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Blue or black?

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11:16 / 21.06.05

Maybe I went to the weird school! My school gave you all your books, jotters etc, but you had to bring your own pens. I've no recollection of them having to be a specific colour, though I suspect we weren't allowed to write in red, because that's what teachers used.

12:06 / 21.06.05

Our primary school too supplied our pens (blue) and forbade us from using biros though they would allow us to use fountain pens if so desired. As mentioned earlier I'm a southpaw and thus had to battle various teachers over my choice of pens. Once we hit secondary school you had to supply your own.

12:36 / 20.07.05

well at my primary school they also supplied stationary but we where only aloud to write in pencil. how bloody annoying is that. so i would come home covered in lead. then when i reached high school pens where aloud, so i used blue bic pens, because there was a colour change from pencil to blue ink. then as i reached the higher years my blue pens went missing every lesson. so i changed to black. now i always find a black pen to write in,i noticed i write neater in black. black bic to be precise. (i found they only splodge if they are old) you should splash out on a bumper pack guys!!!

Waltzing Ganainm

20:19 / 20.07.05

(De-lurks) I've got a variety of coloured ink cartridges to go with my collection of cheap and cheerful Inoxcrom fountain pens. I think hot pink and purple are my favourites, though if I have to be official for whatever reason I tend to prefer black. In reality I just use whatever comes to hand that the kids haven't run off with.

20:46 / 20.07.05

For everyday use i prefer a plain black biro.

For any official letter or form i go back to the old official use of the potato printing method.

I suggest you all do the same.

08:21 / 21.07.05

I used to prefer green pilot pens, but my teachers were always telling me that they wouldn't accept work written in green pen, so I eventually stopped using them. I always hated regular pencils. The way the feel on paper sends shivers up my spine. They're just awful, truely awful. I never ever use them. I finally gave in and started using mechanical pencils a few years ago because, well, I do a lot of math. Ya know? So now I use mechanical pencils for most everything, and I have a favorite brand. I think it's bic, but I can't tell, because all the pencils in my pack have the part that says the brand chewed off. Other mechanical pencils either break too easily, or they take slightly longer to click, or they're not as satisfying to chew on. No one ever nics my pens or pencils. They'd have to be insane to want to nic a pencil that's been chewed all to hell. I chew on everything excessively. I always break my pencils by chewing them too much long before they're out of lead.

04:16 / 22.07.05

Both. I use disposable fountain pens that come in three packs of purple, black, and blue. I actually prefer the purple.

17:15 / 09.08.05

i also remember in high school in yr 8 or something like that, my geography teacher (who i did not like at all) always used to use purple ink. it used to annoy me loads. although purple is one of my favourite colours, i think it was mainly jealously b'cos we had to use blue or black.

i still use black though :-)

lonely as a cloud...

06:24 / 10.08.05

I use one of these; they come with a black gel ink wotsit, so I've been using black recently, but once that runs out I have my choice of purple, red or blue. I love my pen.

10:33 / 10.08.05

A real mix for me. My (personal) diary/filofax has a Pental Gel Rollarball always with it. Black ink.

My (work) diary/filofax has a blue inked gel rollerball with cushioned grip.

But for everyday jotting/doodling/note taking I reach for the trusty propelling pencil (0.7mm). One of the benefits of having a Dad who worked as an engineer and draghtsman, never had to buy one of these and rarely had to buy any of the leads (although this has reminded me I've recently run out and need to grab a tube).

17:16 / 10.08.05

Green or violet.

10:03 / 11.08.05

Teal Green at the moment mainly because my sister had a load of calligraphy inks she didn't want anymore and also because my fountain pen writes better with those types of inks yet there is no black amongst them.........

Oh well the inhumane world makes me write in Teal Green, Red, Purple or Gold. It's not fair I tell you.

Crux Is This City's Protector.

13:51 / 04.01.07

Figured I'd bump this thread rather than start a new one, only slightly more general, for pen talk in general.

I imagine that the pen/moleskine geek crowd and the barbelith geek crowd have a non-trivial intersection. You are writers, yes? You care about writing. So let's talk craft. What do you like to write with? Do you have any favorite, most-loved, most bitterly-resented pens? Or, for that matter, papers?

I started my fountain pen career with a Rotring 600.

It's the "new" design, with slight differences in construction after (I believe) Rotring was bought out. I loved the body of it; very hefty octagonal metal with a thin, straight barrel, a far cry indeed from the more showy and bulbous classic Mont Blanc style (you will see, however, that it is absurdly long with the cap posted. A minor inconvenience, but I managed to never lose the cap when writing, so it worked out). I don't know if I could whip one of those out in public. The writing, while not the marvelous dream that some fountain pen enthusiasts characterise the form as, was surely many steps above any ballpoint, and these days I find myself cringing when I have to pick up a bic.

Which, I'm afraid, I have to do rather frequently, for my Rotring flat-out broke. The construction is widely agreed to have suffered for their buyout, and I guess I have to agree. First the cap started falling off, and so I had to squeeze it with pliers in order to make it fit more snugly. I was willing to live with that, though, until the entire head—the nib and the piece it fits into—started wobbling terribly. You can't write with a wobbly pen, friends. There's really no way to fix that, so I had to hang up my spurs.

