Okay, so I couldn’t wait for the end of the year and moved into my Filofax early. For December I’m just using lined notepaper for my daily sheets with a simple hand-written the date at the top of each page. So far, the daily pages are working well. They provide plenty of room to write out any appointments plus tasks for the day, and add a little bit of fancy decoration when the mood takes me. What remains to be seen is whether the narrow focus on one day at a time feels right to me. It’s the most practical solution for the smaller page sizes – I need at least an A5 page to feel comfortable with a week to view layout – but I can’t rule out running blindly back to A5 if I start to lose control of my year.
When it came to setting up the Filofax Holborn, I decided to go with Filofax’s plastic dividers from the “Expressions” collection with their paint-speckled design. I previously used these in my personal-sized Original binder and they were the obvious choice when I wanted a quick and simple set-up to start off the Holborn. To be frank, I haven’t got very far yet with adding all the information I think I want. I am telling myself that it will come with time, but I am also wondering if this signals a lack of commitment. Only time will tell. I am using my Montblanc Slimline fountain pen as my Filofax companion. Although it is not a decent match in colour, it fits the pen loop perfectly, has a needle-fine nib which is just great on the paper I’m using, and, really, you can’t be more iconically 1980s than a Filofax and a Montblanc, now can you?
Speaking of pens, I have been less than comfortable with the pens and inks I have on the go this past few weeks, and I’ve been on the brink of changing things up, yet here we are in mid-December and still almost the same set-up. I swapped out Cacao du Brésil for Kaweco’s Toffee Brown, but neither is really making me totally happy. Yama-Budo and Yu-Yake are lovely accent colours, yet I’m hankering for very basic, very dark blue at the moment. Perhaps today is the day I change it up. Then again…
What I can say is that I am very much drawn to the extra-fine nib of my Kaweco Iguana Blue pen on the 6mm ruling of the Letts of London notebook. Anything else seems slightly too cramped. I’m loving the book, loving the paper, and have already bought a second one, yet I can envisage coming to a point where I will tire of using itsy-bitsy nibs and yearn for the space to spread out with some of my very slightly wider nibs. I feel that I need to be keeping my options open. In fact, as we’re at the point of the year when we start to ponder resolutions, I have the urge to start building up a bit of a stock of my preferred paper options again. I had a vague idea of doing that this year, but never really made it past the dreaming stage. How enticing it would be, though, to have a basket full of lovely paper goods to dip into when the mood is on me. And that is something well worth writing in my Filofax.
Pam Alison Knits 
Oh, you are driving me crazy with the image of a basket filled with writing papers! ❤️ I love a fine tip that makes scratching sounds when I write. So Dickensian!
The whole writing papers area is one where I’m feeling the need of a bit of “out with the old, in with the new”. I’ve got things I’ve been sitting on for years which aren’t ever going to quite fit my personal taste, but which I have been loathe to let go of. I can see how useful they are, I’m just not realistically ever going to use them. Then I’m fighting shy of buying things I know I’ll gobble up because I have this other stuff lingering.
Itsy-bitsy nibs and I simply don’t get along. Their usage always ends with holes in the paper. Ink color is a reflection of mood. I have 2 reds, a black and a green. I canot be sure if that means I am mad or festive?
Hi, Danny. I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about your experience with very fine nibs because I don’t find them “sharp” as such. However, it may have something to do with our expectations of how the lines – our handwriting – is meant to look. My problem is that with broader nibs my handwriting looks all fat and squat and I have to force myself to write really big in order to get the proportions right. Yet I look at photos people take of their handwriting using broad nibs and it looks quite delicate. How can that be? I think maybe if you’re used to your lines being a particular width because you like medium-broad nibs, then maybe there’s an inclination to push a very fine nib to try and get more ink out of it and that would lead to mangled paper. The paper itself, of course, is the other factor. If you’re mainly using pens that gush ink you’re probably gravitating towards paper that suits them, but it might not bring out the best from a very fine nib because those work best with a slightly more absorbant – or maybe just a thicker – paper.
2 red inks, a black and a green makes you a very nicely balanced person who appreciates varierty in their writing instruments, as I am sure you already know!
Hi Pam, excellen points (pun intended). Much like yourself I was not a fan of my handwriting with a medium nib. I like to say I was victimized by BIC, which in part was my own doing. I simply apply far too much prressure when writing. 20 years ago when I started using Waterman I only used trhe paper supplied by my employer and is was cheap. The fine nibs went through the paper and medium nibs sucked up so much ink. I got to the point I held the pen upside down – yes the feed was facing up just to mitigate the ink flow. I have learned to apply less pressure and continue to make strives at that plus the paper quality in general has improved. Delicate handwriting with broad nibs, I too wonder and would go so far as say am jealous. I would venture a guess that they exceptional control of the pressure applied, use quality paper and possibly a background with calligraphy.
I have fine nibs I use which I make an effort to apply light pressure – as a training excersie really. The other day a blogger told me to view handwriting as an art, like drawing. That I should slow down and enjoy it. That hit home and I am trying to apply what is said.
All the best
That was interesting to read that you had been using Yu-yake ink, received mine last week and found it is a nice orange compared to the Online orange ink which iI have been using. At the moment I have 2 of my pens filled with Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire and Montblanc Midnight blue and wonderwhether the Montblanc would fulfill your wish. Wish you a merry Christmas
Hi, Montblanc Midnight Blue is exactly the colour I’m yearning for and the only thing that’s holding me back from putting it into a pen is that I know what Santa is going to be leaving under my Christmas tree in a few short days and, believe me, Montblanc Midnight Blue has to go into that! Yu-Yake is a lovely colour and, as I’ve been persevering with the Kaweco Toffee Brown for my journal entries, I’ve been using Yu-Yake as my contrast colour for dates. The Iroshizuku inks are very lovely.