Via Postalco Jotter | Cool Material.

Jace’s thoughts on keeping notebooks:

I have stacks of pocket-sized notebooks full of observations made over the years and I’m in the process of re-writing these notes in a neater format along with photos that are related to each entry. Some folks use word processing programs and type their recordings, but I prefer mine to be handwritten. I do this because I feel something is lost when you type them up. Handwritten notes have character and personality. Each stroke of the pen or pencil contains a part of the person that made the observation.

More details on note-taking methodology:

At one time I used 4”x 6” lined spiral notebooks, but now prefer Moleskine notebooks, specifically the 3 ½” x 5 ½” unlined reporter’s version which has acid-free paper. My pen of choice is the Sharpie pens that don’t bleed through, are water resistant and acid free, specifically the Sharpie Ultra Fine Point and the Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Retractable. But sometimes I’ll use a good old fashioned #2 pencil.

And here’s a sample interior:

This makes me want to stop and look closely at things more often…

See more at Journals of an Amateur Naturalist: Capturing Notes in the Field.

These 4×3 1/8-inch journals are filled with 48 gridded / perforated sheets, making them perfect for notes on-the-go. And with their five slip pockets and elastic band for security, they’re also a good hiding placce for those secret love notes.

They’re only $5 at the GAMA-GO website.

Via GAMA-GO’s ‘Pocket Journals’ | Collect3d.

The Piccadilly is on top of the stack in the photo.

Below it, the red notebook is one of the monthly booklets from the Moleskine Color-a-Month Daily Planner. I have to say, I’ve been ambivalent about using this planner since almost the day I started. It’s nice to have a very slim booklet to carry around rather than the bulk of a full year page a day planner, but I’m still bothered by all that frontmatter, and there’s no bookmark to help you keep your place– I’ve been using the small binder clip you see in the photo. In the first few days of January, I didn’t think I’d be able to stick with this planner for a full year, so I ran out and bought a softcover page per day Moleskine planner. Now I’m on the fence about which one to continue with– the further I go in the Color-a-Month,  the more it seems like a waste not continue… but it also seems like a waste not to use the other planner. I wish I could do a drawing a day (like these) but I think that’s a little over-ambitious!

But I do manage to draw more intermittently, and that’s what the bottom two notebooks in the photo are for: two Hand-Book Journals, one of which I used for sketches on a recent trip, and another that’s been used for drawings at home. I didn’t fill the travel journal completely, so I’ll either continue it on a future trip, or use the rest of it once I’ve finished the home sketchbook.

Not included in this photo are a couple other notebooks I use occasionally: a 2001 Moleskine Daily Planner that I’ve been using to jot down dreams, and a small lined Piccadilly notebook where I’ve been keeping track of books I read. And a Kikkerland WritersBlok notebook that I use for my French class.

So that comes to 7 or 8 notebooks with some degree of active usage right now. It almost doesn’t seem like enough to make me a true notebook addict… maybe I should start a few more!

I found this batch of notebooks when I was home for Christmas– I guess I’d missed them on all previous sweeps of my parents’ house. It’s an odd assortment, from when I was in junior high school through my first post-college years when I was living at home again for a little while.

Most of this bunch are the usual 3×5″ spiral notebooks but there are a few interesting oddities. The Doctor Who Diary is not something I ever used, but must have been a gift from someone, as I loved that show when I was a kid. The silvery-looking notebook in the bottom row was handmade– I glued together a stack of little paper slips that my aunt used to bring home from work, and then I covered the outside with duct tape and put an orange address label on it. The duct tape actually made for a nice flexible, durable cover and the notebook is surprisingly intact after about 30 years! The black notebook in the upper row is another odd one– it’s a standard plastic-covered looseleaf, but for some reason I must have decided the covers were too stiff– I sliced them open on the insides and slid out the cardboard inserts.

I can’t even begin to describe all the goofy, fun stuff I found inside the notebooks, so I’ll just leave you with this one mystifying tidbit:  in the 1981 Reminder With Maps, there was a page where I’d scrawled this one word in large letters: “DYMAXION!!!!”

