While I tossed and turned in my hotel bed on Sunday night, I realized that the answer to the question “When was the last time you had your septic tank cleaned?” and my blank puzzling for a date/time could be resolved by none other than pen and paper. This morning, when we stopped back at the house, I grabbed a trusty Leuchtturm 1917 Hardcover A5 Metallic Edition. I also approached the file cabinet of doom, and grabbed the extra thick “House” file and took it with me. Today I have been busy building a journal of my house’s greatest and shittiest events (see what I did there?) so that I have dates and repair companies and what type of work was done.

I’ll see you again when indoor plumbing has been restored.

via GIPHY

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The Leuchtturm 1917 Metallic is a hardcover notebook in A5 size available in Gold, Silver or Copper. I opted for silver. The cover is textured, almost giving it a faux fabric feel, and it’s a bit sparkly, though I don’t see any actual glitter. Inside, the notebook is full of 125 pages of 80gsm paper in dot grid (totally my jam). It also has 2 pages for a table of contents, two silver ribbon bookmarks, an expandable pocket at the back, and an elastic closure.

If I’m being 100% honest, it mostly looks and feels like another notebook that I really love: my well loved and slightly worn Rhodia Goalbook. Both are A5, and feature about the same number of pages, the extras (bookmarks, pockets and elastic). The Rhodia is a softcover whereas this Leuchtturm edition is hardcover, but the weight between the two is virtually the same.

The biggest difference I noticed between the two has to be the paper.

The Leuchtturm paper is a slightly different weight (80gsm vs Rhodia’s 90gsm), but the primary thing I noticed is that it’s toothier, more textured. Rhodia’s paper is super smooth, almost like it’s coated. So as I wrote I noticed that my ink went down on the paper differently. Whereas the ink sort of sits on top of the Rhodia coating and takes a short time to dry, the Leuchtturm paper sort of absorbs the ink a bit more. There’s no feathering or bleeding, and dry time is quicker; it’s just a very different texture.

Do I like it better than my Rhodia? I don’t know! I can definitely feel the difference when I touch the paper, and as I write, but I don’t know which one I prefer. Have you tried both? What do you think?

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Originally, my plan was too include THREE different Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks in one post but it was going to be way too much for one post.  So, this will be part two of three. Part 1 & 2 are available here.

The last in our Leuchtturm 1917 “other notebooks” series is the new 120gsm version of the classic A5 notebook ($24.50USD). If you’ve been looking for notebooks or Bullet Journals on Amazon or other online shops in the past year or so, you may have noticed a lot of people making or promoting 100gsm or 120gsm paper notebooks. The appeal of this thicker, heavier paper is less showthrough when using markers and other decorative pen tools. the question, however, is how do these papers work with fountain pens?

I was wiling to try out the new Leuchtturm 1917 with 120gsm paper over a lesser known brand found on Amazon. For one, I suspect that the paper quality will remain more consistent over time over a lesser known product. Also, Leuchtturm 1917 is often easy to find in bookstores and larger brick-and-mortar stores.

Overall, the 120gsm Edition of the Leuchtturm1917 features everything we have come to love about their products: two  ribbon bookmarks, elastic closure, gusseted back pocket, archiving stickers, and an array of promotional booklets about the history of the brand and its users. It lays flat easily and the overall cream color and pale grey dots are consistent with the standard Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks.

A couple notable differences, the 120gsm books are thicker but have fewer pages (203 pages compared to 251 in regular A5 Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks) and there are no perforated pages in the back of the book. In the photo at the top of the review, the 120gsm notebook is pictured in the middle of the stack to see the variation in thickness of the notebooks.

(Once again, the beautiful creamy ivory paper photographed terribly — please forgive me and my camera, we might be breaking up soon!)

But let’s talk about the most important aspect of the 120gsm Edition Notebooks: the paper performance.

Most notably, the paper is the smoothest of any of the Leuchtturm paper I’ve used thus far. I would say its almost comparable to Rhodia in terms of smoothness. That’s both a plus and a minus. I sometimes find Rhodia paper to be glass-like so consider yourself warned f you like toothier paper.

