Yarn + Paper?

For a girl whose first love is knitting, and whose second love is pens, a combination of yarn and paper sounds odd, and also like it hits the spot right? So when I got an email from Hedgehog Fibers about their new recycled yarn notebooks (€9.50) I immediately bought two (one for Ana of course!)

Hedgehog Fibers already creates yarn that includes waste from other yarn production and recycled leftovers, so why not add some of that waste to paper? The notebooks are A6 (4.25″ x 6″, 11cm x 15cm) featuring a cover made of recycled paper and combined and pressed with yarn scraps. The inside of the notebooks feature 68 blank or lined recycled-paper pages. Each notebook is hand-bound with string, and is a one of a kind creation!

So I’ll start by saying that I bought this notebook because I was tickled by it, and not because I expected the paper to be great. The paper is interesting – I don’t have any specifics but it isn’t super thin. It looks like it has been pressed because there’s a gridded texture to it. And it feels a little cottony, almost like money (specifically US money) that has been worn.

As I suspected, the paper didn’t perform terribly well with fountain pen inks – even with fine and extra fine nibs there was lots of feathering. It performed a bit better with fine liners, and just fine with gel inks. Surprisingly, even with the feathering there wasn’t any bleed through except when I swatched ink on the paper with a brush. That was enough to create a few spots.

I confess I was a bit disappointed when I realized that the paper inside the notebook wasn’t pressed with yarn as well, but given the way the back cover looks, that would have made for a bumpy writing experience. Overall, I won’t be stocking up and hoarding these notebooks as my favorite paper ever, but I’m really glad I took the plunge on such a fun object that combines two of my favorite hobbies!