Field Notes Shenandoah Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

Summer is nearly here, all the plants are turning green and blooming, and there's an abundance of troublesome pollen in the air and on our cars. Before we know it, it will be the middle of the summer and we'll be begging for cooler weather. Given that information, I'm a little perplexed as to why I chose to open up the Shenandoah Field Notes over something more bright and cheery. My only excuse is that these covers are gorgeous and I can't get enough of them.

The Field Notes Shenandoah edition was released last Fall, and it's quickly become one of my personal favorites. After I used up my first pack, I ordered some more to keep on hand. They're good notebooks, and I've really enjoyed using mine.

Specifics

Being a Colors edition, the specifics are a tad different than the standard offering.

The Shenandoah edition was printed in September 2015 in a run of 40,000 3-packs. The three books each feature a popular tree found in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia: the Red Maple, Sweet Birch, and Chestnut Oak. The back of each notebook features a drawing of the leaf and a short description of the tree. Each notebook has a unique color scheme, which features a different color for the outside and inside of the cover.

The paper inside the notebooks are all grid pattern, and the paper is Finch 60# instead of the standard 50# found in their standard notebooks. Of course, it's the standard 3.5" x 5.5" size with 48 pages per book for a price of $9.95. No surprises there.

Performance

One of the first things that caught my attention about this edition was the paper they used for the insides. 60# weight, to be exact. The normal Field Notes books use 50#, which doesn't do well with fountain pens or wet liquid rollerballs (like a Retro 51 Tornado or Pilot Precise). I was excited to give it a try since I haven't had any direct experience with this paper before.

Long story short? It performs better than the standard Field Notes paper. But, if you dislike show-through, it will really disappoint you. I happen to really hate show-through, so I've relegated these notebooks for gel pen use only. Still, I wasn't hoping for too much with these notebooks because they're so utilitarian and easy to use with anything that you have on hand. It's part of the appeal for me.

Fine-tipped fountain pens will work well enough on the paper, but wetter, larger pens will destroy the paper. That being said, it's a smooth paper that's a joy to use. I just prefer using non-fountain pens with it. I had a slight hope that this would be a great fountain pen paper, but those hopes were dashed after I turned over the page I was testing on. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of feathering with most nibs/inks I tried, so that's a positive.

Bottom line, this paper can handle fountain pens, but it's not optimal. There are much better options out there in the 3.5" x 5.5" category.

Conclusion

I'm fairly picky about which Field Notes editions I like, and the Shenandoah edition really hit the sweet spot for me. They're gorgeous notebooks, the paper inside is a step above the normal books, and they use a grid pattern paper. My favorite color of the three is Sweet Birch. Honestly, if I could buy 3-packs of Sweet Birch, I would jump all over it.

You can still pick up the Shenandoah edition at several retail locations and online stores. I purchased a pack from Field Notes first and JetPens later.

Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook Review

A few times a year I pick out a product from JetPens that I think is one thing and ends up as not at all what was in my head. I’m bad at reading descriptions apparently. Most of the time it works out just fine because I am a stationery junkie and like almost everything. Additionally, it forces me to go outside of my comfort zone, which is a great position to be in when it comes to reviews.

The Midori Camel Spiral Ring Notebook is a kraft cover stock spiral bound notebook, or so I thought. It is also a kraft paper on the inside notebook, which I didn’t consider when selecting based on the title of the product alone. Turns out, this kraft paper is pretty great.

When I think of craft paper my mind immediately jumps to a paper bag. The surface of paper bags aren’t smooth, and if you have ever experimented writing on one you know they are porous and soak up ink. The paper in this Midori is not that at all. It is smoother than you think (although not dead smooth like standard Rhoda paper for example), and the ink performs far better than I anticipated with little to no bleed or feathering.

It was a given in my mind that I would test this paper with the Uni-ball Signo UM-153 white gel ink pen. It is tailor made for an application like this. The 1.0 mm line is thick and looks awesome. And since it was a gel ink pen there is little to no chance it would feather or bleed through the page.

