.com sometime in 2007; Kraft paper notebook from China; hardbound notebook from China with Jade accent on the cover.

There are more notebooks in my drawers at home and at the office, and in my boxes of stuff from my parents' house. I just got too lazy to look for them and include them here. I'm a notebook hoarder, or perhaps an addict - but what the heck, I use them to organize things around me - it's just that the speed of buying them tremendously exceeds how I use them. Now, I got 55. Who knows how many more I'll get? *Wink.*

GPW #3: Uni-Ball Signo Gelstick

Here’s GPW#3: Uni-Ball Signo Gelstick 0.7 in Blue and Black

After missing GPW for two weeks, it’s back today with Uni-Ball pens.

I got the Signo Gelstick pens from Office Warehouse, the store that also sells Schneider pens and Eagle notebooks. After buying them, I put them in my plastic pen case together with a lot of other pens and left them there, without even trying any of them.

Weekends ago (yes, it has been that long), while I was looking for pens for GPW, I was settled to get a non-Pilot pen. I thought it was time to try the Signo Gelsticks, so I took the two pens out of the box. As soon I tried to write using the black pen, I regretted not having used it earlier. Oh, why didn’t I?

Both pen are mediums (0.7), but wrote smoothly, evenly, and did not skip. The frosted, semi-transluscent plastic barrel is easy to hold while I write, even without the rubber grip I have so gotten used to in my other pens. And because these pens impressed me, I searched for reviews and comments about them and learned these facts:

• The ink used is water-based, acid-free pigment gel ink.
• It is fade and water-resistant, thus lasts long and resists fading due to exposure to light.
• Helps prevent check washing.
• The stainless steel tips with tungsten carbide balls have twin-ball action to prevent ink leaks.
  

The Uni-Ball Signo Gelstick stainless steel tips with the 0.7mm tungsten-carbide balls.

I understand I haven't done a water resistance tests in my previous GPW entries, but because of the fade and water-resistant claims on the Signo Gelsticks, I decided to do one. I ripped off a page from my Eagle notebook and wrote on it. I then placed the page under the tap's running water, and it was simply amazing to see that indeed the ink on these pens remained visibly clear. It did not run, feather, or bleed. Cool.

The Uni-Ball Signo Gelstick now belongs to my top 10 gel pens. It is a simple pen that is highly ideal for everyday use whether at work or in school, and it uses the same ink that Uni-Ball uses in their pricier pens. Great. I'm sure to get more of these pens later, in the same ink colors and hopefully the other available colors: red, green, light blue/turquoise, violet, fluorescent pink, and fluorescent orange.

A Parker Comes By

Before I got so smitten by white fountain pens, I wished to focus my collection on Parkers, in honor of the maroon Parker Vector which happens to be my first FP. As I read the available literature about Parker pens, I realized the vastness of the sea I was letting myself into. Let me just say that I got very intimidated by the number of pens I must get to legitimize a collection. And so I became enamored with white pens and been like that since I laid my eyes on a white Parker Duofold I saw at my first pen meet.

As pens filled my ice trays (yes, they are ice trays), only 1 Parker made it there: a white Parker Vector. But only because it is white and I feel that my collection will be lacking without it. After that, no more Parkers. Until I saw an ad about a vintage Parker 25 with a 'brushed steel body'. I contacted the seller out of curiosity, and he replied fast. And then we lost communication because I was not interested in the pen by the way it looks on the photos sent to me. It was several days later that he went back to me to offer to sell the pen at a lower price. I wasn't interested still, even if I was told it had a Medium nib. I didn't want a strange-looking pen even at that price and nib (I'm a sucker for medium nibs.). Then the seller informed me that another buyer is eyeing the pen and they are finalizing the sale. Great, I thought. Hours later, he was back to me again.

I felt bad for the pen that I began to pity it. It was like a child that nobody wants to take in and was being passed around. Poor Parker 25! Again, I looked at the photos sent to me, and despite their poor quality, which didn't show the pen any better, I bought it.

UK-made Parker 25, profile of nib.

I got the pen the following day in a pitiful state. It came in its original plastic box with the original paper wrap with the Parker logo, but both plastic box and paper wrap are old, dirty, and about to fall out. Closer inspection of the pen revealed that the nib is gunked with old, dried ink, and though I know that the nib can be removed from the section, it won't even move. It got stuck because of the dried ink. The barrel has tiny brown flecks which scared me because I thought of them as rust. But the worst part is the pen's converter. It came with a squeeze filler, but the metal part that should be squeezed is stuck to the rubber (I'm not sure if it is rubber, though), which is totally unusable.

The underside of the nib.

As soon as I got home, I soaked the nib in soapy water. After an hour, I tugged at the nib and it easily went off. Hurrah! For several hours, I kept changing the water in my soaking tub every hour. I did this until past midnight and I was up so early in the morning to check on the pen. The nib looked a lot better after the overnight soak. While I was airdrying it (using an electric fan), I cleaned the barrel and cap using an all-around metal polish. After two hard scrubbings, the barrel and cap are gleaming. Hurrah!

