Today: something different.
Time flies. In my room I used to have a poster from Star Trek’s 25th anniversary. Now it’s already the 50th anniversary.
I didn’t know, but the US Postal Service has released Star Trek stamps for this anniversary and Sean was not only kind enough to tell me about it, he also got me some.
Thank you very much!
Last month we [1]My family and I. went to my home town in Northern Bavaria [2]Franconia.
In the past we used to take the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, an easier drive [3]Without packing you travel 1 1⁄2 days, but recently this ferry got really expensive. We have neither too much time, nor too much money, so deciding wasn’t easy, but in the end we went with the cheaper option: going through Dover to France. This option was much cheaper than what the ferry we used to take costs now, but the drawback is that it involves two whole days of travelling (driving from North West England to South East England, then taking the ferry to France and then driving through Belgium and the Netherlands into Germany (driving through four different German states. Bavaria for example is more than twice the size of Belgium, but within a country there usually isn’t much variation, so there aren’t too many new things to discover, compared to driving through another country. Saying that, there was a new part of the motorway in Germany which was quite nice. On the side of the motorway you can see all the ‘trees of the year’ from the previous decades and a sign showing the name and the year for that tree.).
Well, it’s a little adventure that, as an added bonus, contains the opportunity to buy cool stationery and other items I can’t get in the UK or Germany (except stationery this was mainly caramel tea and flavoured Perrier).
So here’s a mini blog post about a visit to a Belgian supermarket: Carrefour, a French chain that is present in many countries. They used to sell their own Rhodia clones, but I haven’t seen those in recent years anymore.
This being Belgium the main attraction was to stock up on Atoma style notebooks – and the Belgian supermarket didn’t disappoint.
They also had a surprising amount of retro video game hardware. I found that very cool as I used to collect retro video games. I did/do have an interest in this: Fifteen years ago some friends from Singapore and I were running the biggest Gameboy web site at that time (called EAGB) [4]I still have an interest, but no time – my free time is mainly spend on stationery now..
There was also a great choice of Lucky Luke comics. A big proportion of German shops selling magazine will sell Lucky Luke comics, but you wouldn’t get the choice you got in this supermarket – unless you go to a specialist shop. The photo I took on the day was blurred, so I’ll just skip adding it to this blog post.
…and finally: flavoured sparkling water. In the UK flavoured water has sweetener in it, basically making it lemonade, but in Belgium you can get Perrier with all sorts of flavour. Nice. I know these from Shanghai, but in Belgium they are much cheaper.
In a Belgian Supermarket Read More »
A few weeks ago Scribble sent me a sample paper pack containing paper sheets from many different companies, all carefully prepared (‘hole punched’ and the corners rounded) so that they can be used in Atoma, William Hannah or similar disc bound notebooks.
On more than one occasion I have stated how good Atoma’s paper is. It is basically in a class of its own – but with United Inkdom having a closer look at William Hannah’s notebook I thought it might be worth having a closer look at the paper that comes with the William Hannah notebook – different sheets of W.H. paper were part of Scribbles sample paper pack.
Let me start by saying that the William Hannah paper is rather unusual, at least the dot grid version is: It contains printer steganography. The best reason for this I could come up with is that the paper is prepared (cut, punched and the corners rounded) in very small batches. So small that consumer printing equipment might have been used to print the dot grid pattern. That would explain the yellow dots from the printer steganography as well as the fact that the purple used for the purple dots is made up of red and blue areas, i.e. the colour is mixed. [1]I assume that if you would do this big style you would use the colour you want to use instead of mixing it in your printer. The dots are also reflective, like colour laser printed documents, unlike inkjet printer printed documents.
Regarding the printer steganography: you can certainly see repeating patterns. I don’t have the time at the moment or I would try to decode the pattern using the EFF’s instructions.
I find the paper to be of good, but not exceptional quality. In terms of darkness and roughness, it seems a tiny bit worse than the good Boise Offset Smooth 50#T “Whitewash” white paper you can find in the Field Notes County Fair edition, but it is certainly no match for Atoma’s paper.
If I had a William Hannah notebook I’d be happy with the paper that comes with it, just to keep things simple. It is good paper, but depending on how happy you are to go the extra mile it might be worth experimenting with refills from other brands.
The violin plot was done using the same parameters (1.5 Newton force, etc) as the paper comparison in this blog post.
You can read more about William Hannah at United Inkdom and Scribble’s blog.
Atoma’s ruitertassen notebook, which is similar to William Hannah’s notebook can be seen in a previous blog post.
UPDATE: A year after this blog post I met David Round, the man behind William Hannah at the Northern Pen Show.
References
| ↑1 | I assume that if you would do this big style you would use the colour you want to use instead of mixing it in your printer. |
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William Hannah’s dotted grid paper Read More »
I’m familiar with the German verb flanieren (to stroll), but I didn’t know that is seems to be a ‘serious hobby’ and art until I heard about the Flâneuse on Radio 4 on my way to work this morning.
Why is this of interest in a pencil blog? ..because it all starts with the need for a pencil – from Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1930)
…so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: “Really I must buy a pencil”.
We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s own room.
Radio 4 talked about it at 8:21am when presenting the idea from a book by Lauren Elkin.
It’s very good if you find a pencil on your stroll through the streets because part of this hobby seems to be that you then write down what you have observed.
Good that there’s a happy end. At the end of the clip they luckily do find a pencil shop.
You can listen to it on the Radio 4 web site. You have to jump about 2h 21m into the programme to hear the part about the Flâneuse (and the pencil).
The Flâneuse and the pencil Read More »
I usually do nearly all my writing with pencil or fountain pen (actually, most is pencil, I don’t use fountain pens that often anymore), but this week I had a situation where neither pencil nor fountain pen was good enough.
I tried to label a blue Atoma notebook, like the one seen here, but because the blue is quite dark graphite is too light and even my Tactile Turn Gist with black ink was too light, so I wrote with my Staedtler Pigment Liner in 0.5mm over the black ink from the Fountain Pen – this made the lines much darker. Off-topic: the finest pen I have is a Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment 0.1mm, which is pretty fine, but Staedtler’s Pigment Liner is even available in 0.05mm!
Why do I mention this? ..because of the surface of the Pigment Liner.
Many people, me included, love the Lamy 2000, which is not only because of its shape, but also because of the material used and its surface. I think many people put the good feel of the pen down to the material, Makrolon, but I think it is also down to the surface of the pen. The surface is not just smooth, but is made up of tiny lines that run along the body of the pen. As the lines are so fine the material is also worn down fairly soon which, I think, explains the ageing process where the Lamy 2000’s surface becomes more smooth – something we are all used to seeing from the often used keys on our keyboards.
Staedtler’s Pigment Liner has a very similar surface, made up of little lines. I guess the main difference between this pen’s surface and the surface of the Lamy 2000 is down to the material used and the shape. I don’t know how difficult it it so make this surface, but it looks fantastic and this is certainly the only single use, i.e. non-refillable, pen I know that has a surface like that.
The surface of Staedtler’s Pigment Liner 308 Read More »