What I wasn’t so convinced of was using liquid inks like found in rollerballs, brush pens, and fountain pens. I thought the brush pens would go right through the page, but they didn’t come close to doing that. Both of the Kuretake brush pens I tested were great, and might be the ideal pen for this notebook. No feathering at all from either. The Schmidt P8126 roller came close to bleeding through the page. I could tell it was getting into the fibers, but the ink never made it through the back.

Fountain pen inks behaved well, with the Califolio Andrinople from a medium stub nib being the only one showing the slightest bit of feathering around the edges. And that only occurred as it dried. When I was writing I didn’t see it at all. The lone negative is that it wasn’t smooth enough for me to use my XXF fountain pen nibs comfortably, but that is an outlier. Otherwise, this kraft paper exceeded every expectation I had for it.

The only thing left for me to determine is how to use the Midori Camel. It feels like purely a sketchbook at this point. I wouldn’t choose it for notes or journaling, but for drawings and sketches it is ideal, especially with easy rotation into landscape mode.

The A5 Slim size in this review contains 80 sheets for $14, and the smaller A6 Slim has the same amount of sheets for $10.75, both from JetPens.com.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Ink samples page

Ink samples page (back)

Maruman Mnemosyne N195 Spiral Notebook Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

The Maruman Mnemosyne N195 Special Memo Notepad, like its other Mnemosyne siblings, is a notebook that easily makes the cut for replacing your standard Moleskine notebook. Sure, it's spiral-bound, but you'll probably be able to forgive that once you try the paper.

I've always enjoyed the N196, which is the same format as this notebook except that the spiral binding is on top. While that's a great format for some purposes, I also enjoy using a side bound notebook as well.

It's easy to compare this notebook to the top-bound brother because they're very similar. The sizes are a bit different, where the side-bound notebook is A5 and the top-bound is B6, and the former has 80 pages instead of 50 like the top-bound book. But, the same paper is used in both, which is the real star.

The N195 is an example of a "perfect notebook" for my use. I love the A5 size pages for most purposes, and it's one of the biggest things I consider when looking for a new general purpose notebook. This one fits the bill nicely with dimensions of 6 x 8.25 inches and 7mm ruling. The ruling spacing hits a sweet spot for me. It's not too small, but it still works well with my small-medium writing style.

Build

The Mnemosyne N195 is built well for being a soft cover spiral-bound book. The wire binding is strong and resilient against bending in loaded bags. The fact that it's a twin spiral also keeps the pages more secure from tearing out, which is helpful with perforated pages. It always irritates me when a page tears out from the binding instead of tearing at the perforation. I've never had that problem with this notebook.

The covers are pliable, but still sturdy. They're the perfect weight for protecting the pages inside a bag, but probably can't defend it from more distressing situations. The cover features the black, minimalistic design as every other Mnemosyne notebook, save for the single gold "Mnemosyne" in the top-right corner of the front cover. Even this branding is small compared to the overall size of the cover. The back cover has a small SKU sticker that is easy to remove. The inside cover has a yellow sheet that features some more branding, including the Mnemosyne tagline, "The ancient Greek goddess of memory," which is a great name for a notebook.

Paper

The paper in the Mnemosyne notebooks is exceptional. It's not extremely thin like Tomoe River paper, but it is supple. Some papers have a certain amount of tooth, while others are made to be smooth like glass. Mnemosyne leans heavily toward the "smooth like glass" side of the scale. It's an absolute pleasure to write on.

It handles all types of pens and inks with ease, and dries fairly quickly. The pages aren't numbered, and each page has a section at the top for Date, number, and title. I don't normally use this section, but it's a nice thing to include.

The lines are spaced at 7mm in a light gray dotted pattern. They're very well done and seem to blend into the background when using vibrant inks. There are 80 sheets in the notebook, and each one is micro-perforated.

Overall

This notebook is one of my all-time favorites in this spiral-bound A5 category. There are a lot of contenders, but this one takes the cake every time. And, it even beats out a lot of glue- or cloth-bound notebooks as well. Sometimes you just want a good spiral notebook, and the Mnemosyne N195 Special Memo Notepad is an excellent choice.

The N195 is just under $10 at JetPens, which is a great value for this exceptional little notebook.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)