There was also no show through or bleed through of any of the pens I tested. I certainly could have pushed the boundaries with a Sharpie marker and gotten some bleed through potentially but in daily use, with an array of pens most people would use in a Bullet Journal or Commonplace book, I had no issues.

As you can see on the reverse, you could easily utilize both sides of the paper without the distraction of show through. Huge bonus, IMHO.

So, thus far, besides the tried-and-true Leuchtturm 1917 standard notebook, I recommend this new 120gsm version. Particularly to fountain pen users, I think the smoothness and thicker paper will be much appreciated. I didn’t fully test the paper for ink color fidelity — potential for sheen and the like, since the creamier color might affect ink color accuracy anyway.

Just having a reasonably priced, readily available notebook that can stand up against fountain pens, brush pens and other BuJo supplies and survive is enough for me. Add to that number pages, light-enough but visible-enough dot grid, index pages, elastic closure, two ribbon bookmarks and a gusset pock in the back and I’m hard pressed to have any complaints.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

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Originally, my plan was too include THREE different Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks in one post but it was going to be way too much for one post.  So, this will be part two of three. Part 1 is available here.

The Leuchtturm 1917 100 Years Bauhaus Edition (A5-sized, $25.95) is available in the appropriately primary colors of Red, Yellow, and Blue as well as Black. Each edition features different colored edge painting and printed dots inside.

The cover features a quote from Vasily Kandinsky, former deputy director of the Bauhaus, “Everything begins with a dot” which I find inspiring.

I purchased the Black edition which featured blue edge painting and blue printed dots on the pages. It is a little unclear if the Yellow cover with black edge painting has yellow dots or black dots, either might be challenging to use. Leuchtturm 1917 had previously released a Red Dots Edition so the Blue cover with red dots is an option available elsewhere in their product line. If anyone has purchased the Yellow cover, let me know in the comments if the interior is black or yellow dots.

The photo above, showing the blue edge painting on the pages and the two ribbon bookmarks also most accurately show the color of the standard Leuchtturm 1917 paper. I don’t understand how or why, even in my studio, the subtly of color of the Leuchtturm 1917 ivory paper is so hard to capture accurately. The photos that follow are considerably too yellow to be considered color accurate but the photos do show the behavior of the inks on the paper which I deemed as important as capturing the paper color.

The Bauhaus Edition notebooks have all the same features as the traditional Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks: two ribbon bookmarks, gusseted pocket and perforated pages in the back, elastic closure, archiving stickers and promotional pamphlets inside. The sewn binding can easily be opened to lay flat and the numbered pages and index in the front of the notebook make it easy to use for bullet journaling or just general organization.

The paper quality is good. It’s a bit toothy and a warm ivory color. Unlike the Whitelines Link notebook, I had minimal issues with showthrough or bleedthrough with average use. The color fidelity is more consistent with the results I’ve had on other non-Tomoe paper. Shading in the fountain pen inks is visible.

There was no real issue with other water-based pens or pencils on the standard Leuchtturm 1917 paper. My only issue was with the blue dots. They are a bit darker than I would have expected them to be especially when compared with the light grey dots on regular Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. If you regularly use Rhodia dot paper or ruled, it might not be bothersome to you as they seem to be similar in brightness but if you prefer your dot grid to be light and nearly un-noticable, then the blue dots might be as distracting to you as they were to me.