Just last night I ordered (without having taken it in my own hands, I'm afraid, which is a fault of mine) a Lamy Studio,

from the German manufacturer Lamy. I think I did a little more research this time, and I believe it's gotten good reviews. I opted for the steel nib instead of the gold; I couldn't justify the extra 35 dollars. It's not as delightfully skinny and straight as my previous one, but neither is it a big goofy swollen thing, unsuited for the shirt pocket. So we'll see. I miss always having a pen on me, and I hate to write with a ballpoint (biro, I'm led to understand). It should get here soon!

Tell me of your relationships with your styli.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

14:03 / 04.01.07

I don't mind Moleskine
as something that fits
in my pocket but
I've found over time
that I tend to prefer
full-sized pads as
I can usually write
more words per line
and that means less
smearing and less
space lost in the
margins and it's a
lot easier to read
and re-type the notes
later when I finally
get home to my
computer.

Moleskines are sexy
as hell but not really
practical except
that they fit in
your pocket rather
well. But really,
I do 90% of my
writing at the
computer, and
another 15% in cafes
where I have room on
a table or counter
to put a full-size
pad down, so I
usually just use
my Moleskine for
emergency notes or
ideas that just
can't wait.

I've tried many times to care about pens, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I tend to buy Uniball Vision pens, because they have nice ink flow and they're midranged in price, but I just can't get around spending a ton of money on a pen. I appreciate that other people really dig them, but like nice tiepins and hats and fine scotch, it's just not something I can bring myself to plonk money down on.

Crux Is This City's Protector.

17:42 / 04.01.07

and this is where I say: you just haven't yet had the right scotch, and haven't used the right pen.

19:13 / 04.01.07

Damn this thread!
I just had to go out and buy a new fountain-pen and some multi-coloured catridges just because I read it.

Crux Is This City's Protector.

19:45 / 04.01.07

Gosh. I didn't expect to have that power.

well, WADJAGIT?~!

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:05 / 04.01.07

Moleskine's all right and I've got one such book on the go at this very moment, although it's a bit smaller than I'd prefer. Normally, I go for a full-sized, lined, hardback notebook but lately I've strayed into the spiral-bound and the softcover. Maybe I'm just becoming less neurotic about it.

Pens, pens, pens. Black ink. Generally prefer the black gel pens. At the moment I've been using a black Pilot Hi-Tecpoint Fine. Crisp but fluid lines. I generally avoid the Biro/Bic varieties but there's no real defense when I'm at work and therefore disconnected from my main line-makers. The fluid gel lines help me spread out my sentences and encourage me to keep writing while I find the drier varieties of ink slow me down and make each word more laboured.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

21:09 / 04.01.07

I run up the bills at work when I go on supply runs by stocking myself up on Uni-ball Vision pens in black or green. Black for 'me' writing and green for work stuff. I originally picked green so that my co workers could tell if something was written or filled out by me. Of course within about 6 months one of my coworkers started using green as well, but her handwriting is far better then mine so we can keep things straight.

22:07 / 04.01.07

When I can, for a writing-meditation group I'm in (in particular), I use my Waterman Phileas blue marble fountain pen with florida blue ink cartridges. I write on a big drawing pad with nicely textured, sturdy recycled drawing paper, and a hard cardboard back (because we write on our laps) and I don't like lines, so no lines.

For grading papers: pencil! I have to be able to change my mind; sometimes when you hear the exact same, inane argument 45 times over, you start to get a little incensed. It's good to be able to erase a snarky comment. And red--no one wants to see red ink all over their papers. So I avoid it.

Other work stuff--generally black, often gel pens but they often are a little smeary.

23:14 / 04.01.07

Can't believe I missed this on the 1st go around... I'm obsessive about my pen choice.

I've been using a black Pilot Precise V5 extra fine for the past decade. I'd say that I've probably had a handful of days in that period of time that it wasn't on my person. Always in the right pocket corner waiting for the next call-to-action.

Great for doodling, sketching, drawing, note-taking on just about any surface without too much tooth. Cold-press cause a bit more bleed than I prefer. I do like pencils (or soft charcoal) for certain tasks, but I've adapted my drawing style over time to account for my implement of choice. Sort of a loose building-up method.

Moleskins are nice but I find that I only use one when I'm being more deliberate about what I'm putting down. It pains me to see half-cocked things jotted down here and there.

23:44 / 04.01.07

I bought a crappy WHSmith fountain pen, and a cheap, horrendously bright, orange note-book.

These things are not important.

What is important is that ink. It's in three colours: barbie, crocus and cyan.

It makes me moist in a creative writing way.

Crux Is This City's Protector.

00:11 / 05.01.07

Have you guys heard of the Mont Blanc hack? Basically, you buy any one of a number of Pilot gel pens (like the G2, for instance), and you buy a Mont Blanc rollerball refill (for six bucks, as opposed to 200 for the whole pen). If you clip just a tiny bit off the end of the Mont Blanc refill, it fits perfectly in the Pilot -- thus providing you with a pen that writes exactly like a Mont Blanc at a tiny fraction of the cost. I just did it (what can I say? I'm feeling pensive today), and it was absurdly easy. The line is noticeably smooth, both to feel and to see.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:46 / 05.01.07

I'm not sure I could bring myself to hack a pen. It'd be like fucking with some divine object. Similarly, I wouldn't apply glue & macaroni to the Holy Grail. And I'm not even Christian!

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