When holiday gifting goes well

Finding a stationery-related gift for that family member who is a stationery buff is challenging. Often your loved one already bought the pens or notebooks or inks that they like.

Alternatively, one can go out on a proverbial limb. Find a fun-looking notebook or pen and secure it. Gift it with love. To find your loved one explores it in front of you, highlights what they like and don’t like, and then heads off onto their next hunt. Appreciative, but still searching for that elusive “perfect” notebook, or pen, or ink.

Others use wish lists. Your loved one lists the exact items they want. There’s no surprise but you know they’ll love their gift.

My family leaned on a mix of the latter two approaches this year. To great success!

New Colorverse Inks. Oh how I’m digging my new Colorverse inks. The new Project line returns to Colorverse’ astronomy theme. I dig a fun theme when it comes to ink.

I asked for three unsaturated colors: α And, α UMa, and α Psc. Loving the colors. At first glance, And and Psc are best for everyday writing. UMa may need a broad nib to write darkly enough for easy reading.

Pilot Custom 74 in Forest Green — with my first Japanese EF nib. Nostalgia and novelty all in one.

My first gold nib was a Custom 74 in Smoke. It was a smooth, if dry, M nib. I earned my Ed.M. degree with that pen. That poor pen was accidentally destroyed when a friend put it through the wash.

This new 74 is just as I remember my old smoke model: moderately sized, light-weight, and comfortable in the hand for both quick jottings and  longer writing sessions.

Now with thinner lines!

Paper is where I grow my most persnickety. My partner nailed my notebook gift! Tomoe river paper: check. Small profile so I get to change notebooks in a few months: check. Lay flat binding: double-check. Iroshizuku ink decorations: bam.

Double bam

Picky is as picky does. I can feel the love.

This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.

Toolset

Pens. This week’s clear standout combo is the Diplomat Aero, inked with Red Robin. Robin’s coloring matches my Aero’s colorway nicely. Worked well on Rhodia, Stalogy, and Tomoe River papers. Lines haloed on all three papers, even in an EF nib. Would pair these again. Journaling, scratch notes, reading notes, some margin notes. 2/5. 

• Pilot Prera (CM) — Feed. The Prera is a neat little pen. The CM nib offers healthy line variation. I like Pilot’s con-40 converter for shimmer inks — the balls keep shimmer suspended. Wet combination, which kept Copper from shading. Grind kept this pair to slowly written journal entries.

• Kaweco Sport (EF) — 2/5. Small but mighty. Ruby Blue was a champ: consistent writing with strong sheen, even in a narrow EF nib. Premium nib wrote smoothly and reliably. Sheen would be great for lesson plan outlines.

• Franklin-Christoph 03 (F SIG) — 1/2. Strong shading. Shading, added to the SIG grind, made this a frequent pairing while journaling and writing thank you notes.

• TWSBI Eco-T (EF) — 1/2. Wet. Wet enough to bleed and feather on Stalogy paper. Well behaved on Tomoe River. Thunderbolt simply isn’t my favorite shade. However, it flows generously and behaves well on coated paper. Journaling, reading notes.

• Faber-Castell Ondoro (M) — 2/3. Clog monster. I suspect the feed is unfriendly to shimmer inks as the Ondoro has struggled with other shimmer inks in 2021. Poor pairing. Journaling, some reading notes.

Notebooks. Work bujo.  Not a thing. Ain’t breaks lovely?

Journal. Stalogy Editor’s 1/2 Year (A6). 16 new pages spread across three entries. Each entry is very different. One each of a long-form reflection, a brief analysis, and then some ink play and scribbles.

I have an affection for Stalogy’s grid, all-flat bindings, and for their strong paper quality. Working in an A6 continues to be a lot of fun. Change is healthy.

Sunday’s entry tapped two pens. I used the Kaweco Sport (Ruby Blue) for the body and the Diplomat Aero (Red Robin) for a concluding poem. The narrow lines brought out fun contrast between Ruby’s deep blurple and Red Robin’s earthy apricot.

