Stationery Hauls, Fountain Pen Finds & Writing Success – Sailor, Tom’s Studio & More
Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with myself, Rob Lamba, and of course.
Helen:And with me, Helen Lesowski.
Rob:Now it's just us today, Helen, isn't it? There's no guests. So we're gonna just, I guess, talk about stationary hauls. I think you spent a couple of million in the last month on stationary.
Helen:I wish you were joking, Rob. Yeah.
Rob:I've spent a measly £9 on stationary, but it's revolutionized, the way I'm working. So maybe we can talk about that.
Helen:Oh, yeah.
Rob:And you've got all sorts of cool stuff happening, writing, contests, and, woah, we're gonna cover it all.
Helen:Oh, Carol, yes. Where do you wanna start? Tell me about your world, Rob. What's revolutionized your world?
Rob:Okay, well, what has revolutionized my world is, and I've never heard of this brand, and forgive me if they're very, very well known, but it's a brand called Sailor.
Helen:Oh yes, now I had heard of them.
Rob:Have you? Never heard of them. They're a Japanese brand. Apparently, I did a little bit of research and I bought essentially, I was looking for a fountain pen that I could draw with. So it's kind of a calligraphy pen.
Rob:It's kind of an artist's pen. Oh, it's actually awesome for writing with as well. And it looks the part. I'll share a picture in the newsletter. By the way, if you're not subscribed, head to stationeryfreaks.com and you'll find a link.
Rob:And I will share a picture of it and maybe some examples of how the ink flows, etcetera. But it's marvelous. It's just awesome.
Helen:I've heard of them and I have actually coveted one, but I have put to one side my fountain pens for the time being. Because I went and finally, finally bought a Tom Studio Wren.
Rob:Wow.
Helen:Don't know what those are.
Rob:You've reached the big leagues.
Helen:Well, I have. I wanted it because I wanted to see, do you remember I had, I bought a fountain pen kind of thing. It looked like a fountain pen except for it was a rollerball. So it used the same filler mechanism on the rest of it, but the ink did not flow through properly. So this to me was going to be the next thing.
Helen:And I have to be honest, it is bloody amazing. I love it. I really do. So I've just used all of the one coloring. I put a standard sort of dark blue in when I started, I had a really lovely, I don't think they called it Loch Ness or something.
Helen:And they gave me a little sample of ink to go in it. Just comes free with the pen. And you just dip this kind of like, it looks like a cigarette butt. It's long and you dip it in ink. If you go to YouTube, you can see loads of people doing it.
Helen:Every single one I've looked at who's done it have got ink all over their fingers. Now, you know how clumsy I am and how catastrophe prone my stationary bits are. This was a piece of cake for me. I did not get ink anywhere. I did not get ink on my fingers.
Helen:I don't know what people on these YouTube videos are doing, but it's clean.
Rob:Wow, you should film that and then post it.
Helen:I bet if I did it again, it wouldn't happen. But I did then change the ink. So I've now changed the ink. I don't know if you remember, I raved about an ink that's Mulberry that came from Tom's studio. Mulberry, I bought it years ago, years and years ago, and it's deep, deep red.
Helen:And my daughter nicknamed it the blood of my enemies. Oh no, my Tom Studio Wren, which is such a cute little pen and it writes like a felt tip, but with their nibs quite hard. So it's not soft like a felt tip, it's quite hard, but yeah, writes like a felt tip, ink is beautiful. And now I get to write in the blood of my enemies. And I have to say, I'm really chuffed with it.
Helen:The only thing is, is when you close it up, it's quite small, hence the name Wren. It doesn't tuck into anything. So you have to carry it. It fits beautifully in my hand, absolutely beautifully. But yeah, carrying it around with a notebook.
Helen:I mean, it's very drop proof. Have to say that.
Rob:Well, you've dropped fountain pen before, haven't you? Broken it. So yeah, go steady with this one.
Helen:That nib is so expensive. I couldn't replace it. I couldn't afford to replace that nib.
Rob:I mean, Tom's studio stuff's awesome, isn't it? I mean, we follow him on obviously Instagram and what have you, but it is just another level that it's almost like the science that goes into designing these things is insane.
