Ferret Stack
A blog about poker, coding, beer, and a whole *stack* of other stuff
Anything Essential is Invisible
by Ferret Stack
It has been an intense two weeks, but the dust is finally settling. It’s been busy - sometimes stressful and sometimes fun. There are a lot of changes that I feel excited and optimistic about, and I’m sure I’ll share the developments soon!
One of the things that has really carried me through the fortnight is stationery. I have discussed this before in What’s the DEAL With Fountain Pens?, but pens, inks, paper, and everything in between has been a true saving grace for me in the past and now. I really came to appreciate this lately.
I’ll touch on this more later, when I discuss my first pen with you.
Highlights of my day would be writing in my new Quo Vadis Life Journal (which I am using as a bullet journal), listening to The Pen Addict podcast on my daily walks / commutes, and ordering a pen or two. I noticed the more stressful things became, the more I enjoyed diving into stationery. Not only this, but by enjoying my time with these tools, I found the stress unclogging. I was refreshed and ready to tackle the next task.
Pens and notebooks have kept me sane, but they’ve also helped me remain focused and pragmatic; I really couldn’t have done this fortnight without relying on them. Not as efficiently, anyway.
The start of this fortnight saw me move flats and I was accompanied by my Field Notes XOXO 2016 edition, while I scribbled down what I needed to do. While moving, I found some old ink samples and one of them, a very special edition, is loaded in the only pen that I inked up for this rotation (don’t worry: there will be plenty of discussion of other pens below).
While Field Notes helped me through the first week of the fortnight, the latter half was driven by three new notebooks that I’ve procured to help with my life planning while also developing a new notebook system.
In final accompaniment has been a book series that I very much enjoyed as a kid - Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend. It is written in a diary format and has been a nice relaxing read. I also managed to eat through Fahrenheit 451.
I’ve been busy. Let’s chat stationery!
Diplomat Aero
- Filling System: Standard international converter
- Nib: Medium
- Price Range: £190
- Ink: Montblanc Antoine St Exupery Encre de Desert
I knew that w/c 14-Apr was going to be busy with the flat move, so rather than my usual three; I only inked up one new pen for the fortnight (hauling out sofas and cleaning ovens instead of sipping a beverage and writing at my desk). But yet I managed to use not one; not two; not three; but four fountain pens over this fortnight.
How does he do it?!
A very good question, but first, allow me to chat a little about the Diplomat Aero and the ink I chose to accompany it.
The Pen
The Diplomat Aero is a fascinating pen with its zeppelin shape body. Though, given the hefty weight of the thing, it is more like a led zeppelin.
It’s a pleasure to hold and use. When sat out, it can get a calming coldness about it and I relish picking it up and warming it with my hands, as if I am giving it a little hug.
Back when I thought I could have made it as a nibmeister, I worked on this nib myself. It ended up as a serendipitous error because, somehow(??), the tip of the nib is kind of bent that makes it look like the pen has a quiff hairstyle. Not only does it look suave as a result, but it writes that way too. It gives a flare to the writing that I just can’t explain and I am very glad that I screwed this nib up.
The Ink
When cleaning out my old flat, I stumbled across some ink samples. I totally forgot about some of these - I picked a lot of them up during the old London pen club meets, and that was before Covid! One of the inks some kind folk gave to me was Montblanc Antoine St Exupery Encre de Desert
I believe the ink has evaporated in the vial. A quick google-fu tells me that this was released around 2017; seven years ago. That’s a fair while for an ink to be sat in a sample vial, I suppose.
As a result, it’s become a lot darker than the samples that I have seen online. Still, it’s a lovely rosey-burgundy red.
This ink (and the accompanying pen release) was made to commemorate the book The Little Prince. Like many children’s books, this has an important message contained within it for adults also. It is also one of two books that have made me cry.
(The other is Martin Heidegger’s Being & Time, but German phenomenology will do that to even the toughest of the tough)
When I saw this ink sample, I had a rush of emotions and I remembered that book. The part that had such an impact on me was the fox, and the lesson he bestows to the Little Prince has salience for my pen passion over the past few months.
Here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
I am yet to read anything as large or as true as this statement - not even Heidegger could capture life as succinctly as this.
Here is a sticker of a fox that I found on a lamppost during one of my walks during the fortnight.
Indeed, anything essential is invisible. To many people, pens, paper, pencils; whatever are just tools. But to me, they’re a gateway to something else. I could write a million blog posts and I still wouldn’t be able to accurately or wholly capture my love for stationery.
It makes my life better. It just does.
I can plan my time with stationery and I can enjoy the time consequently spent planning. We live in a fast paced and tech-driven, world; it’s so wonderful to just sit down and do things my way (Frank Sinatra agrees with me on this).
