You can only read this post if you promise not to laugh: My first Zentangle

It's tough having a fetish for pens and paper yet lacking any artistic talent at all. Seriously. I look at the other pen and paper blogs, and so many of them include nice sketches as part of their pen or ink reviews, or at least nice handwriting. Others write fiction. I can't do any of that.

I've read one book recently about writing, and I've got a few more to go, thinking maybe this will be the year I actually participate in NaNoWriMo in November. ( I modified that to ShoStoWriMo a couple of years ago, and actually got some stuff down on paper, but couldn't come up with much of a story.)

Drawing? Hopeless. Them somehow, I ran across something about Zentangles. (Here's a reminder I am an attorney: "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc.) This is supposed to be art that anyone can create, based on very small, repetitive strokes creating patterns (each pattern in the piece is called a "tangle"), and the process is suppose to help relieve stress. (Believe me when I tell you that stress relief is something I can use.) Zentangle, Inc.'s trademark expression is "Anything is possible one stroke at a time."

Oh, yeah? They never met me.

Anyway, I bought a book on "tangling," the recommended Sakura Pigma Micron pen (oops, wrong tip size), and went to town this afternoon on a blank #12 R by Rhodia premium notepad.

This is what I ended up with after about an hour and a quarter:

That patio chair backdrop makes for its own nice tangle pattern, It's a shame I didn't draw it.

Maybe it looks better on an oblique?

Leave it to me to put the worst tangle in the foreground!

If you want to go the whole tangling route, I suppose, you buy these Zentangle tiles, which I might get around to eventually, but I figured it would be better to start on notepads for awhile to see if I stick with it before spending money on the tiles, which run about $0.50 each. The No. 12 Rhodia pad, at 3.3 in. x 4.7 in., is about 25% larger than the tiles, which are squares 3.5 in. on a side.

After just one tangling session, I'm not convinced yet this will become a common way for me to relax. But the concentration required in drawing all those little lines sure shuts out the rest of the world, which is exactly what I was looking for.

You can only read this post if you promise not to laugh: My first Zentangle

Review and Giveaway: Levenger Circa Dimensions Notebook

(UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to our winner, Latonya Ramsey.)


 I soured on the Circa notebook system some time ago, at least for work purposes. The big obstacle to using it for work is the punched edge of the paper, which catches on everything once you remove it from the notebook and try to stick it in a file folder, run it through a scanner, or whatnot. I could cut off the edges, I suppose, but for now, it's not a realistic option for work. (If you're unfamiliar with the Circa disk-bound system, read about it here.)

That said, I haven't ruled out using Circa for some personal things, like an ink journal or some writing projects. And Daniel Marshall, Levenger's marketing manager, was kind enough to send me a bunch of sample notebooks and papers after he read about my beefs with (and praises for) various Levenger papers. So, I have to try 'em out! Then I have to give 'em away!

The Review

As Circa notebooks go, there are lots of cool things about the Circa Dimensions Notebook, and the paper's pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good. I'll save the paper for the end and look at everything else first.

I know it's just a matter of taste, but the cover is probably the coolest I've seen on any Circa notebook. The outside looks like a carbonesque prism tape, though not quite as shiny (the inside is gray), and it's translucent. It has the kind of texture that makes a "zip" sound when you drag your fingernail on it.

It's also quite flexible. Consider this a soft cover notebook that requires a hard surface underneath it to write on comfortably. In fact, the cover — indeed, the entire notebook — can be curled around on itself. One bog benefit of the cover, in my opinion, is that it is so thin compared to the stiff leather covers, thus taking up a lot less of the disk when folded completely behind the notebook.

The cover seems way too big for the paper at first blush, extending quite a bit beyond the edge of the sheets (at the side only, not at the top or bottom). However, this is apparently to accommodate the use of tabbed dividers, and it's actually a good feature. The notebook comes with a single tabbed divider, nice and sturdy, probably to whet one's appetite for more.

It's almost impossible to tell the back cover from the front. As is typical, there is a Levenger logo at bottom center of the back cover, but it's so buried in the carbon fiber pattern that it's virtually invisible. You may need to reference the tab or put some mark on the cover to know which end is up.