Overall, I still feel that the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks (be they standard or special editions like the Bauhaus edition) are good products. They are a step up from Moleskine in terms of ink handling and they are well constructed. They feel durable and provide a good middle ground between the wafer-thin Tomoe notebooks (often with astronomical numbers of pages) and thick, chunky 120gsm or thicker notebooks — both of which can feel like a considerable commitment to your notebook life. If you are looking for a “gateway drug” notebook for a new pen fan or you want a quality notebook for everyday notes, Leuchtturm 1917 really is the best standard to choose. Now, if they would just offer more B6-sized notebooks, I would be a very happy pen nerd.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

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Most pen enthusiasts are familiar with Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. Leuchtturm 1917 is often considered the step-up from a Moleskine and a favorite with Bullet Journalers since the light dot grid lends itself to building page spreads. What might be surprising is that there are other options available from Leuchtturm other than the standard (AKA classic) paper/dot design. Of course, Leuchtturm offers lined and blank papers as well as their beloved dot grid and they even have a sketchbook option now. But I’m not covering those in this series. No, I am going to be talking about the Whitelines notebooks, the Bauhaus Edition and the new 120gsm editions.

To start, I am going to review the Leuchtturm 1917 Whitelines Link edition (A6 Pocket, $13.46USD). Whitelines Link was originally created to be Leuchtturm’s answer to an analog-digital solution, the paper is pale grey with white dots. While the notebook came with instructions for using the digital syncing options, I was more interested in the potential of the subtle grey paper with white dots.

The Whitelines Link notebook comes with all the same features that other Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks feature: back gusseted pocket, ribbon bookmark with finished ends, stickers to use for archiving your notebook, elastic band, perforated pages in the back and assorted promotional sheets. The A6-sized notebook only had one bookmark compared with the two ribbon bookmarks included in the A5-sized notebooks.

In the corners of the pages are QR-style icons which help to align and square pages when scanning or photographing them to use with a digital app like Dropbox or Evernote.

The notebook came with a booklet explaining the process and development of the analog-to-digital system.

But like I said earlier, I was more interested in the paper and the grey with white dots design and how it might perform in a strictly analog method.

The short answer to this question is: not well. What I didn’t realize was that the process for making the paper grey was to print the entire sheet and leave the white of the paper exposed. As a result, there is an inky coating over the whole page. Most printing inks are oil- or plastic-based making water-based inks like fountain pen and rollerball inks resist the surface.

(Think or those drawings you might have done as a kid where you drew with crayon and then went over the page with a watercolor paint. Same theory applies here except the whole page is covered with a waxy film.)

The paper seems to also be a slightly different texture to the standard Leuchtturm paper or the process of printing on the entirety of each sheet altered the paper. Fountain pen inks bled and showed through in ways I haven’t experienced before with Leuchtturm.

In testing other non-fountain pens, some of that some resist behavior I experienced with the fountain pens was apparent with felt tip and brush pens. I also had a run of dead or dried up pens. Honestly, I started to wonder if this post was cursed!

There was less showthrough and bleedthrough with the non-fountain pens which was somewhat heartening. Because of the toothier quality of the paper, pencils performed particularly well and, of course, if you prefer a ballpoint pen, this paper would be just fine.

I extended my fountain pen tests to verify that the results were not specific to one particular ink. There is clearly evidence of the ink resisting the paper and makes the ink look lighter, and kind of blotted. I can;t think of any other way to describe the subtle voids in the strokes.

Further non-fountain pen tests revealed that most water-based inks like rollerball pens could bleedthrough.

All-in-all, I would not recommend the Whitelines Link to fountain pen enthusiasts. Even if you are looking for a method to digitize your notebooks, I believe there is probably other methods that can be used that would allow use of good paper and pens and STILL be able to digitize your notebooks. This initial foray into the Leuchtturm 1917 “other notebooks” was a huge disappointment. I’m glad I didn’t invest in the larger, more expensive A5 version of the Whitelines Link. Let’s hope Part 2 & 3 of this review series will be a little brighter.

DISCLAIMER: Some items featured in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

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It has been more than a year since I reviewed the Leuchtturm 1917 Some Lines a Day five-year diary, so I thought it might be a good time to check in and let you know how I’ve been doing with it. 

Distressed at the time about some negative thoughts and feelings I had been having, I intended with Some Lines a Day to focus on writing at least one kind thought about someone each day. On most days, it was easy to think of at least one person to think a kind thought about. Often it was related to a kindness someone had shown me. But occasionally I was so angry, sad or despondent that it was a challenge to pull myself out of my own head to think about someone else – and having the diary to write in gave me a reason to do so. 