Helen:It doesn't. You can tell, can't you? When you're looking at it. I mean, you're even just watching the YouTube videos, you don't have to have it in your hand, just look at it. And you go on Instagram as well.
Helen:This is a person or a company who absolutely are obsessed with stationery. Yeah. You can see their love and fascination with it, in it. Everything is carefully thought out, Beautiful. I mean, that might explain why I might have accidentally slipped and bought their advent calendar, Rob.
Rob:So hold on, hold on. It's the September 10. We've still got Halloween. We've still got bonfire night, various other things happening. I mean, it's three months, is it?
Rob:September, October. Yeah, three, four months away. And you're already buying advent calendars.
Helen:Yeah. And the plural Rob as well, because I've also bought the Martha Brooks one as well. In my defense, I bought the Martha Brooks one as a bit of a panic because if you remember, we talked about Martha Brooks last year. She did an advent calendar, made this beautiful quality stationery that was then copied and ripped off across the internet. And I think we talked about it last December saying, you know, if you see anything, the woman sold out, please, please don't buy anything because they're not legit.
Helen:This year, she sent because I'm obviously on their mailing lists. She sent little thing out saying, if you want it this year, because you're already a customer, you get first dibs. And it was a bit like, oh my God, they sold out so quick last year, I have to buy it. So I did. But then almost, I don't know, two or three weeks later, Tom's studio came out with a, well, you know what, if you want one of ours early dibs, and I was like, well, loved my little wren.
Helen:So yeah, I now am the proud owner of two advent calendars in his only September.
Rob:Yeah, I mean, that's gonna be an awesome month for you though, isn't it December? You know, December 1, you'll be like a giddy schoolchild waiting to open both advent calendars see what I stationary goodness you
Helen:don't know what I'm gonna do with this. I mean, I don't need any more stationery at all. I mean, I've got one lovely Wren. What do I need with any more fountain? Yeah.
Rob:But Helen, we're stationery freaks. That's what this We podcast is we don't need we did the episode on notebooks and I've got, what was it? A 145 notebooks. And I've still bought some more notebooks. We don't need new notebooks.
Rob:Don't need new pens, we love them. Yeah, you've got an exciting month in December for sure.
Helen:I have. And can I just, just say now, you remember the story I told you about being in TK, no, not TK Maxx, HomeSense?
Rob:And I
Helen:was busy looking at notebooks and I was looking for a replacement for my creative writing notebook. And I was bending them all and trying them all and I couldn't find one I liked. And a woman came up to me and handed me one and went, that's the one you want. And it bent and it was perfect and I bought it. Bless her, I started using that.
Helen:So I feel like, you know, vindication and thank you to that stationary freak out there who does not know that she's a stationary freak.
Rob:And that's interesting. So you got a new pen, you've got this new notebook. I think what I found interesting is your choice of ink color. Now we're different. We approach day three very differently.
Rob:My choice of ink color is always black. I don't like blue when I'm using fountain pens or any sort of pen really. It's always black, except for my Sharpie, which is red, which I use for my learning notebooks. But other than that, you have an array of colors. How do you go about choosing the one that you want?
Helen:Oh, it's very scientific, Rob. I choose the ones that are prettiest on the day.
Rob:Right, on the day, so yeah.
Helen:So it's literally, I mean, bought a load of ones from a company whose name escapes me, but that have sparkle in them. Remember There you go. Dear mine, dear mine. Dear mine. Yeah.
Helen:They do quite a lot of inks. They do lots with it, got sparkle in them. They are great, but you kind of have to shake your ink pen a little bit before you write, otherwise the color doesn't come out properly. Yeah, so I'm wondering how that will do in my Tom's studio because of the way it is. It might hold the sparkles more evenly.
Rob:Yeah, was just thinking, assume to create the sparkles, there's some material in there,
Helen:Does I
Rob:that not block up the ink pad?
Helen:No, You'd think when you know, it doesn't. Oh, it hasn't done for me, but equally, it doesn't stay mixed. So it does settle. So if you look at the, I'm looking at the bottle now, there's a load of that glittery material on the bottom of the bottle. So you turn it upside down, give it a shake and you can all imagine how much terror there is in my eyes while I'm shaking this.
Helen:And it redistributes itself and it's fine. But when it goes into the pen, it seems to do the same thing too. But you can't obviously shake fountain pen because there's no lid. Oh, is, but the ink still comes out. So I have not had as much success with that.
