One cover to carry them all 

A weekend away

As both, my wife and I, live in different country to the ones we grew up in we usually end up spending our holidays visiting relatives. It is nice, but it means we normally don’t get more ‘normal’ holidays. Last time was the weekend we spend in Shropshire for my 40th birthday.

Well, last time we went 80 miles South, this time we traveled a similar distance, but East, to Yorkshire: We booked a coach trip for two days, which is great as the whole trip, including admissions to attractions, doesn’t cost much more than what the night in the Holiday Inn would have cost us.

One handy solution

I thought I travel light, so the Galen Leather cover I got recently came in very handy. It’s the Small Moleskine and Field Notes cover. It usually comes with a Monogram (up to three letters), but I forgot about that so mine doesn’t have one.

Using this cover meant I could keep everything in one place, including my mobile phone and my mp3 player. Yes, I know that phones come with mp3 players these days, but there are several reasons why I have a separate mp3 player (with camera), I spare you my long winded explanations, though.

What I stored:

• Phone☑  I have to add though that I misused the cover. It comes with an elastic band that is supposed to close the cover, but I misused it to store my oversized phone.
• MP3 player☑  which I stored inside, actually supposed to be for your phone
• Main notebook☑ Which was held in place by the case’s second, inner elastic band. I picked a Muji A6 notebook. I’ve been using these for over ten years now. A6 is the maximum size you can fit inside. I tried to maximise  the notebook size, so didn’t pick the slightly smaller Banditapple Peewee and couldn’t go for a Silvine Memo Book, which is a bit too tall. You can see a comparison of the different notebook sizes on this page.
• Other notebooks☑ I stored two Fieldnotes, one in the left and one in the right half of the cover.
• Stamps and Airmail sticker☑ I stored them in the left half of the cover, too.
• Pen☑ I put a pen in the cover’s pen loop. It’s an M5-2005 mechanical pencil from Mitsubishi / Uni, made from reclaimed oak wood from Whiskey bottles. More about this pencil another time.

Overall

Altogether this was a great, small, carry-all solution (because I slightly misused, e.g. used the strap to hold the phone). The best part was that all fitted neatly in the back pocket of my jeans, it wasn’t too thick and it wasn’t too wide.  The leather of Galen’s cover is quite thick, much thicker than my Rustico cover, but not too thick. The good thing with Galen’s cover is that the pencil’s point is protected, so you don’t need to retract the lead.

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I kept this blog post very subjective as many other blogs have or will review this case, too. I got this case free of charge from Galen (thanks). They have send out a few of these to different bloggers, including The Pen Addict,The Pencilcase Blog, I Laike Pens, The Gentleman Stationer, This Bug’s Life,  Desk of Adam and maybe more (maybe Ed Jelley).

As usual: please open the images in a new tab to see them in high resolution.