F is for Fountain Pens

You can find information about the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge here or read the rest of my A to Z posts by following this link.

Today marks the 6th blog post as part of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge and the corresponding letter is the letter F.  The topic for this post is Fountain Pens!

I can remember learning to write in school with a HB pencil and the promise of writing with a “real pen” once our handwriting was good enough.  While most kids in my class just dreamed of becoming one of the big kids and writing with any old pen, I always had ideas of owning my own fountain pen and writing with that.

The idea of having my own fountain pen came from my Dad and Grandad who both had beautiful handwriting and wrote with fountain pens, my Dad still, to this day writes with his trusty Parker pen.  Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that the key to beautiful handwriting was a fountain pen.

I can remember the first fountain pen I owned, my Dad presented it to me on my first day of Secondary School when I was 11.  It was a brushed chrome Parker pen, my Dad had bought a refillable cartridge for it and bottles of Quink Ink in Blue and Black and I felt so grown up.  The pen was a dream to write with and made my handwriting look so neat, I’m sure the belief that I’d had when I was younger was true.

I don’t have that pen anymore but I do have several others in my collection which I love.  The latest addition is a Lamy Safari in Neon Lime which I use on a day-to-day basis for making notes in my planner and when I am at work.  I use the Lamy T10 (Special Edition Petrol Blue) cartridges in it.

My other go to pen is my Parker IM series in Dark Espresso.  This pen reminds me of the one my Dad gave me both in the way it writes and how it feels in my hand, though the look is totally different.  I use Parker Quink cartridges in this, usually the blue/black ink but I have been known to switch to black on occasion.

I know that fountain pens are not the most practical to use every day, they can be leaky, feather, shadow and a whole host of other problems, and I know, for certain tasks, there are other pens that are more worthy of the job, but for me there will always be something very special about writing with a fountain pen.

Do you use a fountain pen?

Just a reminder that there will be no Blogging From A to Z post tomorrow, Sundays are the only day the challenge does not run!  I will be back with the next post on Monday!

 

Diary, Planner and Journal Review

I wrote about the diaries and planners that I would be taking into 2019 with me way back in October (Preparing for 2019…) and, today I thought it would be nice to do a little review of how they are still working for me (or not…).

Back when I wrote that post I had 6 journals and planners that I was hoping to use for the year.

This is what I started out with for 2019, from left to right – Hobbycraft Spiral Bound Planner, Ohh Deer Gemma Correll Planner, Paperchase Organise Me A5 Soft Cover Diary, Filofax Malden with Stripes Illustrated Inserts, The Bright Side Diary and a tiny Doodle a Day Journal.

This is the pile I am currently using!  As you can see the diaries and planners are still the same as I started out with, with the exception of one…. I have added The Happiness Project One Line a Day 5 Year Diary to the list!

My Filofax Malden comes everywhere with me and has been really handy with writing down appointments as I make them, my work hours and other things that are important.  I have a section that contains lined note paper which I have been using to jot down ideas for blog posts, shopping lists and things I need to do and I reach for this so regularly that it sits on my desk in eye sight most of the day.

The doodle journal I started with great enthusiasm in January but, along the way, I have stopped adding to this daily.  I found that sometimes I just don’t have the energy or creativity to draw every day.  That said, I have still been adding to it when I feel like it and it is still helping me to exercise my drawing muscles.  I have also been looking at monthly drawing prompts and am thinking about undertaking one of those and see how it goes.

The Happiness Project Journal is something I write each day.  It sits beside my bed and I write in it before I go to sleep.  I’m hoping to keep up with this and fill the whole journal with a snippet from each day.  it would be lovely to look back on in years to come.

The Brightside Journal is something I use regularly still, I plan out my months blog posts into the monthly overview section and then make notes of what I need to do before the post can be published and also what I need to do on the days that the posts go live.

The Paperchase Organise Me A5 Soft Cover Diary isn’t getting used much, I decided to use it for home and recording any events in it that take up more space and can’t get recorded in my Happiness Project Journal.  I have recorded things like the outcome of drs appointments, things I have been doing, things I have done and notes on life in general.  Though it is not really getting much use I find it really handy to have something available to record things in that I may need to refer back to but that I don’t want recorded in my Filofax or other diaries and journals.

The Ohh Deer Gemma Correll journal is still being used as my blog ideas keeper!  I write down all my post ideas into it along with a few lines about what I’d like to cover in the post and a list of things I would need for the post such as any image ideas I may have.  This gets used a few times a week, either I am adding to it or flicking through it to find ideas for future posts.  I’m just over half way through it and I have no idea what I will use once it is full!

Finally, my Hobbycraft Spiral Bound Planner which I intended to use as my home planner.  I still use this, but not as much as I used to, I tend to rely on my Filofax to keep all my dates and information in.  I do sit down once a month and map out my month and what I would like to achieve in that month, things I want to do and things I need to do but aside from that I feel that it is not being utilised to its fullest.  In all honesty, I cn see myself not using this much at all in the future.  It was a nice idea, and if there were more than me in my household tracking the families appointments, classes and social activities along with any household tasks and bills etc, then this planner would be ideal as the stay home planner.

What journals, diaries and planners are you currently using?  And are they the same or different to the ones you started the New Year with?

Top 10 Stationery Items

1. Notebooks.  I have hundreds of notebooks stashed all over the place, the only problem is that I can’t decide if I forget that I have bought them or if they are breeding?  Still, you can never have too many notebooks in my opinion.

   

   Front to Back… Paperblanks Ananda Lined Moleskine Dispicable Me Lined Lechtturm 1917 Dotted

2. Fountain Pens.  I love my fountain pens, Lamy and Parker are my favorites.  It’s just a bit sad that I don’t get to use them as much as I’d like because much of my work is p.c based, though I do use them for taking notes in my various notebooks and planners!

   

   Lime Green – Lamy Safari Purple – Parker Grey – Parker

3. Highlighters.  I have no idea how I came to have so many highlighters though I blame it on my student years.  My favorites are the Zebra Mildliners and my Stabilo Boss mini ones which I use in my planners for colour coding everything!

   

   

   

4. Felt Pens.  These felt pens are by far my favorite at the moment (though I own a heck of a lot more than I want to admit to).  I seem to have a love/hate relationship with felts but at the moment I’m really liking them for using in my doodling.
5. Fine Liners.  I own a load more than these ones…this is the set I tend to carry around with me all the time though, they are really good for writing really small and neat in my planners and journals as well as for drawing with.
6. Coloured Pencils.  These are from Paperchase and I love that from 12 pencils you get 24 colours!  Such a genius thing to create and saves so much space in my pencil-case. 
7. Coloured ball/gel pens.  Is there ever any need not to own pretty coloured ball and gel pens?  They make shopping lists and chore lists look so much more appealing! 
8. Paperclips.  In as many novel shapes as possible, these paperclips are used to mark pages in my planner that contain important information and keep paperwork together.  They never cease to make me smile.                
9. Sticky Notes.  I have a love for novel sticky notes, and they are super useful when I need to write something down to transfer to my home planner, leaving little reminders about things over the house and for keeping phone numbers safe. 
10. Pencil Case.  I had this for Christmas from my little brither, its perfect for carting around the pens and pencils and other stationery items that I need on a day-to-day basis!