Helen:But I'm thinking Tom's studio with a little cigarette butt fillers might be the way forward.
Rob:Oh, you must let us know. And yeah, if you ping over some photos, we'll include some of the photos of the pen, maybe that notebook as well, and that ink in the newsletter, which always accompanies these episodes. So I was I was actually in HomeSense, part of TK Max, and I I I'm on a mission not to spend much money on stationary. I don't need anymore. Just don't need it.
Rob:And I managed to resist again, Helen. This is like the second time this year.
Helen:Are you trying to make me look bad?
Rob:No. I think there's something wrong with me.
Helen:Yes, Rob. There really is.
Rob:So there was a Moleskine planner. Know I'm a bit of a And fan of it was in there and it was a good price and I was like, yep. Picked it up again, got all the way to checkout and I was like, no, I don't need it. I went and took it back, put it back on the shelf and left. And even my kids would just say, What's wrong?
Rob:Are you okay? So yeah, I think I'm just getting overwhelmed with the amount of stationary and the potential that we talk about a lot there. But I think I'm convincing myself that to release that potential needs more stationary, and I think I've got stuck in that loop and it's not working. So I'll start a new notebook, think about the potential, move on to another one. And so, yeah, I'm trying to be really disciplined this month particularly, and focus on just using what I have and making it work for me.
Rob:So, yeah, it's a new Rob changed.
Helen:Yeah. I look forward to seeing how long this lasts. I'm very impressed though, Rob. Did you regret not buying it or are you still feeling quite good about it?
Rob:No, I feel quite good about it because I already have a planner. In fact, I have about three and they're all for this year, academic year. I always buy the academic ones.
Helen:Oh yeah.
Rob:And I don't need another one. Why do I need another one? I've got one. Just gotta make it work.
Helen:Yeah, I know.
Rob:I'm changed, it's good. It's good. So Helen, you were in London.
Helen:I was. I went to the Hyper Japan Expo, which was joyful, but very, very hot and nowhere near enough water. And I did buy, I bought more sake than stationery though to be fair, so I think that's fine. But I then also went to keeping choosing, which has been on my wish list for ages. When my family stomped across London to get there for me and they left me alone unsupervised, which mean, think they must have known the risk they were taking, but they did leave me alone.
Helen:And I did buy only one thing though.
Rob:That's good. For listeners that don't know, Keeping Choosing is basically a stationery shop in London, which we've established, but it's got a very good reputation and it seems does it does it have stuff that you can't find anywhere else? Is it just the ambience of because, you know, I've been once and I don't remember it too clearly.
Helen:There's stuff there that is you can get at other places, so it's part of the ambulance, but they also have lots and lots of notebooks which are made by them. So that's what I bought, something that I could only get there. And it's beautiful and it's very expensive, we don't tell anyone. It's a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a notebook. Think of the number that is too much and then double it.
Helen:It's too much for a notebook. So I only got one.
Rob:What are going use that one for?
Helen:Looking at. I absolutely will not be writing it. Maybe if one day I get a book deal, Rob, I might write in there, but then, but not, not, yeah.
Rob:So speaking of books, Helen, you were saying in the pre show ramble, which went on for a lot longer than normal, didn't it? We had a really
Helen:good have been properly for a while, no.
Rob:And you are doing really well in writing competitions.
Helen:I occasionally do quite well in writing competitions. So I, just by chance sort of three writing competitions that I do and I had one, two, three, four, five pieces of work, six pieces of work that went into those. Some of them I've started to get results back for now and I did quite well in one of them. So I'm quite pleased with that. It's about 1,500 pieces of work I think were submitted.
Helen:I had to work that out based on kind of extrapolation because nobody tells you how many people submit. I came sixth in my group, I came eighth overall for one. So I'm quite pleased with that.
Rob:That's awesome.
Helen:I was offering to share it in the newsletter. So a little link to that will be in the newsletter if anybody wants to read the piece that did okay. Just bear in mind, you're given a serious approach, it's really good practice for just making yourself right. So it's really good for not thinking about anything more than how do I craft a story? And you're given prompts that you have to include.
