Pen: Parker 51

This belonged to one or both of my grandparents: it now gets regular use for letters and so on.

Ink: Grey

I’m pretty conservative with inks in this pen, mostly avoiding wacky colours and saturated inks like the Diamine. This blend is fairly subtle but I feel it’s more than the sum of its parts: it gives a bluish intensity to the black, and makes the normal Skrip Blue-Black a bit bolder. Works with a lot of different papers. As mentioned earlier Diamine make several different blacks, and this one looks a bit like the Graphite.

Paper: Leuchtturm A5 Notebook, Dotted

This will be my new travelling notebook – it’s smaller than the Habana. Dots are the same spacing as the Rhodia dot pad. The paper seems to be fine with fountain pen ink, and a nice off-white.

One thing about Leuchtturm is they number their pages and put tables of contents inside, and they give you stickers for when the book is full and you file it away. I can take or leave that, to be honest. There’s a handy pocket in the back cover, like the Habana. But really this is just another black notebook with a ribbon and cream-coloured paper and a faux leather cover. It’s nice to write in and handle, which is what matters.

Test page (no bleeding or show through to speak of).

That’s it for National Stationery Week!