www-cygnoir-net-9nlp2w.txt (5660B)
1 [1]cygnoir.net Profile Photo 2 3 [2]cygnoir.net 4 5 Fiction, foibles, and fountain pens from a black swan with digital wings. Posts 6 about writing, books, public libraries, community, games, analog delight, and 7 food. 8 9 • [3]About 10 • [4]Now 11 • [5]On This Day 12 • [6]Reading 13 • [7]Writing 14 • [8]Analog 15 • [9]Photos 16 • [10]Bookmarks 17 • [11]Racial Justice 18 • [12]Faves 19 • [13]Search 20 • [14]Subscribe 21 • [15]Stats 22 23 [16]Jan 20, 2024 ∞ 24 25 How I Pocket Notebook 26 27 Many different creativity systems^[17]1 stress the importance of the “capture” 28 or “inbox” step — whatever you call it, it’s a place where you gather your 29 ideas. It should be frictionless and ubiquitous. 30 31 Though we exist in an age where technology has wrested the “frictionless and 32 ubiquitous” narrative away from analog tools, I maintain that the old ways can 33 be the best ones in this case. Enter the pocket notebook. 34 35 Much has been written by smarter minds about the pocket notebook and its myriad 36 uses. For this post, I’ll be focusing on my particular setup and sharing how I 37 use it in the hopes you might also find it useful. 38 39 First, the pocket notebook itself. My rules are minimal: The paper has to take 40 fountain pen ink well, and the notebook can’t be something too fancy to use for 41 any old thing. Currently I’m using a [18]Lochby Pocket Notebook refill for the 42 dot-grid Tomoe River paper, which is more fountain pen ink friendly than others 43 I’ve tried. 44 45 And this would be enough for my frictionless and ubiquitous capture notebook, 46 except I am very rough on notebooks and wanted a cover to keep it somewhat 47 intact. My local stationery store, [19]Oblation Papers and Press, sold me a 48 beautiful leather cover by [20]Goby Design that fits pocket-sized refills like 49 the Lochby one I use as well as pocket notebooks from Field Notes, Goulet Pens, 50 and Moleskine. The leather is sturdy and has worn beautifully. 51 52 OK, notebook in a cover.^[21]2 That’s enough, right? Well ... not quite. As I 53 started to use this combination, I realized that I needed something to keep it 54 closed when I wasn’t using it, and open while I was. There are fancy brass 55 clips that Traveler’s Notebook aficionados have shared, but I’m lower-fuss than 56 that. I had a couple large-size magnetic [22]OliClips lying around, so I tried 57 affixing one to the front cover and another to the back. Et voila! A makeshift 58 magnetic closure plus bookmark plus notebook-holder-opener (whatever that’s 59 properly called). 60 61 an open pocket notebook in an olive green leather cover with iridescent 62 OliClips on front and back and an iridescent Kaweco Sport fountain pen 63 64 Now we have a notebook in a cover with a magnetic closure and bookmark. We’re 65 done, right? But but but ... what if it had a pen loop? I tried sliding on a 66 spare pen loop, but it bulked everything up awkwardly. I stared at this a long 67 time until I simply slipped the clip on my Kaweco Sport onto the edge of the 68 OliClip on the back cover. And it stayed! I haven’t tested the pen-clippiness 69 with something larger than a pocket pen, so exercise caution here. 70 71 an olive green leather pocket notebook cover with OliClips and an iridescent 72 Kaweco Sport fountain pen 73 74 OK, now I’m done. 😂 75 76 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 77 78 1. I’ve stopped using the phrase "productivity systems" because it implies 79 that our most important work is that of production. Creation is much more 80 important to me. [23]↩︎ 81 82 2. And now I have The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” in my head: “Notebook in 83 a cover, I know, I know, it’s serious.” [24]↩︎ 84 85 • [25]#Photos 86 • [26]#Fountain Pens 87 88 • Kudos 89 • [28]✍️ Reply by email 90 • [29]✴️ Also on Micro.blog 91 92 [30]Also on Bluesky 93 94 Copyright © 1998-2024 [31]Halsted M. Bernard · [32]☑️ 95 96 [33] [] 🕸️💍 97 98 Hosted by [34]Micro.blog. 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