Notebook Porn

[MrsStarez]

The pen on the right looks like a LAMY Joy calligraphy pen. I know, because I was given one of them for Christmas

[tangleweeds]

The pen on the right looks like a LAMY Joy calligraphy pen. I know, because I was given one of them for Christmas

Oooh, nice! One of those is definitely on my want list!

[tangleweeds]

So here are 2021's practical language notebooks. so boring that I am not afraid to write in them. The small ones (6.5" x 9") are for individual languages and that big thick one in back (8.5" x 11") is for doing exercises. At the bottom is the somewhat more exciting set of many colors of erasable gel pens I got for Christmas/birthday (hint: my name is Noël).




Because those are so boring, here's some pen pron, featuring that same new set of Frixion erasable gel pens, two sets of Frixion erasable highlighters that I already had (you used to have to order these from Japan), and a handful of the purple version of said erasable gel pens that I use for most everything (I buy them by the box). I have done color-coded highlighting schemes for years (don't knock it, it helped me keep a 4.0 with max class load), and now I want to see if color-coding my note-taking is similarly helpful.




And finally, to keep things from being entirely dull, some colorful sticky things. The mini-washi tape is for covering romaji in books on Japanese, and I use the post-its as index tabs, to mark/match chapters between testbooks and workbooks, etc.




Index tabs in action: (note kawaii kitties peeking out of Reading Japanese)
(& apologies for the distractingly leaf-dappled sunlight in this older Japanese book photoshoot--those leaves are all long gone by now, shiver, sigh...)




Finally exasperated with scribbling out romaji, and with a brother in Japan showing off washi tape to adorn bullet journal pages via video chat, I got on the bandwagon too:




Addendum: Cats are helpful creatures

[Montmorency]

I love the multi-coloured post-it notes. However, I probably wouldn't use them regularly myself. I have a paranoia about anything much like that for study purposes, like using different coloured pens for different functions (like writing masculine nouns in black, feminine in blue, neuter in red, or what have you).

What if I can't find the right colour pen at the right time? panic, panic... then I'd have to write it in another colour and the system goes out of the window. It would be the same with coloured post-it notes, or anything else...

Kind of pathetic in a way, and in fact I do attempt to always have to hand at least blue and black ball point pens, and pencil, but I don't use them in a way such that any one colour has a specific meaning. I mainly use them to break up a "sea" of (say) black text with another colour (i.e. blue in my case, or pencil if that's all I have).

Or, in my version of Iversen's word lists, I will alternate between black and blue for target language and translation. If I were ever to be ambitious enough to try to emulate his multiple language word-lists (although it wouldn't be more than three languages in my case), I might be daring and venture into using red.

[Iversen]

I can't compete in the notebook compartment - unless you would accept a picture of a mountain of loose sheets in an enormous paperbin. I'm however happy to see that I have a serious competitor in Tangleweed in the couloured-pencils department. Writing in just two colours would be like eating porridge every morning, day in and day out. True, in any one wordlist or textcopy two or three colours might in theory suffice (the third one for the lines, but there I can use the light colours which are worthless for any writing because you can't read the result). And if I then should decide to continue with one more wordlist/textcopy in another language I could in principle continue with the same colours. But that would be boring. I want variation, and I like gaudy colours, and when it is possible to buy cheap pens in a lot of colours then I can't resist the temptation. And they don't have to be erasable, which makes them even cheaper.

However I don't have specific pens for specific languages or wordclasses -but when I do sudokus I do have kind of a system: if I'm stuck and I have to make a guess then I switch from blue or black to red, and then I use green for the opposite value in the test field if the first guess didn't function. And when I write music I always write in black with an oldfashioned fountain pen because it makes the prettiest noteheads.

[Deinonysus]

My wife gave me a new notebook for my birthday! My last one was almost full and too small. I'll be interested to see if I can fit all of my Mauger and CLE exercises in one notebook or if I'll need more!

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[MrsStarez]

Another fountain pen! I rest my case!

(And nice writing too...)

[Cèid Donn]

My wife gave me a new notebook for my birthday! My last one was almost full and too small. I'll be interested to see if I can fit all of my Mauger and CLE exercises in one notebook or if I'll need more!

Cool. I like dotted paper a lot although right now my only journals with dotted paper are my Japanese and Vietnamese ones because the dots helps me keep the characters spaced evenly. If I ever decide to study Modern Hebrew or pick up OT Hebrew again, I would probably use it for that too. '

I posted these pics in my log but I'll post it here too--these are the 2 Miquelrius 4-subject notebooks and the new canister of mixed book darts I got with some of my Christmas money:




I like Miquerlirius a lot--the paper they use is very smooth and good quality. The covers of these notebooks may look fuzzy--that's because the covers are printed on transparent plastic and light passes through them, giving them a slight look of depth. Unfortunately, my tablet is an old mid-range Samsung model and its camera is pretty garbage, so it can't capture it very well.

The newer canister of darts in on the right--the left one in my old canister that's so old it's started to get spots of corrosion on the exterior. They changed the canisters but not the darts themselves. At the time I posted this pic in my log, I mentioned I wasn't able to get it open. Well, my brother got it open today--it just had a very, very strong vacuum seal and now it's open, it's perfectly easy to use. But of course, in the process of getting it open that first time, darts got flung all over the room. That was fun. Not sure why the company thought they need such a strong vacuum seal--I've used these same brand of darts for many years, and I have textbooks and dictionaries with some that have been on the pages for a very long time, and I have never found one to corrode. Only the old canister. I use the regular Post-It (and Post-it wannabe) colored tabs too, but those get bent and ragged after time like this (this is my Teach Yourself Gaelic textbook that I've had for over 12 years--I've used it on occasion ):

[oho]

My latest purchase:

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[Neurotip]

That Hebrew looks pretty. The left and right side look a bit different, did you use an architect nib or a reed pen on the right side or did you use a stub nib for both sides but hold it sideways on the right?

I've found that my Arabic handwriting looks much nicer if I use a stub nib and hold it so the narrowest lines are vertical (there's probably a word for that...), instead of at an angle as I normally would. Do you know if this is a thing with Arabic?

Oh, and by the way, in your photo from Jan 9th - is that a Pilot Falcon by any chance?