The beautiful designs of some of the Circa disks (Kyoto, Golden Tortoise, and the various aluminum disks) are what made me try Circa in the first place. The disks that come with this notebook are 3/4-inch diameter shiny aluminum and  are a perfect match for the cover. They really make the notebook stand out with a futuristic, hi-tech look.

The pages turn very easily. That could be due to the size of the disks (my experience is that pages don't turn as well on larger disks), the fact that they are aluminum instead of plastic (these are the first aluminum disks I've tried), or both. I can't be sure.

Aluminum disk and carbon fiber pattern cover are a winning combination. Yes, those disks are solid, but the reflection makes it look like the paper is passing through rings.

Now, the paper. It's what Levenger calls "annotation ruled", very similar to Cornell note-taking ruling. Levenger calls the paper "soft white," and the margin is shaded gray.

There are two blank fields at the top of each page (front side only), and a perpetual calendar at the bottom of the margin on the front of each sheet for circling the month and the date. It's not very intuitive for me, because the dates are arrayed like a calendar, and the actual date may fall on a different day than it looks like on the paper. On the perpetual calendar, it looks like the first is always on a Sunday, the second is always on a Monday, etc. I suppose one would get used to it over time. But the perpetual calendar hardly seems necessary with those two blank spaces at the top of the page, the smaller of which is just perfect for writing in the date.

The paper is very smooth, both to the touch of the hand — really a pleasure to handle — and the touch of the nib. It's fairly heavy (100gsm) but does not feel as sturdy as the paper in Levenger's notepads. I didn't really give the notebook a workout, so I can't say how durable the the paper will prove to be when it's been moved over the disks a lot or removed and replaced repeatedly.

The paper is far more hospitable to ink than the paper that came with the Circa sampler kit I bought around two years ago. Only the most saturated fountain pen inks bleed through. Dry writers and less saturated inks should do fine. And I didn't get feathering with any fountain pen, rollerball, or gel inks that I tried. The showthrough can be significant, though. Choose your pens and inks carefully.

At $39, this notebook strikes me as a little pricey, but consider that the disks alone sell for $22 and the refill paper goes for $16, and it's not out of line if you're a Circa fan. (The disks do not appear to be available separately at present. Update: I was wrong.)

As usual, you can find more photos of the product (in my trademark poor photography) in the Flickr photo set for this review.

The Giveaway

All you've got to do to enter is send an email with the subject line DIMENSIONS to me at notebookeresqATgmail.com. That's it! No blog comment, Twitter tweet, Facebook "like" or anything like that. Just a simple email. But the subject line must read DIMENSIONS, or your email might be left out of the drawing.

I'll keep the contest open to entries through at least Sunday night (March 25), maybe a little longer. The winner will be selected at random and will be notified by email. If the winner does not respond in three days, I'll pick an alternate. And so on.

Good luck!

Review and Giveaway: Levenger Circa Dimensions Notebook

Who painted over the pen mural?

Last summer, I was in downtown LA for an appearance in federal court. I hadn't been to the federal court building in some time, and parked in a parking lot that was new to me. Bordering the parking lot was some sort of huge industrial industrial building. One whole side of it was painted with a mural. I took pictures, but for some reason, the only one I can find is this close up of just one end of the mural . . . but it includes the pen, so it's the important part (I honestly cannot remember what else was in it):

I haven't cropped out the cars here, because I'm missing the pictures of the whole building, and I wanted to give you some perspective to see how big this pen was. That's right, I said was. Because I was back in federal court a month or so ago and that part of the wall looks like this now:

(Sorry for the fuzzy photo, but I had to crop from a larger view.) What a shame. Even more of a shame when you see the whole side of the building and realize that the entire side was a mural:

I was looking forward to seeing the mural again. When it wasn't there, not only did I do a double take, I really questioned whether I had imagined things before! I'm glad I had one of the older photos just to know I wasn't going crazy.

My question is this: who on earth could possibly think this is an improvement? There's little enough beauty in downtown L.A. Here was a nice little patch of it, and they paint over it! This would have bummed me out even if there were no pen in the mural.

Who painted over the pen mural?

