A €10k Noris
Wow, a €10k Noris. Who would have thought…
Pelikan Hub 2025 in Bremen
Another year, another Pelikan Hub. After Hamelin’s acquisition of Pelikan, there was some uncertainty about the future of the Pelikan Hubs, especially when we reached May/June, the time when registration for the Hub opened in previous years, and the situation was still unclear. I am sure I was not the only one who was relieved when Pelikan confirmed that the Hub happens again in 2025.
This year I had again the honour of being Hub Master for Bremen. After Bremen’s Hub in 2024 ran successfully in Vegefarm, a vegan restaurant in a fairly central location in Bremen, we also used the same venue again this year. On the same evening as the hub, there happened to be a football game by the local team, though. With the stadium being quite close to the restaurant, some roads were blocked, but public transport still ran as usual.
From my point of view, the evening went very well. We had some familiar faces, some new faces, and even some visitors from far away— we had a great time talking about stationery, great food, and one participant even brought little gift bags for everyone.
Thank you, Pelikan, for making this happen.
Pelikan Hub 2025 in Bremen Read More »
Lamy’s Song Dynasty Safari
When in Shanghai, I like to visit Lamy stores. Unlike Lamy stores in Europe, they tend to offer lots of special editions. My best guess is that I am not only amazed by the quantity of these special editions but also by the quality.
Originally, I was trying to find two specific items: The Lamy Safari Field Green because it looks beautiful and the Hanzi nib because I want to experience how it writes. The Hanzi nib is made for writing Chinese script. I used Google Translate to translate an explanation into English, see below.
Unfortunately, the Field Green Safari was impossible to find in Shanghai: it was neither available in the Lamy stores, nor was it available on Chinese online market places. This came as a surprise because imported pens are often available via online market places at good prices – for example, it was easy and not expensive to get the uni-ball Signo Needle in Japan-exclusive colours. I also got the Pilot Custom Heritage 91 for a really good price.
Back to Lamy: On the trip to Shanghai last year, I bought three different special editions. I will write more about the Hanzi nib another time (spoiler, I got one), but today I want to show you another special edition: The Song Dynasty edition Safari in Jade White. There is also a Sky Blue version available, also very beautiful.
It also came with free engraving, so I made use of this offer. Below is a short video that shows how my pen got engraved. If you look at the barrel of the pen, you can see the characters appearing.
You can also see more of the pen and its packaging in the unboxing video below.
Another special edition is the Lamy Leben set, as seen in this advertising.
Pokemon sets were also still available, but I had already seen these at previous visits.
Some more impressions from this Lamy store.
I hope you liked the look at the Song Dynasty Edition Safari. You can find an overview of other Lamy Safari editions at Stationery.wiki. Please feel free to contribute to the article.
It’s always exciting to find new and unique editions when visiting Lamy stores in Shanghai. To be fair, they are usually just the same pen in a different colour, but if that colour appeals to me I am happy to add it to my collection. In this case the colour is beautiful like the griso and the cream Safari’s colour.
Lamy’s Song Dynasty Safari Read More »
MAD about pencils
If you grew up in a Western country and are old enough then you probably know about MAD Magazine.
Many countries had their own versions, but the UK edition stopped being published in the mid-90s, so every time I went to visit Germany I tried to get the latest German version. Towards the end of German MAD’s life this wasn’t very easy: the only places I found that sold the magazine were newsagents in train stations of towns with at least 100,000 inhabitants. I happened to be in Germany when the last issue was published and I have to say no one in the German media made a fuss about it being the last issue. It might also not have been known that this is the last issue when it was published, as I don’t see any indication of that in the actual issue.
As is the case with news though, sometimes more relevant news are overshadowed by less relevant news. When the US version of MAD Magazine announced it would stop publishing issues based on mainly new content, this news spilled over the Atlantic and somehow was big news in Germany: on TV and also in popular newspapers and magazines. The news was usually presented as if MAD Magazine will stop being published, even though no one seemed to care when the German version stopped being published and even though the US version MAD is still being published, to this day, it is just mainly made up of reprinted articles, with the occasional new content sprinkled in between.
Why do I mention all of this? Because I want to show you a page form the current (June 2025), reality-TV themed issue:
Reviving refills and the Caran d’Ache
A few days ago I found a refill again that I ordered in 2021 and forgot about after moving home. It’s OHTO’s needlepoint gel refill.
There was an air bubble right behind the tip, probably from evaporated ink, so the pen didn’t want to write. Luckily it was easy to pull the tip out without using any tools. You can then just let the gel ink flow down to the end of the cartridge and close it again. I wish I had figured this out earlier, it would have helped me in the past to get other refills going. So far, this is the most effective trick I have discovered to get old gel refills going again. After letting the ink run down to fill up the air gap, writing was dry at first, but a few days later the refill wrote like new.
Back to the actual refill: It puts down a very fine line. The tip looks similar to JetStream’s Edge tip, but writing is much more pleasant. For me the best news was that it fits directly into a Caran d’Ache 849. The not so good news is that I have only been able to find this refill in black so far.
Since we’re talking about Caran d’Ache: it’s probably clear to most, but I only recently spotted that the refills have the date of production stamped on them. New-ish refills seem to be marked in the DD MM YY format. Very old cartridges seem to be marked M YY, written top to bottom.
One last bit of information to share with you: Bleistift.blog was added to a list of the best 20 (English speaking) pencil blogs. Thank you.
Reviving refills and the Caran d’Ache Read More »