Whelp. My pen collection has hit capacity
Oh. Oh no. I have surpassed the dreaded cap. The point at which I have more pens than beds in my pen case. Wonderful woe is me.
Time for hard decisions as to which pens should be shed.
Some background. I aim for a collection just large enough that rotating through my collection revives feelings of novelty with my pens. I want to spend enough time away from a given pen that I can rediscover it two or three months later.
I settled on four trays of thirteen pens, on 54 individual fountain pens. Capped at 54 pens, it takes me around nine or ten weeks to circle back to a pen once I’ve used it. The “once a quarter” time frame balances well having enough time between inkings for a pen to be rediscovered and visiting with each pen three or four times each calendar year. The see-saw of justice pen use.
So, what I need is a set of guidelines to shape how to choose which pens stay in my rotation and which pens move on to other desks.
Every pen counts. The most low-entry of beginner pens holds one slot in my collection, the same as even my rarest of writers. If it sits in the case, it’s included in my count. Market value isn’t really in my equation. This does, however, make assortments of low-entry pens high-impact within my collection. So …
Every iteration counts. I must challenge the urge to count “my Kaweco Sports” as one pen. Each colorway should exist in my collection on purpose. Choosing which versions of Kaweco Sport, and Lamy Safari, and TWSBI 580 is the purpose of this exercise.
That’s it. Two guidelines to steer my curation to within my case’s physical storage capacity of 54 pens. A two-part treaty with myself to keep my curating intentional. Simple bumpers for challenging decision-making.
My aim is to move twelve pens on to new homes this quarter. I can do this (so I keep telling myself). Fortitude check. Deep breath. Let’s do this.
Wave One: The First Wave
Toolset
Pens. The assortment of six pens that carried me through the past week held up well as a team. The aggregate is this week’s standout.
Lamy Safari (EF) — 1/5. Reliable daily driver. Dry and light on THIN paper. Snap cap excellent for quick notes during meetings. Task management, meeting notes, and lesson plans.
Jinhao 82 (B Naginata-togi) — 1/5. The 82’s small size lends it to precise writing. Meeting prep, reading notes, lesson plans, and journaling. And grading.
Pelikan m805 (F) — 1/4. Produced a wet but disciplined F line. No nonsense writing for detailed meeting notes, reading notes, journaling, and lesson plans.
TWSBI 580-AL (M Selvedge Italic) — 1/3. Wet. Firmament dried to a fun, grassy green with strong haloing. Excellent line size for quickly scrawled notes and thoughtful reflections. Journaling, lesson plans, and meeting notes.
Relic Pens Large (M Bu-di) — 2/5. Large, in charge, and multifunctional. Reverse writing provides variable swatch widths for headings, emphasizing notes, and general noodling around. Upright writing angles produce a narrow EF line for detailed notes. Journaling reflections, journal entries, lesson plans, and meeting prep.
Visconti Homo Sapiens (F CI) — ?? A wet feed and ink combination. Raspberry Rose is a deep pink-red with strong haloing. Long dry times, and so some smearing. Slow writing tasks, like journaling, proved the best fit for this pair.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Kokuyo Century Dotted (A5). The week started with my two-page weekly on pages 95 and 96. I was all business while sketching out this task management layout. Colorverse’s Matter carries the day through the entirety of my weekly, both structure and tasks.
Splashes of shading keep simple grey lively
The six following pages house lesson plan outlines. Sketches of how each lesson I taught over the course of last week all tie together. My daily driver combination (the tasty Lamy Safari Blue Macaron in EF) lays out the general outline of each class, by activity type.
Then I tagged four other pairings for the details of how each specific activity should transition into one another. Cool toned blues, teals and green.
My favorite color for details was Lennon Tool Bar’s Atmospheric Firmament. The TWSBI’s Selvedge Italic grind threw off cheery line variation. And Firmament halos in lovely ways, surrounding my letterforms like middle-school era bubble letters.
Even Zoroastrianism gets a halo
The week’s educational scribbling ends with three pages of meeting notes, two curriculum meetings and one meeting with a parent.
The curricular meetings each traded off one ink color for task-oriented notes against my daily driver for details. Hisoku proved a wonderful accent notetaker for task-related items.
Audio projects are required to be minty fresh
Reflecting on my week’s writing highlights that my Visconti was ignored while at work. Subconsciously snubbed.
Journal. Kobeha Graphilo Graph (A5). I finished my journal last week. Five final entries over the prior week. My schedule settled down into a rhythm for the first time since last Spring. The result was ten pages of day-long recaps scrooched into Kobeha’s 4mm grid. Decadent.
The Visconti got some vampiric scrawling on, too
The final two pages of a journal are reserved for two kinds of targeted reflecting. The kinds of lists that help me to reference specific entries years afterwards. Useful with an extended lifespan.
The Bu-di grind on my Relic Pens made easily visible headers across the top of both pages. Bold and purple. With bountiful shading care of Sailor Hara-Hara.
On the left, I highlight similarities across the entries in this now-full notebook. For this Kobeha, one of the patterns is that I almost always recapped my day — without unpacking the why’s or how’s of my days. Description without analysis. All party and no cleanup.
That Hara-Hara heading ain’t no laughing matter
The right side page indexes the excerpts and poems that spoke to me over the course of the weeks I poured my inky heart into this notebook. I alternated Verdigris and Hisoku to keep the list prettily scannable. And to play with two more pens. Whee.
Written dry. All six pens remain ink-full to a workable degree. Spreading writing duties across all six democratized ink usage. So while all six of my currently inked are near 1/3 full, all six are still reliably inked for the coming week.
Any changes for next week will be for novelty
Newly inked. I was content with my sextet last week. The healthy diversity of writing options kept me content throughout the week. A+.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. No new purchases last week.
The summer was full of new acquisitions. Most recently, I added a Pelikan Souverän m805 Demonstrator and a Carolina Pen Co. Charleston to the collection — and to the pen case.
The Pelikan journeyed back and forth from campus with me all week.
Novelty meter = full
Outgoing / trades or sales. My project for the fall is to bring this section to life.
I began by bringing eight pens to my local pen group’s meetup on Sunday. Each was priced to move, even the limited edition Lamy Safaris.
I also added four well-loved low-entry pens to the outgoing writers: a Platinum Preppy, Pilot Kaküno, Wing Sung 601 and the kooky KACO Green. These formed a “take as you like” pile. Spreading the love.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. I finished Becky Chambers’ 4th novel in her wonderful Wayfarer’s series on Tuesday night. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within was a touching point-in-time story wherein five people, from four species, are stuck together for a few days. Chambers does an outstanding job of rendering interpersonal conflict hopeful. A story with a smile.
I started Anthony Ryan’s latest novel, The Traitor, on Thursday night. I’m only two chapters in and quickly recalling how much I enjoy following Alwyn the Scribe around. Fun, if dark, times.
All of my fiction reading continues on in Apple’s Books app. Consumed entirely on my phone.
Nonfiction. Walzer’s The Struggle for a Decent Politics sits unattended on my desk. Mitsubishi pencil and Mildliners at the ready. Perhaps this coming week.
Music. I returned to my entree into lo-fi last week. The soundtrack to Samurai Champloo (an old anime from my college days) is replete with lo-fi jazz-infused hip hop. Mellow, biting, crunchy beats that are periodically punctuated with bouts of loose hip hop vocals. A great fit for energetic and creative work.
I’m sharing a compilation of the show’s soundtracks below. A word to the wary: some of the tracks have naughty language.
