These are a favorite of mine. I buy a few packs every back to school season. They are cheap at 49 cents a pack of 100 and are available in lined, graph, and blank. Plus I’ve seen neon and pastel shades. These are no where near the best, but they are serviceable.
So what do I like about them? They have nice tooth for graphite and work well with gel pens, they do okay with some fountain pen inks, but not great. The printing is tight but the blue lines are super thin and barely there. You know how I love a ruling that disappears.
The worst aspect about these? They are thin and floppy. I could chop up cheap printer paper and have a heavier “card.” These are 3×5 sheets of heavy paper.
These are responsibly sourced (so they claim) and are made in the USA.
It is well established how much I love an index card. I love cheap and expensive alike. I also love a dot grid card. I’ve printed my own with middling success. When I saw the Myndology cards at Walmart, I had to get a pack. These are also made in the USA.
These cards are padded, that is they are stacked onto a backing with a cover sheet and then glued at the top with a thin bead of plastic glue. This holds the cards together and safe from harm. These do tear off mostly cleanly. Sometimes padded paper is left with a bit of glue at the top of the sheet or tears as you remove them. These cards tear from their glue cleanly and any excess is easily removed.
The cards are bright white and smooth but toothy. They aren’t particularly heavy weight, and there isn’t any weight information about them on the package. The dots are dark gray and spaced ¼ of an inch or 6mm apart. The dots are TINY. Due to the width of the spacing the dots do disappear despite being somewhat too dark. (I do prefer a pale dot that disappears behind both pencil and ink. The back of each card is blank.
The card has a nice tooth for pencil and is smooth enough for a fountain pen. Fountain pen performed admirably on the page, there wasn’t any feathering or bleed through and lines were true to nib size. In fact all my writing tools performed well on this paper.
The pack costs $1.97 for only 75 cards. 3 cents a card. That is pretty pricey especially when we look at other cards on the market.
This package of 100 cards cost a whole 78 cents. In the past the P+G regular cards were great with a whole variety of materials. How do these stack up? (ugggghhhhh) Surprisingly, or not, well.
Let’s start with the good. These cards are thick. They are card not thick paper! WOW. It’s been years since I’ve seen a real card index card.* The card is a nice bright wide. They respond really well to everything from pencil to fountain pen to gel ink. No feathering or bleed or show through, just solid performance. Oh before I forget, they are GREAT with pencil too, loads of tooth for HB leads to look good.
The worst part about these cards is that the ruling is a little bright and thick for my taste.
At 78 cents for 100 of thick actual heavyweight cards? Deal. Sure you have to go to Walmart to partake but…
If you are from Maine, you know Reny’s, if you are not from Maine, you probably don’t. Unless you’ve spent a vacation in Maine. For those not in the know, Reny’s is a small chain of department stores in Maine. They deal in an odd assortment of name brand and cheap off brand stuff. Some of the stores sell canned goods. I love Reny’s but it feels like a knock off of a name brand store. That said, they have great deals on good boots, sneakers, and coats.
Wonderful reader Lisa, sent me a pair of these classic composition notebooks. They sell for 99 cents. Each book has 100 wide ruled sheets/pages. The ruling is pale and disappears behind writing. The covers are classic marbled. The marbling has less white space than is typical,but there is enough that you can tell it is a marbled pattern. The spine tape is well proportioned to the cover and has a nice texture. The interior stitching is tight and even.
The interior paper is smooth and feels great with everything I threw at it. It responded well to most everything except a particularly persnickety ink that doesn’t like anything. It has enough tooth that pencil felt good. Gel ink was great as was ballpoint.
Overall, if you live in Maine or are in Maine and need a comp book, this is a good option. It is unclear if they have college rules, but you know, any port in a storm. At 99 cents and probably not far from that on a regular week, these aren’t a bad deal.
This is a sharpener I never felt I needed to order. Yes, it’s pretty. Can anyone really argue that it isn’t? Hex and knurled and machined it’s all the things I love in a pencil or pen. It’s solid feeling and weighty in hand. The matte black finish looks great. It is desktop or pocket bling.