Review and Giveaway: Tombow Object Rollerball

UPDATE: The giveaway is over, and the winner is Zackary Corbett. Thanks to all who participated.

Overall, the Tombow Object is a really cool pen. What I love about it, I really love. What I don't like about it is enough to make me give it up.

The Review

I'll give it to you all up front: I love the shape and style of this pen, it's virtually weightless, and it writes very, very smoothly. But my beefs with it are dealbreakers: (1) the rollerball tip writes wider than other rollerballs of the same width, and (2) the ink tends to bleed and feather much worse than other rollerball pens.

So, let's pick it apart a little more.

Let's start with presentation. For a $24 pen, it's not bad. You get a black, hinged steel box with a foam insert that presents the pen quite nicely.

Like I said, this pen is very, very light. The body is aluminum. (I've seen at least one vendor misidentify it as light stainless steel, but Tombow's site says its aluminum.) If you write unposted, it's crazy light. Even if you're normally an unposted kind of guy, you might find yourself posting the cap just to give the pen more balance.

Perhaps because the pen is so light, it also seems fairly small. When I got a Lamy Safari to put next to it, I expected it to be dwarfed by the Safari, but it turns out it's not that much smaller. Again, that small feeling may be due to the light weight.

The clip is not sprung, but it doesn't seem prone to wearing out, either. The grip section is a little odd. I wasn't sure I'd find those ridges very comfortable, but they were just fine.

The shape of the pen is pretty symmetric. The cap reminds me a little of a bowling pin, or perhaps a rocket, and the end of the barrel is similarly tapered.

This pen comes in some really cool colors. A colleague at work tried my pen for awhile, really liked it, and decided she wanted it in pink. Apparently, pink is not available from any U.S. vendor, but if you're willing to pay nearly triple the price of a U.S. distributed pen, you can find the pink version at the Swedish site deskstore. (If anyone knows where to find the pink pen in the U.S., please shoot me an email at notebookeresqATgmail.com -- my colleague would really appreciate it.) No matter the color, the section and clip are black, as are the minimal graphics (the Tombow logo and "Japan" 180 degrees oposite each other at the base of the cap).

The pen is a very smooth writer, but it tends to write a bit wide for my tastes. The Tombow P05 Fine refill is, I presume, a 0.5 mm refill, but it writes a wider line than 0.5 mm refills in my Lamy Studio rollerball or Ohto Orca ceramic rollerball. (The P07 Medium refill tends to write about as wide as a Pilot G2 1.0 mm, but perhaps its not a fair comparison since the G2 is a gel pen.)

In any event, here are front and back comparisons against some other pens, writing in a Levenger twin ring notebook, which I chose precisely because it is not impervious to feathering and bleedthrough, and thus gives a better comparison:

The dashes show the lines  with Tombow bleedthrough. For comparison, each "F" marks fountain pen writing with Aurora Black.

Note that the bleedthrough on the Tombow Rollerball is significantly worse than the other rollerballs and is closer to the fountain pen ink bleedthrough of Aurora Black in a couple of wet-writing nibs. And, while I couldn't get a good close-up picture to show it, feathering is also significantly worse with the Tombow than with the Lamy or Ohto.

If I were a patient man, I would experiment with other rollerball refills to see if any fit this pen and write better. But I am not a patient man. Not only am I too impatient to go chasing after different rollerball refills, I'm also too impatient to go through the trouble of putting this up on eBay. You can get a brand new one for $20. I'm not about to spend all that time putting up an eBay listing (mine tend to take a long time, because I'm too picky about pictures and text) so I can clear $10 after shipping. I'd rather give this away to a reader. Hence . . . 

The Giveway

I'm going to make this one easy on you. You don't need to leave a comment. You just have to shoot me an email at notebookeresqATgmail.com, but your subject line must be exactly:

OBJECT

Emails work better than comments because that way I can get in touch with the winner, and the required subject line allows me to filter for the entries easily. The winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org. If you win, I will contact you and ask for your online profile name and link so I can post the winner's name with a link to the winner's online profile. (If you don't have one, don't worry, you're still eligible.)

