Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this review, Dade and I sat down and recorded an episode of RSVP about the use of stationery in support of our other hobbies and activities. This has always been a core component of how I review but is especially important in this particular review.

I’ll start with the basics that you all know about BF. I love their cream-colored toothy paper that works just as well for pencils as it does for fountain pens and gel ink. It holds up to brush pens and colored pencils and feels great every step of the way. To boil that down- if you like dot grid and use almost any writing utensil it’s great. They use the same paper in the Vanguards as they do in the Confidants. Near paper perfection.

The vanguard is a 72 page stitched soft cover notebook. The cover stock is thick and textured. The stitching on this edition is black and sturdy. They do use back tacking to secure the ends, which is better and more secure than cutting the stitching but can leave an unsightly bundle of threads at the edges of the book. None of mine have this issue. Occasionally the stitching will be crooked or off-center, but all of mine were good.

The covers of this one have art created by Josh Cochran. The colors are subtle blends of CMYK to create a near monotone effect. I’m not sure if this is intentional but I enjoy the various shades created. The lines in the art are both thick and shaky at the same time, and folks, I am here for it. Inside the covers are printed with a softer shade of the exterior of the main color of the covers. The back cover features a little doodle in the same theme as the cover. They are cute and a fun little addition to the notebooks. There are 3 different designs for the covers one yellow, one blue-green, and one in pinks. They are all lovely.

After ripping this package open, shooting pics for this review, I immediately pressed what I term the “summer” or yellow notebook into use for my garden planning and seed starting log. I’ve made my way through about the middle of the book. It has been tossed around my bag, the truck of my car, and had copious plans scribbled into its pages. What I really love about the Vanguards is that they are just the right size for a small to medium-sized project. 72 page is just right. The size of the pages is just right, and the softcover format allows you to open the book up flat to spread your ideas out across 2 pages without an overwhelming lump in the middle.

What I have been really surprised about with this vanguard is that the cover has stood up to this kind of abuse and use. Normally most of my notebooks get tossed into my bag or onto a desk. They don’t get wet as I log hydroponic feedings or smudged with dirt as I fill seed starting pots. What is most impressive with this is that despite being a paper cover it cleans off nicely.

You can get these lovely little notebooks over at BaronFig.com

I write the bones of my review with the item in whatever journal I’m using at the time. It felt a little weird to write with this review in the Baron Fig Clear Plus journal. It’s a 5 cent pencil being reviewed in a nearly $30 journal. But this pencil performs more like a 50 cent pencil than a 5 cent pencil.

The Pen + Gear (P+G from here) pencil arrives in a hard plastic box, honestly, I’d prefer cardboard with a window, but this is a decent box. There is a bit of flex in the packaging which can contribute to cracked cores. I chose the package of black pencils, but there are now many colors and decorative features available. It is important to note where the pencils are made while making your selection. Those made in India are the pencils you want. The rest are not good. The made in India are made by Hindustan and are great pencils.

The paint on these pencils is glossy but thin. Some grain is evident through the paint. The wood it covers appears to be bass, linden, ash, or one of the many other pale-colored kinds of wood available for pencils. From the smell, it is likely to be bass/linden. It sharpens perfectly in every sharpener I’ve used, from the Classroom Friendly to the KUM Masterpiece to the M+R Pollux. The graphite takes a lovely point.

The graphite inside is smooth and dark. Much like most of the HB or dark pencils made by Hindustan. These are not super soft. In fact, their point retention is on par with many HB pencils. I used my several test pencils on several different types of paper- from the smooth paper in my work bullet journal, rough pulpy index cards, kraft paper, rosin paper, and in the Baron Fig Confidant Plus. It was silky smooth on all paper, but also the point survived longer than expected on all the papers. I filled an entire page in the Confidant Plus before feeling like I needed to touch up the point. 

The eraser… Generally speaking, erasers made by Hindustan are pink chicklets of disappointment. They rub the graphite around the page but not off, they melt into a sticky puddle atop the pencil. Not these. These black erasers are dust-gathering or sticky, and they actually work relatively well for erasers on pencils. I’m pleasantly surprised.

During the review period, which usually lasts about a week, I found myself reaching for this pencil over and over again. At the end of the week, I kept reaching for this pencil. It simply works and works well. I wasn’t sharpening it every 2 seconds, or pulling shattered cores from the wood. I didn’t fight with the sharpeners. Most importantly, I was able to use the same pencil throughout staff meeting at work without sharpening.

At $1.97 a 12-pack, these weren’t the cheapest Walmart pencils, but they are solidly good.

I’ve been struggling with how to review the special editions and pencils made for other companies by Blackwing aka Palomino. How does one review a pencil that has a topnotch core that is one of 4 different grades (extra firm, firms, balanced, and soft) wrapped in perfect cedar and then coated in a thick coat of lacquer? We’re already starting off with a wonderful product that may be a little higher priced, it is after all marketed as a premium pencil, that we know has quality going into it.

After all I acknowledge that the Blackwing is a premium well-made product at a slightly higher price than I like to pay. I’ve detailed in other posts that I will now only purchase singles or trade for the editions I REALLY like. Otherwise, I’ll live with one to use and one for my collection.

So how do I review the number 19? The story is great. For me the tribute means less to me than the rest of the pencils, even divorced from the story the pencil is great. I love a matte coated pencil, and the flat cool gray is wonderfully grippy. My hand doesn’t slide at all. The imprint smudges a bit which seems to be deliberate and in keeping with the newspaper theme. The charcoal eraser looks black to me but goes well with the pencil itself.