I didn’t always have perfect attendance; some days I left blank, but I rarely skipped more than one day. After about half the year, though, I fell off the wagon completely and wasn’t sure if I’d ever pick up the five-year diary again.

Since I had begun the book on my birthday in November 2020, a year later on my birthday I started reading some of those early entries. I was surprised to find it gratifying and sometimes moving to be reminded of whoever I had thought and written about each day. Reading made me realize that now the book would have two rewards: Thinking about something positive and also recalling whatever positive thought I had had a year prior. It had become a “memory book” and not just a diary.

In November 2021, I started writing in it again with a more general theme of gratitude and appreciation. Most of my entries are still about people, but now I also acknowledge situations or events that are not necessarily associated with specific individuals. As I read the entry for the prior year on the same page, I see the full value of keeping a diary in this format: Without having to dig through my shelves or closet to look for old journals, I can see in an instant whatever or whoever I was thinking about a year ago. Yes, it’s only a few lines a day, but that’s all I need to pull myself out of my own head to recall a good moment.

According to one source, 68 percent of resolution-making Americans will break them by Feb. 1. Although I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I’m here to say that it’s OK to fall off the wagon and then get back on again. Just because you’ve abandoned a diary, a sketchbook or whatever you had committed to using doesn’t mean it’s forever. If it gave you joy then and might give you joy again, just start again.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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This time our winners of the Drehgriffels are Marci and Rob:

Thank you all so much for entering and for reading along here at The Desk! And thanks again to Leuchtturm 1917 for sending us the items for review and giveaway.

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Recently we were sent a few Drehgriffel from Leuchtturm (24.95 each) for review. These fun ballpoint pens are made to look sort of like pencils.

Drehgriffel is German and loosely translates to “twist stylus.” This pen style is a revival from the 1920s and it is made from precision-milled aluminum and brass. The Drehgriffel has a spring loaded twist mechanism – to open and retract the ball point you simply twist the end cap (which looks sort of like a combination of ferrule and eraser). The pens come in tons of fun colors; we received the Sage (green), Nordic Blue and Bellini (orange) for review. The pens come loaded with a blue ink, and refills are available in either blue or black.

The pen is lightweight at 14g, and is fairly short at 5″/12.5cm long. It is slightly longer than some of my favorite pocket pens, and very similar to the Caran d’Ache Nespresso I reviewed a few weeks ago.

L to R: Franklin Christoph Pocket 45, Caran d’Ache Nespresso, Leuchtturm 1917 Drehgriffel, Kaweco AL Sport.

The Drehgriffel writes smoothly without a lot of skipping. It’s lightweight and the hexagonal body is nice to hold in your hand. The variety of colors make it a fun pen to carry, and the fact that it is refillable is so much better for the environment (as opposed to disposable ballpoints.) In general, I gravitate more towards fountain pens, but sometimes a ball point pen is the best option. I can totally see keeping one of these in my wallet for on the go writing needs.

So now comes the fun part, the GIVEAWAY! Leuchtturm has generously offered these Drehgriffels to TWO of our lucky readers.

THE DETAILS: Two lucky winners will be selected from the comments on this post to win their choice of Drehgriffel in either Sage, Nordic Blue or Orange, as well as a package of refills in blue or black. Supplies are limited so we’ll ask for first/second choice and go with first come, first served.

TO ENTER: Leave a comment below and tell us if you have a favorite Leuchtturm 1917 product. Play along and type in something. It makes reading through entries more interesting for me, okay? One entry per person.

If you have never entered a giveaway or commented on the site before, your comment must be manually approved by our highly-trained staff of monkeys before it will appear on the site. Our monkeys are underpaid and under-caffeinated so don’t stress if your comment does not appear right away. Give the monkeys some time.

FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by midnight CST on Friday, March 26, 2021. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Saturday. Winner will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 7 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class is covered. Additional shipping options or insurance will have to be paid by the winner. We are generous but we’re not made of money. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge for the purposes of this giveaway. Please see the About page for more details.

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A lifelong journal keeper, my mom used various diary and journal formats throughout her life. One I remember her using when I was a child was a small, five-year diary. Each page was headed by the date, and below that were five small spaces, one for each year. My mother, a practical woman, probably liked the five-year format because it was small, compact and less expensive than keeping a bunch of single-year diaries.

She wrote in Japanese so I couldn’t have read it if I had wanted to, but I had the impression that she noted things like the weather, which of us had a cold or stomachache that week, current events, the books she was reading, things like that. Sometimes she also used it to have the final word: If someone whined, “I can’t believe how cold it is! It’s never this cold in October!” she would pull out her diary, refer to the same date a few years prior, and say, “No – it was even colder than this back in 19__.” End of discussion.

A lifelong journal keeper myself, I’ve tried many different formats, too. Every now and then I have looked at the five-year diary format, but I never made the commitment. I already keep a DIY journal/log book (here’s what I’m using this year), but I prefer to keep a single year in one volume with more space for freeform writing when needed. What would I write in a five-year diary that would be different from the kinds of things I already note in my ongoing log (books and movies I’ve consumed, places I’ve sketched, current events, people I’ve socialized with, the weather – you can see my mom’s influence, I’m sure)? And yet, I clearly see the appeal of having five years of entries for a given date on a single page: More than a snapshot of a day, the format captures patterns over a five-year period.

Several months ago when I was shopping for a Leuchtturm A5 blank journal (one of my favorites for my DIY log book), the Some Lines a Day 5-Year Memory Book ($27.95) came to my attention. It’s familiar A5 size, paper and hardcover material were attractive to me. Maybe it was finally time to give the format a try.

About a quarter-inch thicker than a standard Leuchtturm A5 notebook or weekly planner, the 5 Year Memory Book “provides space for some lines per calendar day over 5 years. In time, this special diary will become an interesting reference book of your own past.” I chose the berry cover. It’s also available in black and Nordic blue. Like all Leuchtturm notebooks, it has an elastic closure band.

The flyleaf offers space to record the years covered by the undated book and the owner’s name. The next page includes a quotation by Lincoln.

Immediately following are the 366 days of the book. Each day offers about an inch and a half of writing space. If you’re familiar with Leuchtturm’s weekly planner + notebook format, it’s just a smidge of space more per day. I think it will be a comfortable amount of space to write two or three sentences with my large handwriting – not too cramped, not burdensome.

Two fabric ribbon page markers – one striped, one solid – are bound in. (Ana would be pleased that they are long enough to pull all the way out past the edge of the book, so they could be used to open the book to the page.)

The inside back cover includes the obligatory pocket. Leuchtturm books always include a sheet of title page and spine labels. (I never have a use for these, but they are a nice touch for those who do use them.)

My media tests confirmed that the paper is the same as what I’m familiar with in Leuchtturm’s other notebooks and planners. Although it’s less opaque than I would prefer, only the fine-point Sharpie showed actual bleed-through. Even my juicy Sailor fude nib and pigment brush pens did not feather or bleed.

So that’s the product – familiar, reliable, unlikely to disappoint – but what about its contents? What would I want to record and later read over the course of five years? I thought about it long and hard. This pandemic year seems like such a crazy time to think about any kind of diary. On the one hand, I’m not doing much of anything worth documenting. On the other hand, I’m doing so many things differently out of necessity. I suppose it might be interesting to compare those mundanities in future years . . .

Then I started thinking about something about myself that has distressed me. This year I have had many unkind, ugly and even vicious thoughts about certain individuals and many people that I don’t even know – based on what I perceive to be their beliefs. In the moment, I feel better, but later, I realize I do not want to have such thoughts.