Helen:You're only given like maybe forty eight hours to write it. It's very limited amount of time, very constrained in the number of words you have to, I think this one's 500 words, it's like half a page, it's hardly anything. Yeah, so it's quite contained and lots and lots of constraints, which make you really, really creative as and I run a workshop on, I think I mentioned. So yeah, I've done that, but because I did okay with it, I will share it with people if they'd like to see.
Rob:That's awesome. So yeah, we'll get that packaged up. That'll be in the newsletter along with the photos and we'll make it a little PDF download. Are you able to share the prompts that you were given just to add that context to it?
Helen:I can, I can put those on the beginning of it if you want?
Rob:I think that'll help set the scene so people can, you know, maybe you can have a go themselves. And if you wanna have a go yourself, then please do send it back to us. And, you know, maybe there's a little, a little activity for our stationary freak fans.
Helen:Yeah. Yeah. I that would be so good. I'd be so interested to see. I find that the less words you're allowed to write, the harder it is.
Rob:Oh, for sure. Oh, absolutely.
Helen:Yeah, this was 500 words, which was hard, but it was because of the prompts you've given. So my prompts for this was it had to be an uplifting story, but it had to include a haunted house. So it's really, that's really interesting as a combination of things to do. So yeah, I'll send it on through.
Rob:Nice, yeah, all right, well we'll include that in the show notes, a link to the newsletter, and then in the newsletter we will include that PDF download. Can read Helen's 500 word uplifting story about a haunted house. And If you wanna have a go yourself, then have a go. Bring it over to us and we'll share it with the community. Sounds good.
Rob:So Helen, what else have you bought? Anything else? Any stickers? You've not mentioned stickers yet.
Helen:We slipped and fell on Etsy and we're not speaking about it, Rob, okay? Think it's best for everyone concerned if we just don't mention it. But I tell you what we did find. I sent you a picture to it because it was so cool, most useless thing, but I just loved it. There's a guy whose name I can't remember, but he makes hyper realistic paper that when you wrap something in it, it looks like bread.
Helen:Just the most wonderfully creative, beautiful thing because it's so hyper realistic. And I just enjoyed the view of it. I mean, it's barely stationary, right?
Rob:Well, I think wrapping paper, I think that is stationary, yeah.
Helen:It is. And the other thing I did buy, I did say I didn't buy much at the Hyper Japan Expo. I mean, can I just say this is the like the last two or three months where I haven't actually done a rundown of what I bought? I did bump into the very nice people at the zebra stand. So zebra pens, and I've got quite a few of them.
Helen:They had a whole load of limited special edition things. So I basically told them we did the podcast, bought one of everything. I did buy a pack of pretty much everything that's new that was limited edition or special edition. And I now have these retractable felt pens, which are just so joyful. They do not work well with the Hobonichi paper, they do bleed through, but I still use them because the retractability is amazing.
Helen:Because you think they dry out right, but apparently, I don't know how it works, but they kind of suck moisture from the air so that they don't dry out. I don't understand it, but it's brilliant. Brilliant.
Rob:Wow. So these are felt tips that are just clickable on the end. You just click and click
Helen:and Yeah, it's like a ball pen, but it's a felt And you know, a dozen colors and really lovely.
Rob:Well, that sounds cool. Yeah, I'm a big fan of zebra pens actually. They're one of those underrated brands, aren't they? That just seem to be everywhere and people use them. So it's nice to hear that they're coming out with some new novel products.
Rob:That's awesome.
Helen:I may have overbought Rob. So what I will do is when I do next come your way, I'll bring you a couple of my limited edition sets for they're not the retractable though. You can't have the retractable ones, not the felt pens. You can have the retractable ball pens, not the felt pens. I love them.
Rob:That's fine. Thank you. Any gift is great. I'll give you back the 200 sharpies that you left with me. Still haven't managed to get through them all yet, but we
Helen:go through them in this house. My husband's forever wandering off with them. I don't know those in pairs of scissors. It's like, where are the scissors? And he lives.
Helen:Do you know where the scissors are? He's like, yes. Are they coming back? Yes. I don't need to buy more then, no.
Rob:That's like our house though. Yeah, every time we go to IKEA, I buy one of those bumper packs of scissors. There's maybe 10 different sized scissors in there. They all go in the kitchen drawer. Week later, there's only one left and it's the tiny one.