Good luck! (And, as usual, you can find more photos in my Flickr photo set.)

UPDATE: Oh yeah, I almost forgot . . . I'll keep the entry period going through midnight Sunday night on March 11. The time stamp on the email will determine whether it is timely, and I have no idea whether the email gets stamped with your local time or with my time, so play it safe. Also, the giveaway is open to anyone, but if you want me to ship it outside the USA, you will have to pay shipping.

Review and Giveaway: Tombow Object Rollerball

My afternoon at the 2012 Los Angeles International Pen Show

Today was my second visit to the Los Angeles International Pen Show. (Second ever, first this year.) Last year, I didn't have any idea what I was looking for, I just wanted to get a feel for the show. This year, I has some specific goals in mind, most of which I met, so it was a pretty good visit.

Remember that 30-year-old Mont Blanc my wife's uncle surprised me with at Christmas? It is now in the hands of a pen restorer, who will be working on removing some stains, evening out a dent in the cap, and making sure the pen is in good working order. I'll still need to send to off to a nibmeister later, though. From the same vendor, I picked up a set of shims for spacing nib tines, which will come in handy, and I also bought a lighted loupe. Now I won't have to use my wife's and get in trouble when I leave the light on and use up the battery in hers.

Speaking of wives and trouble, I thought this was a cute sign:

I wonder if it helped her sales?

Main display area

The show did not seem as crowded this year. It seemed a little easier to move through the aisles. But maybe I just had a more defined mission and moved better through the crowds.

I was hoping TWSBI's Speedy would be there again, since I wanted to buy some of their ink bottles and a couple of stub nibs, but I didn't see him (or anyone else from TWSBI).

I still don't know my way around vintage pens at all. Some vintage hard rubber pens at The Fountain Pen Store's display caught my eye, but not enough for me to buy one.

Mostly, I was on the prowl for some pens I'd been admiring on websites but had yet to see up close.

One was the Pelikan M625, which I have been lusting after for most of a year. But when I saw them at the show, they weren't as beautiful as they look on the website. Nice looking pens, but not as beautiful as I was expecting. The translucent barrels are so dark, it is hard to see the difference among the red, blue, and aubergine models without their caps on. 

The others were the Aurora Europa and Aurora America, which are basically limited editions of the Aurora Optima. These two pens looked even better up close than they do online, especially the America. I like the idea of an Italian pen that honors America. Still, a little pricey. If I ever buy one, it will probably be off of eBay, or perhaps when someone is trying to unload theirs on the Fountain Pen Network classifieds.

Still, I did not walk away empty handed. I was also looking for a deal on a Visconti Rembrandt Eco-Roller rollerball pen (which takes fountain pen ink), since no one seems to discount them online. Bittner gave me a great deal on one, which I'll review after trying out for a couple of weeks:

I came every close to buying A Diplomat Excellence Rhombus fountain pen with 14kt nib. This is a pen I saw for the first time at last year's show. It's gorgeous, the fine nib wrote smooth as silk (though writing on an R by Rhodia pad will undoubtedly make most nibs feel smooth), and it felt remarkably light in the hand for a metal pen. I already regret turning down the discounted price I was offered.

An afternoon just isn't enough time to fully explore the show. I could have spent all afternoon going down just one aisle. But all, in all, it was a fun afternoon, I got a great deal on a pen I wanted, and I managed to learn a little more about vintage pens in the process.

If you are a pen nut and a show is held within a few hours' drive from you, I highly recommend you make the trip!

My afternoon at the 2012 Los Angeles International Pen Show

Review: Lamy Studio rollerball, stainless steel finish

As much as I love my fountain pens, sometimes they're not very convenient, so I recently decided to get a couple of rollerballs. One of them is the Lamy Studio in stainless steel finish. There are some cool things about the pen, but some things that I just haven't been able to get used to.