That solid feeling makes me think of fidget toys and other detritus made to carry about with you that have no other purpose than to weigh down the pocket or to play with when thinking. I’ve always been a fan of having a dual purpose fidget tool- a pencil sharpener or eraser makes a great option. Even better is a mint tin that contains a sharpener- as it can have some weight but also have something moving about inside. The BWOSLPS combines the shavings collection and sharpener all in one.
How does it work? If you get a good one, great. If you get a bad one? Awful. (Check out Brad’s review here.) This reminds me of the Pollux when it first arrived on the US shores, ahh so long ago in more innocent times. The sharpener often didn’t work due to blades dulled by shipping the sharpeners loose in a large box. Sometimes a stropping revitalized dulled blades and sometimes it didn’t. Like, Brad, I got a bad one. While my blade was sharp and didn’t break points it sharpened to a stumpy concave point. I contacted Blackwing directly and they sent me a replacement blade. If this weren’t a $20 sharpener I’d fiddle around with it and attempt a scrape of the paint. But this IS a $20 sharpener and as such it should JUST work. More on this in a moment.
Single hole long point sharpeners can be an exercise in frustration . The BWOSLPS is one example. The KUM One Hole or Stenographer is another. When the KUM Stenographer was painted it was a piece of junk, but a $1 piece of junk. So scraping the paint off from under the blade was a worthwhile hack. It turned the $1 sharpener into something worth using. The Pollux is another example which I won’t harp on here. When they work the concave point is a joy. You get an extraordinarily long writing point that is lovely to behold. When they don’t work graphite shatters and wood is torn. A dull long point blade is a nightmare that destroys pencils.
The greatest difficulty of any concave long point sharpener is a dull blade and so many makers of them push their release before replacement blades are available. Blackwing is no exception to this. New blades aren’t readily available and those installed in the sharpeners are shoddy. Mine arrived with a lump on one end and unable to produce a long point. I received my Blackwing Branded replacement blade (it is the same blade size and shape that used for the KUM Masterpiece) and it works substantially better. The new blade does the job. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, EVERY high end sharpener should ship with 2 or 3 extra blades. Blackwing could slice a small slot into their decorative box and accomplish this with ease and style.
But the point? I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was more. I’ve grown to love the Pollux’s lengthy concave point and the many pages I could write with it. Heck I even adore the Apsara long point. Or the point produced by the Classroom Friendly/Carl Angel 5. This point is shorter than those mentioned above. It’s kinda stumpy. That said, once I fiddled around with it I achieved a decent point that does not shatter like many long points. This is s sturdy and long lasting point. It is not quite as long lasting as other mentioned points, but I got nearly 2 composition book pages per point. Not bad.
Dare I say it? This might be the long point sharpener for short point fans. Perhaps they should call it the Blackwing One-Step Durable Point Sharpener.
I know I said I wasn’t going to hack or mess around with the sharpener, but I had to. No I’m not scraping paint, but I did add in a few paper shims at the point end in an attempt to make it more convex and stop the point from becoming a needle, and it worked. It takes it from a meh sharpener to an okay one. About 3 tiny slices of Post It note stacked gave me a nice long point that I like.
Is this a nice sharpener? Yes. Is it impressive? Sure, it’s well made and feels lovely. Is it necessary? Well no, not even a little bit. Like the Pollux, it’s a bit fussy and can be annoying. A Masterpiece produces a more even point, though not concave, but just as long. I like it. I think it’s lovely. But would I spend another $20 on it? Probably not. I guess I just don’t see it as $20 good. But then I’m also the person who glued a Apsara long point sharpener into a medication container and usually carries my sharpeners in a pastilles tin.
This pen has liquid ink and flows as such. Ink flow is good and the ink doesn’t seem to feather or cause issues on many papers. Which is an issue for roller ball pens. The liquid ink is not always well behaved.
This ink is smooth and flows well. It is smooth and feels good. I was able to use a highlighter over the ink without lift or feathering.
The cap is solid matte balck while the body of the pen is semi translucent matte black plastic. Despite this you cannot see the ink inside so you cannot monitor your ink levels. The cap sports a sturdy metal clip that is springy and holds itself to whatever it’s been clipped to. The cap closes and opens with a satisfying snap. IT posts deeply and securely when it’s time to write.