Rob:And it's like, where have they all gone? I see. They can't all be, you know, the house isn't that big that we've lost all these scissors.
Helen:Were you at that company we worked at at the early days of, you and I, I think it was, I'm sure it was where we worked together. It was in the early days, Sharpie was relatively new, was highly desirable. We were trying to make saturate the market with the office market with Sharpies so that people stopped nicking them. And the way we were doing this was putting them on the table and waiting for everyone to take them and they all left with them and we didn't collect them up afterwards. So every workshop we ever ran, we would desperately try to like get people to take these Sharpies without saying, please take the Sharpies.
Rob:Yeah, they were great and they are still awesome. I actually used the Sharpie fine liner. That's a red pen that I use for my notes because it just, when you're writing learning notes, for me, they've got to come out pretty quick. You're trying to capture your thoughts and ideas from what you're reading or listening to or watching, And they just write really well. You can just free flow it.
Rob:They're really good, really good products actually. So yeah, really good. Anything else in your stationary world, Helen?
Helen:Oh my God, have you not had enough? No, I did make notes though. So that is literally, I knew we'd be talking about this at some point. So I've been making notes for the last two or three months about, don't forget to tell Rob about this, don't forget to mention this. So that's all the things that I've spent money on.
Helen:Tell you what, it would be lovely to get sponsorship because this is costing me a fortune.
Rob:You never know. You never know. I tell you what though, always blend digital and analog and that's kind of something we've done various casts on this in the past. But I was stumbling through this sort of big book of creativity, and I stumbled across an app called Capacities, and it's capacities.io. And I'm a sucker for trying new sort of knowledge management note taking apps, those kinds of
Helen:Really are, yeah.
Rob:And I was playing with it and I was like, well, it's a little bit clunky. It's harder to get stuff into than it is into Apple Notes, for example, or even Evernote or something like that. Is everything still going, by the way?
Helen:It is, I think. I mean, don't use it. And
Rob:I was using it, so I don't quite understand this, but everything in tool is an object, so you can link to everything. It's really quite clever in that way. But the thing that makes it really special is it anchors around time, so it doesn't anchor around folder structures or tags or labels or any of this sort of stuff that a lot of tools do. It anchors around time. So as you're creating stuff in there, get this daily log and it tracks all the stuff that you've done and you can write directly into it and create objects from it.
Rob:And I didn't think it'd be that useful, and then three days later, I'm absolutely obsessed. Really? Yeah, there's a few ideas like this, aren't there, where you remember things based on time versus what you might have called it or what you might have tagged it or what you might have labeled it or which notebook it's in. And I think there's something in that because there's times when I've gone, oh, what was that note that I made? And I think about what I was doing on the day and go, oh, that was sometime in June, then you can go and find it.
Rob:Obviously in digital tools, you can search for it, so it's a little bit less of an issue. But it threads it all together through time, and that's the bit that holds it together. And I'm telling you, I'm obsessed, it's so good.
Helen:That's quite genius actually, because that, you're right. I don't necessarily think, Oh, it was June I did this, but I might think that was the day that I also did this or I was looking at this about that time, or I know that it came from this book, but I can't remember what the quote was or something like that. That would definitely join up for me. I suppose that's the way our brains work, isn't it?
Rob:It is, it is. I'm filing. And so yeah, when you're in your daily note, as they call it, you can just type the key and then you can create people, can create objects, pages, book reviews, whatever. There's all you can create your own objects, whatever, Do whatever you want in there. And then it tracks all that.
Rob:Then at the bottom, if you create stuff outside of that daily note, it logs all of that stuff as well. So you updated this, you created this post, you added this knowledge, whatever. It's really good.
Helen:So what's that called? Because I'm looking for a new way of keeping a work journal. So an end of day work journal, who do I speak to? What problem would I like to have solved if I'd had a magic wand? What did I learn about that I didn't fully understand?
Helen:That kind of thing. Because those, I think I've got four or five questions that I use. And I stumbled across these questions that I used a long time ago and I thought, that's really, really helpful. And I wanted to do it. And I've tried to do it analog and it doesn't work.