Let's start with the bad. The stainless steel wasn't my first choice. I walked out of the store with the black Studio. When I got it home, I pulled it out to take pictures for this review, and noticed that the black finish on the cap was noticeably different than the finish on the barrel. One was glossier than the other (can't remember which was which, though.) At first, I thought I might be seeing things. But looking at the pen under a light, you could see a big difference in the reflection off the barrel and the reflection off the cap. So, I took the pen back to the store the following weekend. I felt like I was being a real pain the butt, but even the salesperson agreed that the finish was inconsistent. She had two more black Studios in stock, so I was willing to trade straight up, but . . . both of those had the same problem as mine. I don't know of this is a widespread issue or just a bad production lot, but it's not what one usually sees in a German product. (I've been there, and you really can set your watch by the trains. It's amazing.)

So, I ended up trading it for the stainless finish, which I like quite a bit and has the advantage of a non-metal section. Which brings me to the second issue I have with the pen: the width of the section. It is noticeably wider than any of my other pens, and I've had a hard time getting used to it. It really throws me off, and my handwriting deteriorates when I write with it. I've tried to give it time, but I'm growing impatient. This, of course, is merely an issue of personal preference, not quality.

This distorts the size of the section, but it FEELS this big to me.

The third issue: the feel of the rollerball. There's something vaguely waxy about it. It's not just that it's different than a fountain pen, because there are other rollerballs I use quite comfortably. It just doesn't have a good feel to me. Again, a personal preference. One that I should have discovered when I was trying it out in the store, I guess.

Everything else about the pen is pretty cool. I like the finish a lot, and it seems like it will stand up over time. I won't have to worry about the finish scratching off, as would have been likely with the black finish. One odd thing about the finish is that it creates an optical illusion at the intersection of the cap and barrel that makes it look like each side dips down toward their junction. At least, I think it's an optical illusion. Maybe that's really the way the pieces are machined. I couldn't get that effect to show up in a photo, though.

I find the finish very aesthetically pleasing, and especially like how it is complimented by the shiny chrome clip. The clip on the Studio seems to have gotten all the attention from pen aficionados. It's essentially a 90 degree twist of the clip as you go from top to bottom:

A few views of the infamous Studio clip

Lamy's website describes the clip as "reminiscent of modern sculpture,"while others have refereed to it as propeller-shaped. (I can see the reason for the latter description, but it's not technically accurate; I don't think you could generate any lift with a propeller designed along the lines of the Studio clip.) For a long time, I thought people made too much fuss over the shape of the clip, but when I saw the pen up close, it really did look pretty cool.

But it has its downsides. First, it does not appear to be spring loaded, so you might have to worry about it giving and bending away from the cap over time, leaving a gap between the clip and the cap. Second, the orientation of the clip makes for a very small surface area coming in contact with your pocket, so there's less friction to prevent slipping. Combined with the lack of spring tension, this makes the pen feel less than secure when it's in your breast pocket. (Not too much of an issue for me, as I usually carry my pens in a case.)

Posted cap leaves room
between barrel and cap

The ink refill performs well enough. It doesn't skip. It doesn't bleed like the ink in my Tombow rollerball does. The ink is not the blackest of blacks, but it's hardly alone among black inks in this regard.

The cap posts differently from almost any other pen I own. It is not a friction fit with the barrel. Instead, there is some form in the inside of the cap that clicks onto the very end of the barrel. There is actually a little space between the barrel and the edge of the cap when it is posted. If you write very fast or move your hand a lot, the cap will actually wiggle while posted. It wasn't noticeable enough to throw me off, though.

Bottom line: this rollerball is going on eBay, because I don't like the feel of writing with it. There are enough other cool things about the pen, though, that if it weren't for my inability to get used to the wide section, I'd probably like to own a Studio fountain pen.

As usual, more photos in the Flickr photo set for this review.

Review: Lamy Studio rollerball, stainless steel finish

Review: Levenger Bomber Jacket Unifier

I mildly (I think) bashed Levenger the other week for the inconsistency of its paper quality across various of its products, but I mentioned at the time that I am a happy owner of other Levenger products. This is one of them, and my most recently acquired: the Levenger Bomber Jacket Unifier:

My stocked unifier, with my rocker blotter in its assigned spot just in front

I've had my eye on one of these for quite some time, but they're a little pricey: $155. So, I kept my eyes peeled at the Levenger outlet on eBay and picked this one up for about half retail, and I'm quite pleased with the purchase.