My one problem with this pencil is that the ferrule fit was not great. In Bob Slate, I noticed that all the ferrules were off. I don’t care much about the centering, that is dealt with by twisting the ferrule into place. Easy. Instead the ferrule just didn’t fit deep enough. Once I arrived home, I removed the ferrule and sliced off a mere millimeter and the ferrule fit perfectly. Gone were the janky looking bits of cedar hanging out around the sides and chips of paint. Once dealt with this pencil became amazing.

Now comes the argument that evolved as I used this pencil. Once dealt with the janky issues, the looks are perfect. But I had to deal with them. I had to do work on this pencil. A pencil that costs $3 (when bought as a single at Bob Slate, and even when not bought as a single it’s well over $2 per pencil) shouldn’t need to be worked on for it to be perfection. If I were spending 50 cents I don’t care about reattaching the ferrule in a pleasing manner, but when a pencil is sold at a premium price the quality control of said pencil should match that premium price. It shouldn’t be janky once it is boxed and sent out to buyers.

In short, this pencil is a perfectly sedate pencil that feels great in hand but it is hampered by janky production values that don’t belong on a $3 pencil. If I’d bought a 12-pack of these for $26 or $30 and they all looked this awful I’d have been very upset.

If you are trying to get away from reviewing anything online, or maybe you need to take some notes for your online review the LE Gather is a perfect option.

The packaging for Gather is light olive colored with and an assortment of illustrations scattered across its surface. These are rendered in traditional Baron Fig white and gray. Between these items are stars printed in thick glossy ink, they remind me of thick embossing powdered rubber stamps. (Only a few of you will get that reference.) Like all their other products the packaging is eminently giftable, maybe to yourself maybe to someone else.

Cracking this box open reveals a gorgeous olive green cloth cover debossed with icons that look suspiciously close to those you might find on your phone. The bookmark is a slightly darker shade of olive while the elastic closure is dark gray. Opening the book reveals olive end sheets with lighter green stars and some of the icons scattered about the page. Further, into the book, you find a quick start reference and a key to the icons.

The set up of the review page is very simple, along the edge is a bar with all the icons, you circle of check off what you are reviewing, then at the top of the page is a pale green bar to write the name of what you are reviewing. Then there are lines to write the body of your review, a 5-star rating guide, then high and low points. In the far back of the journal are a few pages about each item and a brief almost how-to on reviewing those items.

I tested my Gather with a few pencils and pens. I notice that the paper feels less toothy than other iterations of the Confidant. I’m a fan of the toothy paper, but this doesn’t eat a graphite pencil to a nub in short order. Also, my fountain pen felt great on the page but the ink did seem to spread wider than my nib size. There was no feathering or bleed through but it should be noted that my EF looked a bit like an F. I love BF’s cream-colored paper and the pale green accents on this color are subtle but lovely.

My low points on this journal are that they spend 11 pages explaining how to review each item represented by an icon. This would have been a perfect Confidant to introduce a pocket- to collect ticket stubs and other ephemera gathered as you gather your reviews. The top 10 lists in the back seem a bit redundant, but also like they could be useful for some folks. An index might be helpful in finding where particular items have been reviewed.

The high points are definitely the color and design. Like all Baron Fig products, this is well designed and work really well for their intended purposes. It also assists in giving something some thoughtful inspection, examining why you might like something or dislike it, without snap judgment. As someone who reviews all the things that comes into her orbit (from restaurants to books to pens and paper) this is a fun way to focus my thoughts and not nitpick every tiny thing with the thing I’m reviewing. I do think this is far too small a format for books, but that’s just me.

Overall, this is a great starter review journal for someone you know that likes to think deeply about all their things, or if you want to start out reviewing and don’t want to use an online service- this is a great tool.

Purple. Blue-ish purple, not the normal burgundy shade of purple Baron Fig often uses, nope, true purple on the violet side of the spectrum. If this were an ink shade it would be referred to a blurple. The shade of purple hit me straight away when I browsed the Baron Fig site checking out their newest limited editions.

When I was a kid I loved purple. I loved purple so much that every gift-giving occasion I was gifted purple things. Until I hit 13 and I hated the world and only wanted things in black. Deep down my affection for purple was still there.

If you haven’t gotten it yet this pen is purple, and it is a lovely shade of purple. Gorgeously blueish in hue.

Etched into the sides of the pen are Castlevania-esque stairs, bricks, and windows. I’m talking old school 1990s era Nintendo Castlevania, not the new Netflix cartoon Castlevania. The version of the game with an endless scroll of jumping and swinging as you kill vampires in the castle. The design is simple, covers the whole body of the pen and is elegantly done. I’m not sure a casual observer would recognize the design as a fortress/castle.

I always love Baron Fig’s packaging. The presentation makes these pens perfect for gifting, maybe to someone else but also for yourself. BF hasn’t made a Stone for the Click yet, but the base of the tube is perfect to act as a desk stand until they adapt the stone for the Click.

I like the slim feel of the click, if you have smaller hands this might be the perfect Squire for you. You can see my previous review of the OG Click here. My issues with the nock still stand, I find is soft and mushy and I miss the satisfying click of a good nock. This nock is sturdy and works really well, but it just doesn’t give me a good click.

I like this pen, it’s slim and comfortable and feel great in hand. The nock is a bit mushy and doesn’t have a resounding CLICK when depressed, At $50 it isn’t cheap, but like I’ve argued before, a refillable pen body is an investment that is well worth the initial expense. Get yours here.