Paper Explorations: Reflection on 2023
The past two years have been paper exploration palooza. I gathered papers any time I was ordering or going through a stationery shop. I have papers made from all over the world. They are line ruled, grid, dot grid, and blank. Some are white, some are cream, and even a few are gray. I have loose leaf, paper pads, stitch bound notebooks, spiral bound notebooks, top bound, side bound, you name it - I’ve probably got it. I have notebooks from big brands, small makers, and even some that I made myself. The San Francisco Pen Show this year was a paper smörgåsbord with vendors from around the world offering papers that are sometimes tricky to get without paying high shipping prices.
Recently, I did a desk cubby cleanup as I have a tendency to shove little odds and ends into the slots on my secretary desk and ended up putting a lot of notepads away in the bottom drawer. That drawer is currently full to bursting with loose leaf Japanese papers and a variety of notepads. In addition to the drawer, I also have a photo box full of empty A6 notebooks that I have purchased and made, ready to slide into my TN when I am ready for them. These A6 notebooks include everything from Sterling Ink Tomoe River paper, Itoya Oasis, Paper Penguin (variety of different papers), an Onion Skin Journal insert, Apica, and a slew of random papers that I stitch bound into notebooks. I also have a few empty hardbound journals (mostly A5) sitting on my small bookshelf.
See? I wasn’t kidding when I said the drawer was getting full…
Paper chaos was the theme of 2023, or perhaps paper indecision is a more apt descriptor. I added new notebooks and papers from my travels, I was cutting down notebooks to fit into my TN, and I was even deconstructing notebooks that were partially filled. There were very few books that I wrote all the way through without abandoning at some point. Moving a pen across the page is one of my favorite things, but somewhere I was losing my flow. While some of the reasons for that are beyond the scope of this blog… one of them was too many choices. A good problem to have for sure, but decision paralysis can set in at the best of times.
Very little room left in this box either…
There were some exceptions to my notebook indecision/notebook hopping, like my Tomoe river paper Odyssey Notebook that I recently reviewed. Looking over my completed notebooks this year, they had a lot of features in common. They were often thin, smooth papers with some level of ghosting and crinkling as pages were filled. Tomoe River paper (Old, New, and Sanzen), onion skin paper (airmail, typewriter, etc.) and Kokuyo Thin Paper brought me the most interest consistently. Cosmo Air Light and related papers popped in now and again when I was craving super sheeny inks, they just look good together.
While a pen can be made fresh quickly with the introduction of a new ink or swapping out a nib, a notebook is hard to refresh halfway through. After all, it is, literally, bound to be what it is start to finish no matter how long it takes to use. The ruling, type of paper, and binding type stays the same from the outset. While I can put together a notebook that has multiple options, but most don’t come off the shelf that way. And if the notebook was too long or the paper didn’t have the right feel at the time… I just didn’t use it. It hung out on a string in my TN or tucked onto a desk shelf.
What I am hoping to do in 2024 is be more intentional with my notebook usage. I am taking my writing more seriously and will be applying
Perhaps keeping a log, similar to how I track my inks, will be valuable and encourage me to find new things/get even more enjoyment out of papers I already enjoy. The question will be how to record what notebooks I have/what I have used. While it’s fairly straight forward to track the pen/ink usage, the notebooks generally last longer, either because they are thick or because I have switched around or are using more than one book at once.
So, the question remains, how should I track paper use? At the moment, I plan to use the notes pages in the back of my A6 Monthly Sterling Ink planner to mark the following info about the notebooks:
Date started
Type of notebook (paper, size, binding, how many pages)
Possible log option on the notes pages in the back of my A6 Monthly insert from Sterling Ink.
I’m not sure if I would need to include the the contents of the notebook at the end… because I tend to have a summary page in the front/back of each notebook itself. Maybe an overall theme? With inserts, especially, they tend to end up with one subject per insert. Eventually, I may even be bold and make an inventory of my paper… might be a good project to work on.
Do you track your notebook usage? Or do you just reach for the next one that looks interesting?
Currently Inked
I’ve been doing small fills of inks that are interesting to me from the Diamine Inkvent calendar (which has been all of them up to today - except Fortune’s Gold and Sweet Dreams), so here is a quick picture of my new ink log. Many of my new Inkvent inks have gone in a pen for a partial fill and I wrote through them in less than a day. The list below is what made it to the day of posting.
Diamine All the Best - Kaweco Sport Macchiato 1.5 - I love the purple shimmer in this ink. It gives it such an interesting depth when it pools in the big letters. It’s getting a workout at the moment as I do some end of the year reflections.
Diamine Best Wishes - Kaweco liliput fireblue 14K M ‘journaler' - Still working through my refill because I have been enjoying using this ink for making lists. There’s just something about the black sheen, green shimmer, and black-green base color that is hitting right for me at the moment. This ink can be finicky if the shimmer settles in the nib, but that’s true of all shimmer inks.
Diamine Arctic Blast - Kaweco liliput copper 14K ‘selvedge’ - This ink has been bringing a smile to my face while doing editing at work. It’s such a bright pop of blue, pink sheen, and bright blue shimmer. When all three are in play, the ink is stunning. On papers that don’t show sheen well it still is a gorgeous base blue.
Diamine Bah Humbug - Kaweco Sport Burgundy M - Okay, this one might be my favorite of the Inkvent calendar so far. It’s right up my alley as a dark burgundy and the pink shimmer is just super unique. This one will probably run out as soon as this blog post is live and I’m only allowing one fill at a time at the moment for new Inkvent inks so I can try the ones that intrigue me right away… but this one will be back in a pen. It’s too cool.
Diamine Weeping Willow - Kaweco Sport Mellow Blue B ‘premium’ - Initial reaction is that this nib is too wet for this ink… so I might have to try it in a narrower nib the next time. It’s an interesting brown that is a little darker than some of my other cool tone browns, so it will be fun to experiment with going forward.
Ferris Wheel Press The Ribbiting Pond - Ferris Wheel Press Carousel Hearty Harvest M - The second story I ever sold was a retelling of the Princess and the Frog, so when I saw an ink inspired by it, I wanted to give it a try. This ink is a soft blue with pink and green shimmer. There is a lot of shimmer in this one! Going to have to experiment with it over the next few week (just inked it up on Tuesday).
Colorverse Apollo 11 - Kaweco Art Sport Terrazzo 14K B - A brand new pen required a favorite for the first fill. I was waiting until I had the pen in hand to decide between brown (there’s a reddish brown and a yellow brown in the pen body) or a dark blue. Blue felt right and I picked one of my favorites.