Overall, I like this pen. It feels good in hand and it writes well. It’s comfortable and has a professional capped pen feel. I expected it to feel cheap, kind of like the original Sharpie pen felt a little cheaper than other pens in the same price range. I liked this pen for sketching as well. the ink flow was great, no skipping or blobs or even errant unevenness. I prefer the S Gel ink, but this is a good choice for liquid ink in a fine 0.5 tip.
Year after year walmart does great things with their line of wooden pencils. Most of this has to do with contracting with Hindustan to make them. This year is no different. Look for the cardboard packages with Made in India for some pencil happiness.
I like that the P+G has a nice cardboard package with a window cut into it. The cardboard is recyclable anywhere, which the plastic packaging wasn’t usually recyclable. Inside the package the 12 pencils are kept safe. The lacquer is thickly applied over a white primer coat. The resulting finish is glossy, with some texture. It is quite imperfect. The ferrules are silver and fit the erasers better than in the past. Mine were all fixed to the pencil well. The erasers are soft and dust gathering, which I appreciate but seems a little weird to me. I don’t know why I don’t like dust gathering eraser on my pencils. Maybe I’ll warm up to them, maybe not.
The cores are classically, for this pencil and Hindustan, not perfectly centered. Maybe one is perfect. One was hilariously off center. This is par for the course for these pencils. I grabbed 3 randomly for sharpening. As usual they all sharpened well in all my sharpeners, including the Pollux. These pencils are made out of jelutong.
The core is dark, smooth, and holds a point well. If you are looking for a cheap workhorse pencil, this is a great choice. They just write so very well. Even on slick pencil these leave a mark. You can get pencils that are twice as expensive, heh, or 5 times as expensive, that don’t work as well as these. At 4 cents a pencil these are a killer deal. Sure they are from Walmart, but if you are on a budget and you want to write with something that feels good and won’t break the bank, spending 47 cents (back to school sale) or 97 cents at regular price, this is a great deal.
Back to School sale 2020 is upon us. I shall not debate if it is wise or not for all school locations to send their kids back to school or send their teachers into the Covidzone, let it be known that as a former teacher, a sister to a teacher; and the child of teachers, I do not approve.* That said, distance learning needs stationery supplies just like in person learning.
I liked the first iteration of these cheeky little erasers. They feel great in hand and look super cute. This version is no different and if anything even more cute because they are NEON. Hells yes. Again readers if you’ve been here for any period of time you know that I love neon stationery items.
I love this iteration. They erase just as well and feel just as good in hand. They work great for erasing pencil from a variety of papers and work GREAT as a fidget.
I’m a fan of long point sharpeners. The Apsara version is inexpensive and creates an extremely long collared point that is serviceable but too short. This hack takes a good sharpener and makes it great.
You need: post it notes, scissors or a craft knife, a screw driver, a ruler, q-tips or tissue, and of course Apsara Long Point Sharpeners
Let me know if you attempt this hack and how it turns out for you.
You know that feeling when you pick you pick up a nice pen or mechanical pencil and it just feels good in your hand? Like when you pick up something like the Pentel Kerry or the BAronfig Squire? The idea that this will be a nice writing experience? Yeah, that feeling. Perhaps comparing the Frixion Fineliner (FFL from here) to those pens is apples and oranges, so let me drop the bar lower. Let’s compare it to something like the Pilot G2 or the Sharpie S-Gel, both pens work well and you know you’ll get a decent writing experience from them.
Well sorry to get your hopes up. The FFL is none of those things. From the moment I picked up these pens they were a disappointment. They feel lightweight and cheap, The cap looks cheap. The printing on the body of the fineliner looks cheap. They look and feel cheap.
I can look past that if the experience of use is better than average. These provided a sub par writing experience. I like Frixion pens quite a bit. I pick them up even though they aren’t even close to archival. I like the idea of a pen that can be erased. Period. They provide a weird sort of nostalgia for me. One that doesn’t ooze and blob on the page.
The FFL feels dry and the ink is not saturated enough for enjoyment. The black is gray. And all the colors left a pale line. I thought maybe it was the composition book paper being too absorbent so I tried them in a sketchbook that I know is not absorbent, in fact it is a book that allows ink to really shine and look great. While a bit better, these were still terrible. Pale and washed out.
They did erase well, though I suppose when the pen does lay down enough pigment to be nice and dark it is easy to erase the lines on the page.
Whatever I paid for these was far far too much. Avoid these.
