Gary Robbins wrote to me a while back to share some photos of his beautiful handmade wooden notebooks:

As the proprietor of my favorite obsessive notebook blog, I though you might enjoy these blank books I’m manufacturing. Xylobooks were designed to marry traditional bookbinding methods with a clean, modern aesthetic that emphasizes the tactile nature of the materials and the connection between wood and paper. High-quality, recycled archival paper, cotton twill tape, and tiny iron nails create a sturdy, simple, natural object. The wooden planks provide a portable writing surface and the cotton bands create a place to hold cards and other bits of ephemera.
The books take advantage of a waste stream, scrap wood cutoff produced at a furniture studio here in Portland, Oregon. The species include beautiful Northwest woods like Oregon bigleaf maple, madrone, western walnut, juniper, and cherry. Each book is handmade and unique, with variations in grain, color, and knotholes. They’re available from my website, www.containercorps.com

These may not be the best thing to throw in your bag for on the go jotting, but they’d be wonderful to keep on a desk or shelf at home for the kind of journaling you want to cherish for a long time.