Travel Edition: The Gentleman Hits the Road

Just a quick post for the beginning of the week, since I've been traveling since Thursday (and, at least for the time being, am stranded in the airport.  What pens/stationery/writing equipment do you all take on the road?  For this particular trip, I've chosen my "non-fountain pens of choice."  If I'm going on a particularly long vacation or business trip, where I might be doing a lot of journaling or writing, I will take one or two fountain pens, but since this was a long weekend where not much writing was going to get done, I went with convenience.  

Four of my preferred "road pens"

Four of my preferred "road pens"

So, from left to right, the Sakura Pigma Micron 02 (.3mm); Hi-Tec-C Coleto Lumio in Matte Black; Retro 51 Tornado Stealth with the .7mm black refill; and the TiPen with a 0.4mm Blue-Black Hi-Tec-C refill.  The Coleto has four .4mm refills in black, purple, apricot, and orange.  I tucked these into my Nock Co. Hightower with a ruled kraft paper Field Notes and four or five Exacompta index cards and I was ready for pretty much anything:  

So far, I think the Hightower has been the favorite of my Nock Co. cases.  I received all of them, but this is my favorite so far.  Reviews forthcoming.

I'm comfortable with this as my "travel rig" for now.  I've been experimenting with various setups on recent business trips and nearly always have come home concluding that I've carried too much stuff that never gets used and just bulks up my bag.  We'll see where this goes. . . . 

 

Ink Review: Sailor Epinard

This is a review for one of my "professional inks," that I regularly use at the office, in court, or anywhere else that I don't want to turn heads.  Not that this ink won't turn the head of anyone who's paying attention--it's a great color.  I apparently just missed out on the Montblanc British Racing Green ink by entering this hobby in 2010, just as that ink was discontinued.  People often suggest that Epinard is a comparable ink and fair substitute, along with Diamine Green Black, Diamine Evergreen, and Noodler's Zhivago.  Having never tried the original, I can't give an opinion.  What I can say is that this ink more than stands on its own. 

For the non-Francophones, "Epinard" is the French word for spinach.  It's a fair descriptor.  Although there's a good bit of black in the green, you're still writing with green ink.  This ink is loaded into my Lamy 2000 with an EF Nib.  A very professional ink in a professional pen.

What makes this ink great for work is the fact that like many Sailor inks, it's incredibly well-behaved on cheap copy paper.  If your employer, like mine, buys whatever it can get the most of for the least amount of money, and you absolutely must use a fountain pen at work, Sailor Jentle Ink is a pretty safe bet.  I have bottles of Epinard, Apricot, Grenade, and the ultimate cheap-paper ink, the pigmented nano-black.  All are excellent.  

Rumor is that Sailor is releasing a new range of ink this summer.  One of the colors among them is an even darker green-black, which is on my list.  Stay tuned.  And if anyone wants to send me a sample/full bottle of the British Racing Green, feel free to reach out . . . . :) 

Kickstarter Lawsuit Filed As Backer Fails to Deliver

As some of you might know, when I'm not writing here I spend my days--and some of my nights--as an attorney, and I couldn't help but post this when it landed in my inbox yesterday.  Apparently, Bob Ferguson, the Washington State Attorney General, has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the Kickstarter card game, Asylum, for failing to deliver a finished product to his 810 backers who had provided him with $25,000 in funding.  35 of those backers lived in Washington State.  This unprecedented development certainly came as interesting news to me, as we pen enthusiasts are known to back a Kickstarter project or two, often with little to no assurance of whether or not we are paying for a project that will never deliver, or whether we will end up paying $50 for a "custom-designed" product that the backer purchased in China for $0.89.  The question has been asked in more than one forum, what recourse do we have against obvious fraudsters, when there's no real economic incentive to sue when you're out of pocket less than $100?  Apparently some state attorney generals are listening to consumer concerns, and it merits watching whether or not this becomes a trend.       

Some other links and stories:

Gamer Rant, Kickstarter Lawsuit May Set Precedent on Future Successful Campaigns

Gizmodo, The Government is Finally Trying to Make Kickstarter Scammers Pay

 

Ink Review: Franklin-Christoph Syrah Syrah

This is the second of two reviews of Franklin-Christoph's bottled ink that I picked up at last month's Atlanta pen show.  This one is their red color, "Syrah Syrah," which as you might expect is a burgundy wine-colored ink.  Like the Olde Emerald, it offers shading galore, especially in a stub nib like this 1.1mm Masuyama on my Sheaffer Legacy Heritage.

Excellent shading, but if I had one gripe, it's that the ink is fairly watery and sometimes railroads on slicker paper.  This is the same Exacompta Index card stock that I use for all my reviews.  This is a smallish price to pay, however, for a red ink that's as easy to clean out of a pen as this one.

This ink has good flow, especially for a red.  In my experience, red inks sometimes get crusty around the nib and are hard starters.  I've not had that issue here.  There's no bleed through or feathering on good paper like my Exacompta card stock.  On a Doane legal pad, there was some bleed-through, as you'd expect from a stub nib and an ink this wet, but hardly any feathering so my pen was still usable.  I've not used it in a fine or extra fine yet, which are my day-to-day users, so I may post an update as it makes its way through the rotation.  

In Praise of the Original Field Notes

I worry that somewhere along the line, what made the original Field Notes so great is getting lost in the recent craze over the limited "colors" editions, which seem to be getting ever more exotic in the form of the Shelterwood and the like.  Disclaimer:  I have all of the colors editions since Night Sky, and have not tried the Shelterwood yet.  I am sure the notebook is as nice as the gorgeous paper looks, and I am certainly not trying to hate on Field Notes for embarking on these artistic endeavors which no doubt take them a lot of time and give their customers, me included, countless hours of enjoyment.  That said, for the first time this week, I cracked open a pack of these beauties.

Nothing fancy here.  Field Notes Craft Paper, Ruled with lines. 

I had watched them languishing on my office bookshelf at work for months, while I filled up two Drink Locals, a Night Sky, and two Doane Paper utility journals.  All of those products were excellent, and I have multiples of each.  But for reasons I can't really explain, this plan ruled craft notebook has been my favorite.  I've filled up a third of it in four days, a pace nearly unheard of for me, in a combination of gel pen, pencil, rollerball, ballpoint, and even fountain pen, all of which the ruled paper takes surprisingly well. 

Aaron Draplin's beautifully simple original design, with its unadorned Futura font, is what made this product great from the get go, and the sturdy, functional construction and just flat-out nice paper makes you want to write in it.  Sure, you can't draft a novel with a 1.5mm stub nib fountain pen filled with Noodler's Apache Sunset, but who would do that anyway in a pocket notebook?

I love the Khaki-colored ink.  I'd probably like graph more, but I'm enjoying the ruled for now.

I sometimes think my life would be a lot more interesting if I incorporated some shady transactions.

After buying (and using) Field Notes regularly for almost a year, I think I'm ready for a colors subscription, and not for the reason you might thing.  I had been hesitant because I didn't know what I would do with two free packs of original craft, but now, I view that as a true bonus.

And here's to hoping that Field Notes issues some more colors editions similar to their first, for those of us who missed out on Butcher Blue, Orange, and Grass-Stain Green.