Nero’s Notes and Cultpens in the UK are one of the best sources for finding Derwent pencils. Derwent’s website has an outstanding online shop that even lets you build-your-own tin of pencils. Unfortunately they do not ship to Canada. I may eventually use them alongside my account at MyGermany, which I have used for (very expensive) drop-shipping of European-only products.

I made my first buy from CW Pencils, which is one of the few online shops where I can get Musgrave pencils from the US. The Tennessee Reds wood box and pencils inside both have a strong cedar fragrance, and don’t write too bad. The Harvest Professionals are indeed nicer than your average HB, and I really enjoy the feel and weight of the round 600 News line.

Vintage Canadian pencils are what got me started on this journey, but they are devilishly hard to find. My sources vary from ebay to Etsy to Kijiji, with yard sales and thrift stores a potential source one day when we are not trapped at home and afraid of anything touched by human hands.

I was very excited to recently get a large package of goodies from Endless Stationery. Their package included mostly leather goods (a selection of pen and notebook cases) some notebooks featuring “Regalia Paper” (which appears to be their in-house brand), and my first retractable fountain pen.

From CultPens and CW Pencils I ordered a variety of items from Caran d’Ache, a brand quite prized by artists and writers alike. Caran d’Ache seems to stake its reputation on being expensive and being Swiss, and therefore being good. Whilst these three things may often coincide, in the case of their graphite pencils, I don’t find it to be true. Their lead grades are the hardest of all cores I’ve tried, and I find it difficult to write with anything harder than a 2B, both in their woodcase pencils and the leads for their clutch and mechanical pencils.

This was my first purchase of pencils in I can’t say how many years. Easily eight.

I’ve missed the boat on any new Canadian pencils, which apparently ended in the early 2000s or 2010s (notwithstanding the current Mexico-made “Canadianas” from Papermate). But since so much of the world’s timber harvest comes from here, and major paper and packaging plants are based here, I figured I should be able to find some good paper products made here.

Still working on it.

Calepino makes possibly the best notebooks I know of. I love their true A5 brightly-coloured threadbound books with a nice chipboard cover and an inner cover page.

Only recently did my accumulation of quality pens grow great enough that some sort of storage and organization method other than keeping them all in their original cases or boxes become necessary. Mind you, I do still have a few pens that I regularly use whose value and quality don’t warrant much consideration of storage or protection, but the number that do is increasing, and so I was very happy to obtain the Leather Zippered 20-Pen Case from Galen Leather.

A recent visit to Pen Chalet resulted in obtaining an Aurora Style pen, in a lovely muted blue. I loved the simple design and rose-gold accents.

Because what I need more than anything else in the world is more fountain pen ink, I managed to obtain the beloved Diamine Inkvent calendar.

I recently gave props to the Benu Briolette, probably the best pen I’ve ever written with. But sometimes we also have to talk about bad pen experiences. Such was mine with the Montverde Ritma, a pen that, whilst at about half the price of the Briolette, is still not a cheap pen, and which Montverde markets as quite a high-end writing experience.

I have been admiring the designs of Benu for a while, and watching with interest their recent move from Moscow to Armenia. Quite an understandable decision as a company that is very dependent upon a global export market. Whilst the Russian market is large, I doubt it could currently replace the global high-end sales benu had enjoyed prior to wartime sanctions.

I’m a systems kind of guy. I find it hard to really get into something if I don’t have a system to properly do the enjoying. Most of my systems are essentially “use it up in a structured way.” And most follow a general pattern of saving the best for last. This has the unintended consequence of leaving me to always feel like I’m using the less-than-ideal things in my collection - whether it be my collection of pencils, papers, inks, bath soaps or refrigerator leftovers. I would love to write a letter on the beautiful new Rhodia pad I just bought, but first I have to make it through this 2000 pages of crap I salvaged from Hilroy notebooks.

One of the stationery subscriptions I’m currently enjoying is from Stickii, a monthly sticker club with the unique feature of dispatching their sticker selections in an A5 6-ring binder storage page. It’s been a really fun way to start storing and organizing the stickers I already had, and each month another page arrives in the mail, already-full, and no matter how hard I seem to try using them, I still seem to refill these pages faster than they go empty.

Gravitas is an Irish-based company essentially run by Ben Walsh. Originator of a concrete pen, most of his current offerings are aluminum with various patinas, electroplating, anodizing and enamels, giving some interesting and original colour ways.

During my papeterie shopping spree a couple months back, I grabbed this 3-pack of notebooks from Rifle Paper Co. The artwork and design was excellent, but I ran into some problems when testing them for fountain pen use.

My new favourite pen is this lovely German-made Diplomat Magnum, recently ordered from Goulet. This pen has it all: writes smoothly, never making me fear of torn paper, even papers that aren’t fountain-pen friendly; a wet tip that flows consistently with no need to adjust or prime even after many days unused; a light and easy feel in the hand and a slim and small nib.

I made a recent visit to Nota Bene, Montréal’s glorious and very comprehensive stationery shop. I was on a bit of a mission to find some fountain pen friendly index cards, as well as some more of my stationery staples. I was quite pleased by some of the things I found.

A mini post just to show the beautiful sticker sheets from Artpetry, a Ukrainian artist who has incorporated the traumatic imagery of life in wartime to be creative and bring a little beauty to even the worst of the world.