Stationery just makes me feel better. I get excited when I sit down to write or plan things, and as a result I am so much more focused and pragmatic in completing tasks and objectives.
Why does stationery make me feel that way?
Well, because. Because it’s important to me and I love it.
Other Pens
As it turns out, I suck at cleaning out fountain pens. Rather than add to the list that I need to clean, I figured I’d just take some from previous rotations and try to run them dry.
So I picked out my Esterbrook J inked with Diamine Ancient Copper and my TWSBI Eco inked with Diamine Earl Grey. The former ran out by the middle of the second week, and the Eco is slugging its way through. When the Esterbrook ran dry, I picked out my Wingsung 699 that is inked with KWZ Newkey Brown.
I will be cleaning them as soon as I publish this. I promise. Follow these links to read more about my thoughts on the:
Forget the Notebook: There’s an App For That!
Shoutout to the now-closed Nero’s Notes for that slogan
This month has been a planning month for me. Chief among the things I wanted to get sorted out was my system. I very loosely used a bullet journal approach previously, but I could tell there was something lacking. I had a net, but the net had holes in it, and I wanted to plug them.
I recently got a Quo Vadis Life Journal. This replaced some notebook that I bought off of Amazon at the start of 2024, which did the job, but its USP was page quantity, rather than page quality. As a result, writing in it felt bland and I ultimately knew my frugality was doing me a disservice.
So my Life Journal is where my ideas originate. I have yearly, half year, quarterly, monthly, and weekly spreads. Things just kinda filter down through here as I plan my objectives. Before I was mainly focused on the monthly and weekly, which kept the ship afloat, but didn’t really offer much acceleration.
I now also journal every day. Or I try to. I won’t lose sleep if I miss a day here or there, but broadly I would like to keep it consistent. At least four-out-of-seven days a week is a good thing to aim for in my mind. I now write these in my Quo Vadis Habana. This is just a beautiful slim shape of a notebook and it has the amazing paper to go with it.
I was a little wary of the ivory paper, as I prefer a white as pure as Jurgen Klopp’s teeth, but I’m getting on with it. I’d be more thrown if the ivory was in my bullet journal.
The third notebook that I am adding to my arsenal is a traveller’s notebook. I was on eBay one night and I saw a listing for a Jinhao 82, which was being sold with a leather notebook case for £16.
Bargain!
My idea for this is to write my daily plan from my weekly in my Life Journal. I reasoned the act of writing my tasks for the day on the day from a plan that I made at the start of the week is a nice way to ease into the start of the day, provides (yet another) excuse to use my pens, and it allows me to plug those aforementioned holes to make sure that stuff gets done.
I will write the time in one pen, the task heading in another, and any notes or subtasks in my third pen.
I have ordered some Midori 005 inserts, though I was pleasantly surprised that this notebook came with its own inserts with two blanks (including one that is a shade of cardboard-brown) and one ruled.
Finally, I am also carrying a pocket notebook. I would be lost without this thing. This is where I write all my out-and-about thoughts. While at my desk, I will use my Obsidian notebook to write things down.
I went to the shop one Saturday morning to buy three things: coffee, bread, butter. I neglected to write these down in my notebook, and guess what, I only came back with two of the items (I obviously remembered the most important thing: coffee).
Two Nibs are Better Than One Something I am trying to add to my rotation is a wider array of pens. While describing an interest in stationery, the bulk of this fascination has been taken up by fountain pens.
When I ordered the Traveller’s Notebook that I mentioned above, it came with a few extra goodies that I wasn’t expecting.
The main thing I’m interested in is what seems to be described as a double line pen - a pen with two points to it.
The one I have has a blue tip and a pink tip - my two favourite colours!
It’s really cool to write with this as you can use either the blue or pink, or if you hold the pen at a straighter 180 degree then you’re able to write with both points at once. This gives a sort of psychedelic 70s or 80s bounce, or shadow, to the writing.
I’ll have to pick up more of these.
Concluding Remarks
This has been a long post that reeks of optimism and excitement.
I am already excited to see what other things in stationery I’ll dive into over the next 14 days. I’ll be updating on my notebook usage (as this will be the first proper test of the system), as well as writing with two new pens that I bought over this month - the Jinhao 82 and Kaweco Sport.
I have a third pen that I will also use.. but for now, that’s a surprise.
If you’re also using stationery to ground yourself or explore your thoughts, I’d love to hear what’s working for you, so do drop me a message!
I’ll continue reading Adrian Mole over the next fortnight. I prefer the earlier books, but I’ll power on through with this one. It’s been a nice break from Nietzsche…
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