2022 state of the scholar, tray three
Taking inventory of my pen collection helps me to ensure that the pens in my case all draw me into my writing. A process that I started back in July and continued a month later.
The process involves balancing each pen atop my guiding principals. As I wrote then,
“I hold the same rule for my collection as I do for technology (new apps and the like): each pen should work for me, not me for it. As the kinds of projects I take on change, the pens and inks that serve me best also change. Moving targets.
With respect to my writing, this means sifting each pen from my trays through three filters.
Do I regularly use the pen?
Does the pen spark joy when I ink it up?
Is it well-suited to the kinds of writing I most commonly take up?”
This week, I sift through the third (of four) 13-pen trays. The tray I lovingly call the “Tray of Small-Sized Big-Hitters.”
Kaweco Sport: Classic Blue, Frosted Light Blueberry, Skyline Mint, Skyline Fox and Skyline Iridescent Pearl. The Kaweco Sport has a special place in my heart. These wee beasties are compact, comfortable and conveniently priced.
The Classic Blue was the first gift my now-spouse gave to me. Talk about romantic. The Mint was the first pen I pulled a nib and feed out of. And the Blueberry is the first pen I eyedroppered — to a disastrous and inky result. Lesson learned. Joy assured.
The nibs are easily swappable. As such, they’re easily adapted to whatever kinds of writing I anticipate getting myself into in a given week. Well-suited, well-colored, and well-sized.
But do I use all five often enough to warrant such a large sub-collection? I have used four recently. The Mint was inked earlier this September. The two blues were used last summer. And the Iridescent Pearl saw the inside of my penvelope last spring. Only the Fox has sat, tray-bound since last February.
The lesson is that five Sports is one too many. I need to reflect on which Sport to let live in a more attentive home.
Sailor Pro Gear: Blue Train, Slate Blue, Graphite Lighthouse and Imperial Black. The Pro Gear sports a comfortable section width, squat length and a lovely texture in the hand. And Sailor plays in joyful ways with their Pro Gears’ color combinations. But, more than any colorway, I’m drawn to Sailor’s pencil-like feedback and sturdy gold nibs.
The Pro Gear is a recurring staple of my writing life. All four were inked this past summer. They clearly all fit my use case. My nib selection suits long and short writing sessions well — in addition to fast and slow writing. A wide Zoom nib, a Zoom-width Architect, and two Fs. Tailored suits.
Sailor’s shiny resins have a smooth, sticky texture I find pleasing. So the joy box is also definitely checked. Four keepers.
Sailor 1911 Mid-Size in Gold. My 1911 is quite another story. The crisp M-CI nib writes consistently and with strong line variation for such a narrow line width. But the nib requires concentration to ensure I maintain a proper, classic writing angle.
As a result, I rarely reach for this pen. I last inked it in January of 2021. Well over a year ago.
The 1911 is a great candidate for my nascent moving-on pile.
Pilot Custom 74 Forest Green. I saw to it that I had a professional nibmeister tune and smooth the EF nib on this 74 during the DC Pen Show. The pen wrote fine out of the box. Now it writes how I like: extra fine with pencil-like feedback.
I used this pen as a daily driver just last month. The hairline EF line is an excellent choice for detailed notetaking, task management, and margin notes. It’s also able to tame wet inks — consistently rendering smooth EF lines. Rock star.
The subdued green colorway also suits the serious meetings wherein I tend to take a lot of notes.
Right nib. Right colorway. Happy-happy joy-joy. Another keeper.
Pilot Custom Heritage 912 in Black. This pen stays because of the excellent nib. Pilot’s SF nib gives me life. And I’m not prone to exaggeration. The SF suits how I write as if it were ground for me. Disciplined F lines. And bouncy in a way that keeps me entertained while writing.
My praise for the SF nib aside, the pen itself doesn’t derive joy. I could take or leave the body. The resin feels thin and cheap compared to Sailor’s excellent resins. And the body’s plastic threads grind concerningly against the section’s metal threads when I open the pen for cleaning or inking.
That nib though. A keeper for now. And perhaps a candidate for a future custom-made pen to house the most-excellent gold nib.
Pelikan m805 Stresemann Anthracite. A goldilocks pen. The section is tapered with a flare at the end that keeps the Pelikan comfortable in my hand, even after multiple pages of writing. A go-to pen for long writing sessions and for meeting notes, given it’s suit-like pattern. My “take this seriously” pen. The pen I wore on my wedding day.
Pelikan’s nibs are designed with customization in mind. The entire nib unit easily unscrews to afford easy swapping. I have both a F Architect (for the fanciest of writing) and a F smooth cursive italic for everyday scrawling.
I enjoy everything about my m805. A permanent member of the third tray family, I suspect.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes last week’s currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. Not only did my Karas Kustoms Decograph travel from my for sale list into my currently inked this week, it’s the clear standout amongst my other six inked pairings. Clear, true-to-size EF lines. Precise pops of blue that made easy-to-see comments on manuscripts and students’ papers. I enjoyed writing so much I journaled with this pair three times of the course of the week. EF nib with 1/2 a converter remaining.
Lamy Safari (B) — 1/5. The B nib brought out Yu-yake’s personality for the first page of writing before growing dry. The snap cap lent this pair to fast writing — especially pocket notes. My pocket carry for the week. Also: longform journal reflection, lesson plans, lecture notes and some paper marking.