It really lives up to its name (unless you're expecting a product that unifies your bomber jackets): almost everything I use in the way of stationery each day is now "unified" in one spot. I love having a selection of papers to choose from every time I have to jot something down and knowing exactly where to find it.

And, it's managed to do something for me that most people who know me might have thought impossible. It actually makes me look organized, at least in one little corner of my desk. (I moved it to the conference room to take these pictures; my desk is NOT this clean.) I'm hoping that its organizational aura will radiate out from it and get the rest of my desk squared away. So far (about two weeks in), though, that hasn't happened.

Even without that effect, though, it helps. I no longer have to look through drawers or under stacks of paper on my desk to find my pens, notebooks or pads. Not only are they all in one spot, but they stay that way because I like the product so much that I always put the pens and pads back! I've written before about how nicer products have this effect on me, so maybe I should consider an entire desk made of bomber jacket leather  . . . maybe bomber jacket wallpaper, flooring, and upholstery for complete office organization. (Geez, what would that cost?)

The unifier holds quite a bit. In the picture above, it's holding:

• front left compartment:six  fountain pens, a rollerball pen, and a Sharpie marker;
• front middle compartment: six large highlighters and five slim highlighters;
• front right compartment: two Rhodia no. 12 pads, a Staples mini legal pad, and a pocket Rhodia Unlimited notebook (with a Zebra Mini T3 ball point pen stuck in it);
• in the center compartment: a hundred or so 4 x 6 cards, a Levenger junior notepad, and a Rhodia no. 16 pad;
• in the back compartment: an extra large Moleskine Cahier notebook, a Levenger letter-sized pad, and a Rhodia no. 18 pad. 

And it really isn't even a tight fit:

Heavily stocked, with room to spare

I know the front right compartment might look a little stuffed, even in this closeup:

But it's not. Every one of those items slides out quite easily.

In case you really need to plan what you can put in this, here are the inside dimensions of the compartments. The two large back compartments are each about 11-7/8 inches end to end, and 1-1/2 inches front-to-back. The front compartments are likewise about 1-1/2 inches front-to-back, but vary in their other dimension. The two outside compartments are 3-34 inches wide, but the center compartment is only 3-1/2 inches wide.

The unifier arrives with two removable foam inserts -- one in each outside front compartment -- each with 8 pre-cut holes for keeping your pens upright. I really like the way the foam insert keeps my pens apart and safe from banging into each other and getting scratched:




As you can see from some of the above photos, I opted to remove one of the inserts and use the right front compartment for small pads instead.

Some of my fatter pens tend to bring the insert along a little way when I try to remove them because they are a snug fit, but I suspect that will decrease and eventually end as the insert gets broken in. If it really bothers you, you can stick to thinner pens or glue the insert in, I suppose. You could also move the insert to the slightly smaller front middle compartment. I tried it, and the tighter fit kept the insert firmly in place even when removing my fattest pen, despite the fact that the fit of the pen is necessarily tighter, too.

I have just one beef with the product, and that is the color. I still like it, it just doesn't match my expectations. The bomber jacket leather is a darker brown than it appears from the catalog or online photos. (On my monitor, the leather looks truer to its actual color in my photos than in the catalog or online photos.) When I first opened the box, the leather looked almost black but I'm sure that was my mind overreacting to the difference between the actual color and my expectations. After a few weeks, it now looks brown to me, just a much darker brown than the catalog would suggest. That might vary from lot to lot, but keep it in mind if you're trying to coordinate with other desk accessories (or trying to match some pens in your collection . . . but no one would do something that ridiculous . . . then again . . . hmmmm . . . note to self . . .).

So, am I happy with it? You bet! I'd probably be happy with it at full price, too, but it probably would have taken a few years for me to talk myself into spending the money.

Which brings to mind a side comment on Levenger's prices. I used to think they were ridiculously expensive. Then I started looking at Filofax and Franklin Covey leather goods, as well as products form other leather products vendors, and realized that a lot of Levenger's prices are not out of whack after all. I would include this product as one that strikes me as reasonably priced.

More photos in the Flickr Photo Set.

Review: Levenger Bomber Jacket Unifier