Parker 25 cap and barrel.

It's obvious that I couldn't wait to test the pen. So I placed a cartridge of Parker Penman Mocha on the pen and tried it. I was very surprised at how easily it wrote after being kept unused and dirty for so long. The Penman looked perfect on it as it wrote smoothly. The pen does not write as wet as I would have wanted it to be, but that's fine. I love its balance now, so there is nothing to worry about. The brushed steel barrel and cap are both very sturdy, I don't need to worry about accidental falls breaking it.

Another shot at the cap and barrel. They definitely look better than in this photo. The pen looks like new!

And here is a writing sample of the pen on a page on my Moleskine. There's feathering and bleed, but that's okay.

There is a lot written about Parker 25 and other Parker pens, but I didn't want to rewrite what has been written. For more reading, ParkerCollector.Com has a lot of valuable information, and there is a long conversation and review of Parker 25 at Fountain Pen Network. Check them out!

Ink Review: Aurora Blue

I've been getting fountain pens for a while now, and I have several bottles of inks with me, including the two Private Reserve inks I got last year. Despite the variety of inks I got, I have not taken the time to write about them, or post reviews.

Last weekend, I got hold of a bottle of Aurora Blue and immediately filled my white Schneider Base pen with it. I tried it on my Moleskine first, then I tried it on another notebook with a completely different paper type, and the result is awesome!

Aurora Blue is one of only two colors manufactured by the Aurora Pen Company. It's not my first taste of Blue, as I also have Cross Blue and two Watermans, the turquoise South Sea Blue and dark Florida Blue, which is very similar to Aurora Blue.

The blue of Aurora has a very intense and rich dark hue with visible tinges of purple but dries as a beautiful blue. It has excellent flow that will work well with different pens. It's already amazing on my Schneider Base because that pen is such a smooth writer. I'm excited to try it on other pens later.


Feathering and bleed are two things I always worry about because I use a Moleskine for journaling. Of course it's a known fact that these notebooks are not the friendliest to fountain pens and their inks. When I tried it on my Molie, the ink did not feather at all, but there is minor bleeding. I then tried it on a different notebook with a different paperstock (shown on the photos above) and I am so happy with the results: no feathering, minor bleed.

Aurora Blue is a happy color for me. I cannot describe it properly, but when I look at my Moleskine pages written with it, the pages just seem to smile at me. And happy is good. Happy pens, happy inks. Happier? Happiest! *Winks.*

GPW #2: Pilot Coletos

Here's Gel Pen(s) of the Week (GPW) #2: Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coletos.

Alas, here's my foray into the world of multi-pens. :)

Long after its release, I've seen photos and read reviews of the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto from many pen blogs and websites. During that time, I was seriously into populating my meager fountain pen collection, that I did not pay too much attention into this new multi-pen from Pilot. I wasn't (and still am) too fond of multi-pens, and this was another reason why the Coleto wasn't am instant hit with me.

Then the time came when there was a huge discussion about Pilot 78G pens at FPN-P. That discussion convinced me to get my first Pilot fountain pen, the 78G. Oh, wait, this is about the Coletos, right? But it was the 78G pens that brought me to the Coletos through Cosmos Bazaar in Binondo. The colorful packaging of Pilot Coleto refills caught my eye that time, but the 78Gs held my attention, and I bought three of them: teal, green, and black - all medium-nibbed. Perhaps it wasn't in the stars yet for Coletos to come home with me.

And then another trip to the city brought me near Binondo. I didn't let the chance pass by that time, and off I went to Cosmos Bazaar to get my Coletos.

At Cosmos Bazaar, the Coleto refills are available in the usual black, blue, and red in all tip sizes: 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5mm. The other refill colors, green, turquoise, purple, orange, and pink, and available only in 0.3 and 0.4mm tips. I bought black in 0.5 and 0.4, and blue and red in 0.5mm. Then I bought all remaining refill colors in 0.4mm tip sizes. I also got three of the three-color pens: clear, blue, and gray.

Coleto refills: 2 blacks, blue, turquoise, green, purple, orange, pink, and red. There are two colors missing in my collection: blue-black and brown. But I don't have them only because Cosmos doesn't have them.

Above is a simple writing sample of the Coletos on my Moleskine. These pens use gel ink, and they write very smoothly and does not skip. I do not worry about bleed and smudges on my notebook pages, because the ink dries fast. They are easy to hold, and my hand is not so tired after writing for some time.

It's also a joy that the Coleto comes in 2, 3, and 4 color sizes. This multi-pen is an excellent choice for people such as I am who loves writing in different colors. And it's also important that the pen barrels can be bought empty, because refilling them with my choice of color is very easy. I can mix different colors in one barrel, or have different tip sizes of a single color. Fun!