This was a brief two-page reflection on my day. Getting my head facing forward about the coming week and final holiday prep. The poem is An Exercise in Love by Diane do Prima. It’s about gift-giving. Timely.

Wednesday night’s entry was analytic. I unpacked a lovely piece of prose by Toni Morrison. She gave a speech at Howard University in 1995 on the intersection of discrimination and fascism. It moved me enough to sit and unpack her list of ten steps to convince everyday folks to treat one another horribly. Dark, but powerful.

Flipping and flopping between pens and inks

I alternated between the Franklin-Christoph and TWSBI Eco-T for each of Morrison’s ten steps. Night Shade’s dull grey contrasts easily against Thunderbolt.

And then there’s this mess … er, fun time :)

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Written dry. My overall amount of writing dropped this week. The primary cause: I read far more than usual. Reading involves time with a pencil and a pair of Mildliners.

No regrets

As a result, all six pens survived the week intact and with ink to spare.

Newly inked. None. Behaving yourself is easy when you have a holiday to look forward to.

The collection

Incoming / new orders. In addition to the three new inks, new pen and new notebook from the very-long introduction to today’s post, I prepared for a custom nib order. Pixelmator was my software off choice for the preparations this past week.

I tweaked the design of the mnmlscholar logos, which are vector images. And, importantly, the software allows me to export my work as psd files.

I used a near-identical version for my pen show buttons

I now have the materials FP Nibs needs to create a customized #6 Jowo nib adorned with my own artwork. Anticipating the pretty personalized nib. Wowza.

Outgoing / trades or sales. No outward movement. However, I am more confident in my choice of six pens to release into the wild. And confidence is important.

Currently reading and listening

Fiction. Voldemort fell, at last, to the powers of friendship and trust. Oddly enough, just before next month’s Harry Potter movie reunion special. Rowling tells a tight, well-written story. I’m happy I took the time to listen my way through Stephen Fry’s narration.

I opened Brent Weeks’ The Blood Mirror on Friday night. At 27 pages in, I am still reacquainting myself with Weeks’ world and characters. My last experience with Weeks was four years ago.

The Lightbringer series is a fun fantasy read for those who are interested in nuanced magic systems and soap-opera inter-character politics. Weeks bases his magic system on color theory. I find it cool.

Nonfiction. Started and finished two academic pieces this week. One essay and one book.

First, I read through Jason Stanley’s well-organized and clear essay on fascism. A worthy read for those who are interested in political theory.

GoodNotes and an Apple Pencil helped me annotate my way through the essay. Reading digitally was convenient. I could read on the sofa — and without printing the article.

Digital for the win

Hex codes are fabulously-useful. I have three pencil colors set to the hex codes for Diamine’s Early Grey, Kyo-No-Oto’s Aonibi, and Sailor’s Yozakura. And the highlighter colors are set for the hex color values of Zebra’s Mild Grey and Light Blue highlighters.

I snuck my first (skim) read and second (deep) read of Dennis Baron’s What’s Your Pronoun? across Saturday and Sunday. He has a clever take on the evolution of the debates on proper pronoun use through US and UK histories. His first and second chapters would make great readings for the high school students enrolled in my LGBTQ Studies class.

I stuck with my analog reading toolkit for Baron’s book: a Blackwing pencil, two Mildliner highlighters, and a Dux sharpener. He, she, they, and Blackwing.

Late night reading accoutrements

Music. My partner and I stumbled onto Adia Victoria while listening to Spotify’s Southern Gothic playlist. Her music is earthy, somber, and powerful. A mashup of blues and moody indie sounds. If Pitchfork and peach sweet-tea made music.

Herbal tea and a magazine worthy.

UPDATED, Dec 31, 2021 — Fixed a silly spelling mistake.