Franklin-Christoph 03 (M SIG) — 1/3. I enjoy Yama-budo. I enjoy the M-SIG nib. And I adore my 03. Just wasn’t feeling the love with this pair last week. Slow, reflective writing proved my most enjoyable use case: lesson plans, lecture notes, and lesson prep.
Platinum 3776 (F) — 1/3. Sailor’s 223 is a complex dark grey in this F nib. Purples and some greens peek through the ink’s undertones in the middles of lines, where lines are driest. A reliable daily driver combo. Five stars. Task management, reading notes, meeting notes, scratch notes and lesson plans.
Carolina Charlotte (B) — 1/3. A powerhouse pairing. Consistent writing. Wide B lines. Bountiful shading. Perfect for teaching reflections, manuscript drafting and lesson plans.
Platinum 3776 (B) — 1/2. Laurel Green’s smoky colorway was well-suited to taking notes during the two interviews I paneled last week. Reliable, consistent writing with fun green shading at the ends of brown letterforms. Teaching reflections, lesson plans, journaling, and meeting notes.
KACO Green Retro (EF) — 1/2. I put this combo in my blazer pocket and forgot about it on both Wednesday and Thursday. However, this proved to be a reliable pocket notetaker and meeting note accenter the other three days. The sturdy clip proved an asset. Writes super smooth while inked with 441. And some journaling.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Odyssey Neptune 400 (A5). My bullet journal is working well this year. I feel on top of my work. That is a feeling I’ve missed since the lockdowns of 2020.
The week’s writing lent 21 more pages to the Odyssey. I wound my way from page 54 to page 75. Two pages of tasks in the form of my weekly spread. Managed entirely with Kylo Ren’s lovely, disciplined F nib. And grey ink. Gotta have that grey ink.
My weekly is followed by seven pages of lesson plan outlines. Every pen-and-ink combo from my currently inked sketched out at least one lesson plan. I tapped the Franklin-Christoph for a second lesson, too.
The tell-tale ribbons of a cunningly crafted SIG nib
Add to my teaching core of a weekly and lesson plan outlines another two pages of lesson planning. Thinking through changes I want to make to my unit on the Carlisle School. I invite my students to interrogate the different stories told about the purpose and function of the termination school. A necessary skill for resisting nonsense news.
Hacking out a reading timeline … in 223
The final nine pages house discussion notes from my students’ roundtable classes. I asked them to apply C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination to their summer reading book.
I alternate colors by discussion thread. The first topic a student raises is one color. A change pens when a new topic is raised. And I turn to broad nibs for forgiving distracted writing.
Sloppy handwriting, clever thinking
In an odd turn of events, I also found myself with time on Friday to build out my weekly and lesson plan outlines for the coming week. This is rare. So, next week’s lesson plans are already made — with my four broadest inked nibs: the Carolina (B), Lamy (B), Platinum (B), and Franklin-Christoph (M SIG).
That’s six more pages, ending at 81. Woo.
Journal. LIFE x Kleid Noble Note (B6). Thirteen more pages are home to inky scrawlings, reflections and personal brainstorms. I sat at table and journaled six times over the course of the week. An unusually high, but welcome, volume of writing. All star.
Well … technically Safari. Not Al-Star
I reached for my Karas Kustoms Decograph for journaling three times. Once for a long-form reflection checking-in with my symptoms as I exited the CDC-required COVID quarantine period. The final two are short reflections on my day-to-day shenanigans. In blue. Lovely, eye-searing blue.
“Seared, like tuna steaks.” — Archer
The Karas spent time on my for-sale pile. However, I returned to the pen last week to rediscover my appreciate for the writer. The narrow section, with it’s flared end, is comfortable. And the EF nib’s happy true-to-size EF lines with my Yoseka ink made it a fun, trustworthy annotator — and journaler.
Odd, that. I’m following my heart on this one.
Written dry. I am on a survival streak. All seven pens ended last week with ink in their converters. No complaints.
Newly inked. I was a right-old gentleman last week. I stuck to the original plan of seven pen-and-ink pairings.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. This week was arrival-less. What I already have is a happy place. A happy, inky, analog place.
Outgoing / trades or sales. No movement yet. Posts like today’s hasten my listing of pens intent on being rehoused.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. I read the first 61 (iPhone sized) pages of Brian Jacques’ Martin the Warrior last week. The Redwall series has continued on as my evening-wind-down activity. Tight storytelling without fluff or conceptual complexity. Easy reading with characters you come to enjoy.
Martin is presently captured and plotting an escape. Jacques’ theme of friendship as a pathway to success seems ready to strike again.
Nonfiction. I spent the week prepping readings related to my teaching. That means neither pencil nor highlighter nor book dart met paper last week. So that I can resume my nonfiction reading in the coming week.
Histories of ancient Mesopotamia. Feminist analyses of ancient Ishtar stories. And histories of the United States’ termination policies. Wa. Hoo.
Music. My barber and I talk music while he cuts my hair. He recommended I check out Ichika Nito since I enjoy both guitar-heavy music and instrumental artists. Ichika Nito is both.
And I like. Intricate guitar riffs. Instrumental, with few exceptions. Perhaps too musically interesting for a teaching soundtrack. But excellent music to write and read alongside.
I expect Ichika Nito will be polarizing. You will either enjoy the tapping, complex guitar arrangements or Nito will decidedly not be your cup of tea. Which is welcome, too. Find your happy place.