Her comments: different elastic, doesn’t open as flat, and the paper is whiter and coarser. Worth a try at about 1/4 the price of a Moleskine! (At least if you live in the Philippines.)

Has anyone else tried one?

Read the full review and see more photos at The Carnet Challenge | JessicarulestheUniverse

Gil says:

“i’ve been trying desperately to locate any surviving specimens of a spiral notebook i used as a junior high student in 1968-1970. it was a 9 1/2″ by 6″ spiral notebook with brown board cover, 3 section and 150 pages. what made it unique was that the wire spiral  was covered with a green plastic binding. it was not a novelty item-you could buy it in any stationery or candy store and it was manufactured by one one of the big companies, mead or national, i can’t recall. i’d pay dearly to find just one for purchase!”

After some further correspondence, Gil sent me these notebooks, which are similar to what he’s looking for: one a Mead notebook that is widely available, and one home-made model! I wasn’t familiar with that particular Mead notebook style and was quite impressed– it has some nice extra features like notecards and pockets, and the covered spiral is actually a great feature–it’s so annoying when those wires get caught on something!

So try to picture these with a brown board cover and green plastic over the spiral– can anyone help Gil find this notebook?

Thanks to anyone who can chime in, and thanks also to Gil for sending me these samples for my collection!

Click on the image to see more from the artist’s Flickr photostream.

And here’s what she has to say about them:

This is a pile of notebooks gathered from around my bedroom (I’m sure there are more hidden on shelves, in closets & drawers). In this pile, there are spiral notebooks, leather notebooks, still-wrapped notebooks (for when I finish my current notebooks), half-ripped out notebooks (I have a bad habit of looking at what I’ve written later and thinking it’s dumb), school notebooks, personal notebooks, 4 small Moleskine notebooks (the “legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso and Chatwin”), lined and unlined notebooks; you get the idea.Superfluous, you think? Unnecessary? I can’t help it. I don’t know what it is about pretty notebooks and journals, stationary, pens and lists. I gravitate to and accumulate them. They give some sort of pleasure with an associated productivity that is magnetic and seductive to me.

Magnetic and seductive… I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Read more at Slightly Lovely: Extravagantly Noted.

Here’s the front and back cover. The removable paper band is made of a translucent vellum paper.

The back view provides the first departure from the standard Moleskine set of features– the elastic band attaches in the middle of the notebook instead of at the top and bottom

As you can see from the next photo, there is quite a large overhang of the cover beyond the paper.

The outside dimensions of the notebook are about the same as a Moleskine, but the pages inside are much smaller.

When you open the notebook, that elastic starts to seem really weird– the way it’s attached leaves it hanging quite loose.

At first I thought it might have been made that way so you’d have the option of wrapping it around sideways like a Ciak or Piccadilly Primo journal, but it’s too loose to work that way.

Here’s a closeup of the cover material– it’s hard to see, but it has an unusual texture, not the usual vaguely leather-ish feel. The closest thing I can compare it to would be the surface of a cinder block, or a stucco wall!

The inside front cover is blank:

But when you turn to the first page, there’s the space for writing your info, on the inside of the endpaper. The binding is a bit tight and the notebook doesn’t open flat very easily.

There’s no pocket in the back, just a logo.

So how about the paper? I’m sorry to say that it’s quite disappointing. It’s quite thin and showed some of the worst bleed-through I’ve seen in any notebook I’ve reviewed:

I have to say that I found this notebook very disappointing overall. The weird elastic and small, skimpy pages just bothered me. The price for these notebooks on Amazon is currently $5.49 (or $8-12 for a larger size), though I think it was about a dollar less when I bought mine. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re even worth that much– Piccadilly’s notebooks cost less at Borders and are far superior in quality. The only upside to these might be the color and texture of the cover, but that’s a matter of taste.

Specs:

96 lined pages

132 x 85mm

Made in Malaysia