Hobonichi update
Hobonichi’s full lineup preview for 2020 has gone live now 🙂
Work is keeping me very busy, but to prove I’m still around here’s a quick blog post, taken from the top of my pile of unfinished blog posts.
Just a quick look (not a proper Handicraft post) at how I label old Hobonichis, so that I can see the year from the Techo’s spines, i.e. without having to take them from the shelf.
I love Post-its on a roll. Not cheap, but very useful. Even though Post-its are supposed to be reusable I often use Post-it tape for permanent labelling. In this case I just used white tape and make sure the labels are all at the same height by applying the label on the new Techo when holding the previous year’s Techo next to the new one.
If it comes off you could prefold the tape to make sure there’s a proper 90 degree angle where the cover meets the spine and/or use longer tape so that it has more area to ‘grab’ the cover. I should add that to the blog post.
Not quite Handicraft with Bleistift IX – Labelling old Hobonichis Read More »
Nice to see the Kaweco AL Sport Raw on Hobonichi’s web site. In the past they used Staedtlers and Stabilos.
I have never held a real AL Sport Raw in my hands, but during our Kaweco factory visit last year Sebastian Gutberlet told me that the moment you touch and use the pen your fingers will start to scratch the surface.
The Raw seems to take the concept of ‘beauty through use’ to a whole new level and seems to be a good fit for Hobonichi.
You can read more about the concept of ‘beauty through use’ on Lexikaliker’s blog (Google Translation of the German blog post into English).
I hope you’re enjoying the Summer.
Last Summer East…West…Everywhere made me aware of Hobonichi Techo’s 2018 Advance Notice.
Well, this year there’s the Hobonichi Techo 2019 Preview Festival – and it started today. What a nice start for August.
My July also came to a nice end: our family was lucky enough to spend a few days in Northern Italy (to celebrate a special occasion). We were near Lake Garda and it was really beautiful. There were lots of Germans and Austrians in that area. I am not surprised. It’s not that far to drive from Austria or Southern Germany. There was of course also some stationery to see, which I want to share with you.
Once I ordered Cotoletta di Pollo. It came with fries which were served on a reproduction of an old British newspaper.
Did you spot it? Let’s do a close-up.
There’s fountain pen advertising in the corner. Richt click and open in a new tab to see how much you can save on a Fleet Pen ;^P
In Verona, I also came across a shop selling posh fountain pens. I love the Pelikan sign outside the shop.
You might know that Staedtler’s Noris is my favourite. I was happy to see this Noris stand in Malcesine.
In that shop, they also sold other, nice stationery.
I couldn’t resist and brought these items back from my trip: Turkish paper clips, Italian paper and German/Chinese pencils. I have covered Lyra’s Temagraph in the past, but now I also have one in 3B 8^D.
In a Pizzeria I managed to see a calendar hanging from the wall, much like the ones shown in the past. The one I saw seemed to be from the tax authority (I think). Stationery-filled holidays are even better than normal holidays 8^)
Italian Stationery (and Hobonichi) Read More »
Now that the holiday period is coming to an end and things are returning to normal I thought I share my Stationery Christmas with you.
I mentioned previously that I would like to try the bigger A5 sized Hobonichi Techo this year, the Cousin. I ordered the A6 version, again, but changed my mind and it was too late to change the order. Luckily I was able to sell my A6 Techo on eBay without losing too much money. Even more lucky, my wife was looking for a Christmas gift for me and The Journal Shop had a Black Friday event, so the Cousin was available for a good price. Not cheaper than when ordering from Japan, but this way was saving time and hassle with customs. For a little bit extra you could even get a cover with the Techo. I picked the Hazelnut cover, not only because it looked good on the photos, also (to a smaller extent) because I really like hazelnuts. The Blue Gingham cover would have been my next choice.
One complaint I have is that the Hobonichi should have been packed a bit better. The corners of the diary look as if it fell down at some stage. They look worse than the corners of by Avec from previous years which all have been used for six months each.
The cover itself looks good but more shiny than expected. It is still fairly gender-neutral, less than expected. It reminds me a bit of the stationery that chains like Paperchase use to target female customers.
With the Hazelnut cover, the Cousin isn’t much bigger than the A6 version with a zipped cover. The big zipped cover was one of the reasons why I often took my A6 Techo out of the cover when I took it to a meeting at work – the cover was just so bulky compared to the diary.
The Techo usually spends most of the time on my desk at home or at work, so the size itself is not a problem. The Cousin comes with additional weekly pages: One week per double pages. So far I found this a useful addition. I will see how the A5 Cousin holds up. My hope is that I can write down more useful, work-related information during the day as there is more space. Whether I can then easily find what I have written down is another matter, we will see.
In case you wonder why I don’t use my new Staedtler 925 15 with the Hobonichi: the rubber grip is too difficult to put through the cover’s closing loops.
Funnily enough Brad Dowdy seems to have switched to a Cousin, too, this year. You can hear his first impression in The Pen Addict Podcast #289, around 44 minutes in.
We also got a surprise parcel with Christmas gifts from friends from Singapore.
Fun fact: In the Nineties and earlier Noughties these friends and I were running the biggest Gameboy web site on the planet: EAGB.net. At that time, I had several limited edition Gameboys and accessories the day after they were released in Japan (at least when the postal service was quick, which it often was).
The gift they sent to my wife was a Japanese magazine that came with a Pikachu case. The magazine itself is described as a “trend magazine for business person” and includes information about stationery. I thought I share some of the stationery items shown there with you.
The zeit Vektor folder seems interesting. I assume it can be stored vertically in your drawer for easy access, but you can also just take it with you.
Orgel On, the tape measure that seems to play a melody is probably more of a gimmick, but the masking tape for closing and opening envelopes seems like a good idea. There have been many pencils as dice products, so they don’t get me too excited, the novelty has worn off, but the colourful Rhodia cases look beautiful.
Other, unrelated, things I found out during the holidays and found very exciting:
The Dutch have caffeine free Coke Zero. How cool is that‽
..and Munich’s Develey brand is selling a sauce in Germany that tastes very similar to McDonald’s sauce on the Big Tasty. I am quite sure that when I was still living in Germany the McDonald’s sauces there were made by Develey, so this one might even be made in the same factory as the real one.
The images from Dime magazine have been taken from the September 2017 issue. I believe that their use falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
A Stationery Christmas Read More »