Nock.co had some really awesome pocket notebooks. I really liked them a lot. They had this really simple look. But with some really cool and bright colors. Most of were top stapeled instead of on the side. Something I wasn’t the biggest fan of. But not that important.

What I really liked about them is that the paper was really good, and they actually worked well with fountain pens. Plus they had dot grid.

If they had continued this would most likely have been the thing I’d replaced my Field Notes usage with.

Here is a short history of my ink preferences over time.

At first I was really into black inks only. In the start of that I went for the sharpest drying inks possible. Before I slowly moved to better looking blacks and eventually ending up with 5 different colors in my drawers.

For a very long time I preferred to have all of my pens with the same ink. Just liked the idea of writing one pen dry and then continuing with the same color from the next pen in my carry.

Then at some point. Probably in 2021. I started to have all of my pens in regular use with different inks. And I love it. Some pens have a permanent color. Like I have a red Kaweco Sport with red ink, and a pink TWSBI Eco with pink ink. But the rest are more or less open to any ink.

There was a point in my fountain pen journey where I cared more about fast dry time than how things looked on the page, including not caring about feathering. And during that time I was big into Field Notes. Plus that the Field Notes shipping at the time was really cheap and fast compared to everything else.

Today I use notebooks from Rhodia that is very similar to this.

What I liked about the Steno book was that it had a sturdy cover that made it easy to write with it on the couch. And this was when I started to really appreciate notebooks where I could just rip pages out when I was done with them.

Haven’t used them in years, and don’t see myself doing so any time soon.

I’ve been doing adult coloring on and off for a couple of years at this point. Plus my two year old loves to play with pencils. And we have tried a bunch of different color pencil sets.

I have tried cheap, expensive and very expensive. And here is a numbered list of what I want from color pencils:

1. Sharpen them with the same gear I use to sharpen my regular pencils
2. Easy to buy them
3. As inexpensive as possible

Of all the shit I’ve tried, the most consistent in line with my wish list is the Blackwing color pencils.

I’m on my second bottle of this ink. I think that says a lot. There are very few inks I have bought it again after the first bottle ran out.

The other one is the black Iroshizuku ink; mostly because I like to have a bottle of black ink.

This was also the first Robert Oyster ink I got. He makes some really cool inks. Not loving the bottles though. And in my experience they are like 95% of what I get from Iroshizuku.

The color is basically something that looks very similar to the orange you see on The Pen Addict. I like it a lot, and it is the ink I’ve kept permanent in my FC Pocket 66 since I got the second bottle.

I was looking for my old cover a while back I couldn’t find it. So I ordered a new one. The big version. Also thinking about getting the small one for pocket sized stuff.

I’m on my second Day Free refill in my Travelers Notebook.

I’ve also added a dated 6 month refill to it. This is most likely just a pre-cursor to me ordering a Hobonichi Cousin A5.

The dated refill has a two page spread with all the days of the week, that I use for high level planning my week. Like when I’m going into the office, when I’m going to the gym and if I have any spare time appointments. Makes it much easier to plan my week in 2 minutes than with digital calendars.

The Day Free is more used for mid level task management. And I have a lined refill for a common place journal style writing.

I was ordering another bottle of the Pen Addict orange and decided to throw in a pack of the Write Notepads he had in The Pen Addict Shop.

Write notepads have been on my list of stuff to check out for a very long time. But I’ve never pulled the trigger because they’re mostly available on their own store, so it takes more of an effort to order it than all the stuff in stock at JetPens and similar.

Anyways.

I like these notebooks. The paper is awesome, and they have a very high quality feel. They’re also a lot thicker than the typical Field Notes format. Not sure how I like that yet.

But if I can get behind the new thiccness I’ll probably start using them as my new go to for pocket notebooks.

The standard size for a pack of pencils these days is a box of 12. You can get some as singles but that is a surprisingly small section of the market.

At the time of writing I have over 50 pencils I haven’t started using yet. Most likely closer to 60. I’ll guess this is like 2-3 years of pencils at my current pace.

In the same way I’d love to see smaller bottles of ink, I’d also love to see smaller boxes of pencils, like 4 or 6 instead of 12 as a industry standard. Would be great for everyone that love to try things out but don’t want to build up a huge collection of pencils.

Back in the early days I used Hobonichi Techo’s for a couple of years. I think it was 2015 and 2016, if I remember correctly.

Then midway into the second one I gave up on them. Mostly because the dry time was a struggle. And that the format didn’t really do anything for me.

When I look back at it I probably was doing some bullet journal like thingy without knowing it.

These days I have been considering them again. Not the techo, but the A5 cousin.