Another thing I came across in the woods last weekend: a 9-inch long feather from a Canada goose. I’ve got no experience with knives outside my kitchen, but I’m nonetheless very tempted to try to make a quill pen with it. Have you ever made one? My last experience with a quill pen — a precut J. Herbin set — wasn’t positive; the line kept splattering and I had to re-dip every two words.
Still, the lure of DIY is strong… I found some pretty detailed instructions online, and I’m thinking about giving it a try.
If you’ve made them before, I’d love to hear your experiences. Did you use a pen knife? Were you handy with knives before you began? How long did it take before you felt comfortable with the whole process?
Speaking of composition notebooks, here’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for months.
As you may recall, I continue to be quite partial to Mead Composition books, even though I generally prefer a smaller notebook for the sake of portability, and the paper doesn’t play well with fountain pens.
Nonetheless, I have one going at all times and I can’t seem to give it up. It functions as my most expansive idea journal, and sometimes (the horror!) my diary, when I’m in the mood, or when I want to write down a particularly memorable dream. There are also a couple of things I like to store in it — photographs and souvenirs — so one evening I sat down to make my very own pocket on the inside of the front cover.
Funny story: I was just watching a new video we made for Clairefontaine (Karen’s going to blog about it later), and followed one of the automatically generated suggestions to find the clip that’s embedded above.
Who was “Brian,” I thought to myself — could it be Brian Goulet? Sure enough, I emailed him, and he knew exactly what this was. One of his customers, Lauren Irby (irbyls on the FPN), purchased some Basics notebooks, and he sent her follow-up note asking for her feedback. One thing led to another, and Brian ended up featuring her elastic band notebook hack on his blog back in April.
Lauren also, of course, made this video, which seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle until I stumbled across it yesterday. Funny coincidence, eh? Anyway, it’s a cool demonstration, so I figured I’d feature it here.
How cool is this: reader Cole Wardell, whose lovely cursive doodles we featured back in April, just made herself a new journal with four different types of Clairefontaine paper: a Graf It sketch pad, DCP paper, a Calligraphy Art Pad, and the Ingres Pastel Pad. “All the papers serve very different functions,” she writes, “so binding them into one journal is a way … to keep me artistically on my toes!”
You can read more about Cole’s journal and the different papers that she used over at her blog.
I’ve said it before, but everyone has their own idea of what makes a perfect planner. Most of us muddle through by selecting the company and format that best suits our needs, and perhaps a bit of customization.
Some dedicated souls, however, bust out their pens and their rulers and make the planner of their dreams. As a non-crafty person, I’m in awe of the patience this requires. But I can certainly see the appeal; after all, what other planning system can claim to be exactly tailored to the way you think and live?
If you’re curious about exploring homemade planners, check out Chet Chin’s posts about converting her large Habana notebook into a 2010 planner — then making sure it feels like her own.
Chet does her customization in advance and by hand, but reader Dave Terry uses a date stamp and stamps each new day as he goes. He also creates a detailed index so he can find things later. You can read more about Dave’s planning system on his blog and at D*I*Y Planner (which, incidentally, has a wonderful collection of ideas and templates for customized planners).
