Feeling rough today for some reason. Good nights sleep and no sugar last night. I woke up a little groggy as always, but felt fine. But now? Pretty rough. Oh well.#
I'm writing this with that little fancy German pen with BulletJournal branding. I still don't get the hype. £28 and the ink is cutting out as I write! Let's switch to my £3-5 Uni-ball Jetstream 101. See, this is so much nicer. Sure, the ink isn't as thick or as black and sharp. But the ink doesn't cut out. And it's so much more comfortable to write with.#
I've put a cheap £25 fountain pen on my birthday list (and some cheap ink). I'm very curious what it's going to be like. I'm sure it will take some getting used to. But hopefully it will improve the look of my writing in my notebooks. I'm slightly concerned about comfort and ink smudging (with me being left handed). But hopeful it will [be] better than my beloved Uni-ball Jetstream 101, which is proving harder than you might think.#
Sometimes I count myself a very lucky beneficiary of the factory age.#
A fountain pen is called that because you no longer had to dip your nib into the ink. Instead there was a reservoir for holding several days worth of ink. The ink just kept on flowing out – like a fountain.#
I always love finding instances in history books of people moaning and worrying about new technologies or the decline of the next generation.#
Here’s one of a man moaning that the steel nibbed pen isn’t as good as the quill and that it’s worsening children’s handwriting:#
But not everyone approved [of steel nibs being used to write over the quill], no matter its quality or place of origin. In 1862, an unnamed correspondent for Scientific American found that all pens with a steel tip were barbaric, and all who used them hoodwinked. The greatest casualty was handwriting. 'Do not ninety-nine persons in a hundred use steel pens,' the magazine writer complained, 'and has more than one out of the ninety-nine the effrontery to say he can write with them? Lord Palmerston was quite right: the handwriting of this generation is abominable; and as new improvements in steel pens go that of the next will be worse. There is neither grace nor legibility in the angular scrawl that prevails now.' (p49)#
Now that I’m on the BulletJournal train (adapted slightly by me) I thought I’d give the Leuchtturm1917 x BulletJournal x Dreggriffel pen (that’s a lot of collabs) a go.#
Don’t know why I did. I’ve already found the perfect pen: uni-ball Jetstream 101. And this one cost £29! (the uni-ball costs £6 for 3!)#
It’s a pleasant enough looking pen, with decent weight. But doesn’t write as well as the uni-ball – and isn’t as comfortable.#
Oh well. Maybe I’ll keep it at my desk and use it when I plan my day.#