Helen:I can't do it analog because I've not got the habit of writing in that way. So I wonder if digitally would be better because my life at work is obviously digital except for my Hobonichi. It doesn't fit into my Hobonichi at all. I've tried to fit it in and have this little notes page, but because when I go into the office, my Hobonichi is available then theoretically, if I left it on a desk, somebody could flick through. I would be really worried about that.
Helen:So I couldn't be as open and honest. Nobody would, I'm sure nobody would, but it's still confidential. You have passwords on your laptop for reasons, right? So I wouldn't want to write. It would just change the way that I wrote.
Helen:So what's it called?
Rob:It's called capacities.io. Now, obviously, we're we're not sponsored by this company at all, got no affiliation whatsoever. And I'm only into about day six or seven of using this thing. But it will definitely do what you you want it to do because you can create templates. And it has a meeting object, so you can say who you met with, you could template that to your heart's content, having those questions in there as a template.
Rob:It's pretty free flow. It takes a bit of getting used to, to get used to this time thread and the fact that everything is an object, so you can connect everything to everything. But yeah, it's pretty good. There's a free tier, which is what I'm on at the moment. I think if you upgrade, you get access to plug it into Todoist and all sorts of other clever plugins and stuff like that, but so far, so good.
Helen:Excellent. Sounds good.
Rob:Yeah, there's a risk with these sorts of tools as they come and go.
Helen:Yeah, yeah.
Rob:So I always look at whether you can export it and yes, can. You can store it locally and there's all sorts of stuff you can do to get your data out. So yeah, it seems pretty good so far.
Helen:Yeah, I remember, I don't know if I've complained about this bitterly recently, but I remember an app that used to do, it would take your to do list and it would put it into actions in your calendar for you. There was some kind of rudimentary AI in it. I mean, is probably fifteen years ago. And they closed it down, Google bought it and buried it because it was too good. And I broke my heart because my life depended on this one thing And even exporting it wouldn't have helped because it was the process that helped me.
Helen:Wasn't the content. So yeah, you're quite right to remind me of that.
Rob:Yeah, I think they've been going a few years and they seem very active, it's getting updated a lot and the community seems very strong and you you get on YouTube, there's people that have got tons of stuff in there. Now it's sort of pitched as a knowledge management tool for capturing references and that sort of stuff as well, But I'm still sticking to Zotero for that because that just captures everything straight out of the box. So yeah, it's finding a place. I'm still torn between that and Apple Notes for capturing stuff. Apple Notes just so quick.
Rob:I don't know, maybe we'll do an episode on it in the future.
Helen:I think I'd love to do that actually. I'll have a bit of a play and see, then I can report back too, so yeah.
Rob:All right, Helen, anything else?
Helen:No, I'm done. I think, you know, I've done the buying for both of us, Rob, but you're not having one of my advent calendars, sorry.
Rob:Well, maybe we could do some Christmas y special type stuff. Get our thinking caps on see if there's some legs in these advent calendar ideas again. We did Didn't we do the advent calendar series three years ago, was it? Was it three or
Helen:It was, it was. We did, I think twelve Days of Christmas or something, we did And that was quite fun. We really enjoyed that. But I think, yeah, I should do a little mini unboxing maybe on Instagram or something like that.
Rob:Sounds good. Sounds good. So of course, if you want to follow along, then please do head to stationeryfreaks.com where you will find the podcast, and you'll find a link to our newsletter. Newsletters typically always go out around the same time as a podcast, although we might start posting a few things in between. And, yeah, have a look at Helen's writing special.
Rob:Have a go yourself. That'd be awesome.
Helen:Yes. Yeah.
Rob:Let us know how you get on.
Helen:I would love for people to post something. It's 500 words. You can actually post it into a message So you can put it on Instagram and we would be thrilled. Or you can put it as a comment into the newsletter. I would be thrilled to read somebody else's attempts.
Helen:Definitely. It's hard to do.
Rob:I might have got this afternoon actually, haunted house, positive spirit. Oh, there's a connection there. You see where I went with that?
Helen:Did, haunted house and uplifting. It had to be an uplifting story.
Rob:Yeah, that's what I'm saying, positive spirit somewhere. I think that's quite good. Anyway, I might riff on that later. So anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode, and we look forward to speaking to you in the next one. Bye bye.
Helen:Bye.
