Black n’ Red is a pretty common brand in many stationery stores, but I haven’t talked about them much on this site, for two reasons. One, that all their notebooks are lined, and I gravitate more towards plain, squared, or dot-grid pages. And two, the Black n’ Red notebooks that I tend to see in … Continue reading Review: Black n’ Red Ruled Notebook and Business Journal
Some very intriguing notebook pages were sent to me by a reader named Khang, with this background information: A friend of mine recently sent me several notebooks entries written by Vietnamese and French soldiers aboard the Kilinski, a Polish cargoship. Following the end of fighting in 1954, the ship made trips between North and South … Continue reading Notebook Entries from French and Vietnamese Soldiers
I’ve been enjoying my cross-country trip so far! It hasn’t involved a whole lot of notebook sightings but here are a few so far. At the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, TN, I bought this Vinylux journal. I’d seen these before at a holiday fair in NYC and didn’t buy one, but … Continue reading Cross-Country Road Trip Notes
On my trips to Paris, I found myself almost too paralyzed to sketch because there was so much to look at. But Juan Carlos Figuera doesn’t have that problem! Here are a couple of my favorites from his Instagram posts: Venezuelan urban sketcher Juan Carlos Figuera documents the streets of Paris with expressive watercolor paintings. … Continue reading Juan Carlos Figuera’s Urban Sketching in Paris
It’s been a while since any new product from Moleskine excited me much. But I was happy to see that they’ve finally introduced some updated versions of the City Notebooks. I have almost all the cities that were released when they first introduced these (in 2008, according to Amazon, even though the maps in some … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: New City Notebooks for 2018!
A great piece at My Modern Met about an expat artist and his sketchbooks: Berlin-based English urban sketching artist Keir Edmonds keeps a visual diary that illustrates his life as an expat in Germany’s capital. Believing that “you have to put in 10,000 hours to get really good at something,†the self-confessed “Englishman lost in … Continue reading Keir Edmonds’ Berlin Sketchbooks
This spring, I’m going to be driving from New York to California and back, with lots of stops along the way. I’m hoping that part of my adventure will be finding some cool independent shops that sell notebooks! What are your favorite retailers in the US that I should visit? Arizona and the Bay Area … Continue reading Help Me Plan My Cross-Country Trip!
This notebook was a gift from a friend who visited Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam several years ago. I’m not sure which of those countries it was purchased in. I’m sorry to say this kind of notebook gift always makes me a little sad! People who know me well are aware that I’m always scribbling things … Continue reading Notebook from Southeast Asia: Giveaway!
Here’s another Japanese shop that makes customized notebooks to order: Kakimori is the brainchild of owner Hirose Takuma, who opened the shop in 2010 as a place for writing fanatics. He stocks the store’s shelves with an impressive lineup of fountain pens and other items carefully chosen from leading Japanese and overseas stationery brands, winning … Continue reading Made-to-Order Notebooks at Kakimori in Tokyo
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, was famous for always carrying a pocket notebook in which he jotted notes and ideas. After seeing this mentioned in various books, I was curious to see what kind of notebooks he used. A little research brought me to the website of The Henry Ford, which comprises … Continue reading Notebooks Used by Henry and Edsel Ford