My Leuchtturm Some Lines a Day will be devoted to thinking one kind thought about someone each day. It could be a loved one, the mail carrier, a social media acquaintance, the Instacart delivery person, or another total stranger, but I know that if I commit to writing one kind thought at the end of each day, I will be more mindful during the day about having such thoughts. When I read my entries later, perhaps the thoughts from a prior year will prompt me to call someone I haven’t talked to in a while. Or perhaps I’ll see some type of interesting pattern that will give me insight. My hope is that I will become a kinder person over time.

I also decided that I don’t need to wait until Jan. 1 to begin. The Gregorian calendar is a practical device, but each of us began our actual first day of the year when we were born. My birthday is just around the corner; I’m going to begin my Leuchtturm Some Lines a Day on that day.

DISCLAIMER: The item in this review include affiliate links. The Well-Appointed Desk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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Yesterday, on The Pen Addict podcast, we talked a bit about notebooks for fountain pens and I wanted to follow-up and include a few other books that didn’t get mentioned.

This is what I’ve currently been using, from the bottom to the top (as they appear in the photo. I’m not ranking them):

• Miquelrius Grid notebook: I’ve been using this for ink samples, product reviews and pen tests. Its an enormous book and a good value. The paper shows a little show through with dark colors or particularly wide nibs but its a good middle-of-the-road paper at a good price.
• Paperblanks Weekly Planner: I liked the layout of the week on the left side and an area for notes on the right. I have reviewed this product in the past and will probably do a follow-up towards the end of the year about how well its held up to being toted back and forth to work. Its a warm ivory colored paper and works great with just about every pen I’ve thrown at it, fountain or otherwise. Paperblanks also sells journals and notebooks using the same paper if you’re not in the market for a paper planner.
• Quo Vadis Habana: This is a slightly-larger-than-A5 notebook with narrow-spaced lines on a creamy paper. Like all of the quality products from Exaclair, this is top of the line. The cover is semi-flexible leatherette and less puffy than the Rhodia webnotebook. Its available in several sizes and cover colors. I purchased mine from Goulet Pens. (Full review)
• Rhodia Webnotebook: I prefer blank notebooks to lined or grid so I was very excited that the infamous Webbie was available in a blank edition. The paper is excellent. It is available in lined, dot grid or blank and in several sizes in black or classic Rhodia orange. Rhodia recently introduced a 3.5×5.5″ sized Webbie in lots of different cover colors called Rhodiarama. (Full review)
• Piccadilly Essential Notebook: This is the budget-priced notebook with slightly better paper than the Moleskine that I have come to love. For the price, I don’t feel so bad if some inks show through to the reverse of the page because the cost-per-page is so much lower than most books. I was only able to find lined and grid versions of the Piccadilly when I came across this book. I’ve heard that the binding an spine do not hold up as well as the Moleskine, Rhodia and other brands but overall, for the price, its a good option. See my full review for more information.
• Clairefontaine 1951: I’ll have a full review posted by the end of the week but I wanted to include it here as well since it is something I’m currently using. It reminds me of an upscale composition notebook in size and format. I find the lines inside a little darker than I like and a little wider spaced than I prefer but its a good size, with top quality paper at a reasonable price.
• (Not pictured) Luechtturm 1917 pocket notebook: This book lives in my purse or backpack for capturing lists, numbers and ideas on the go. (full review)

I find, like I’m sure you do too, that I like different notebooks for different tasks or projects. I no more want one notebook to rule them all than I would want one pen to rule them all. I need a Sharpie marker as much as I need a fine fountain pen. The same goes for notebooks.

For office meeting notes, I don’t want to commit those to a $20+ leather-bound notebook. The 1951 will be perfect for those tasks as it is good paper at a reasonable price. For saving quotes and recommendations from letters, I use the Quo Vadis. The Piccadilly Essential Notebook is my daily jotter for lists, things I hear on podcasts and other bits of information. Because its an inexpensive book, the Piccadilly is not precious to me. I can write, tape, cut and throw it around without feeling like it was meant for someone or something better.

How many notebooks do you have going right now? Which one is your favorite?

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