Rhodia – Driven Outside

We had a national holiday in France on Friday and I made the most of my 3-day weekend.

Instead of the stuff I needed to do I did this:

1. Got up at 7:30 on a holiday
2. Went up into the mountains with a group of Expats for a hike and a picnic – got some great pictures and had fine food
3. Worked on a design for wooden wine box/kitchen cabinets
4. Completely filled my Leuctterm1917 design sketch notebook – took 2 years
5. Watched a girlie movie with my sweet wife
6. Started a new notebook – a Rhodia Webbie this time (I like the paper better)
7. Spent too much time on the interwebs
8. Started formal permit process for garage shop and apartment above at our place in Seattle
9. Sanded, sealed and painted the “T” supports for the workbench/buffet table
10. Rough turned 4 oak bowls from a piece of tree blown down in a storm
11. Sent some e-mails out that I had let sit too long
12. Coated the bowls in wax and will let them cure for a year.
13. Cleaned and organized GROP – oak shavings were EVERY where
14. Composted the shavings with some grass and kitchen scraps
15. Sharpened all my lathe chisels
16. Brained myself on a low hanging bike – said f-word more than once
17. Went to a run along the river
18. Called my Mom and talked for a bit
19. Checked on the kids
20. Cut first 5” top sections for Cornebarrieu Workbench
21. Need a proper circle saw… the 18v battery saw is out of it league on 1.5” beech
22. Worked on the small cabinet rosettes for our neighbor – he also asked me to install a shelf while I was at it…
23. Played with the puppies – while Stamps-With-Foot had a girls night
24. Got sucked into Pinterest
25. Updated website a little (here and Tumblr)
26. Watched a little too much TV/YouTube
27. Took puppies for a walk around neighborhood a couple of times
28. Rode my bike about 10 miles – muddy
29. Cleaned and tuned single-speed bike
30. Played with puppies
31. Did some grilling with beer in hand 
32. Got up Sunday morning and worked for a few hours, – because I thought it was Monday. Damn it!
33. Closed office door and did not return for 24 hours
34. Told wife her hair was very pretty
35. Went for a walk with wife and puppies
36. Made a small parts organizer out of a broken wood bowl
37. Got glue on my favorite shorts
38. Wrote some snail-mail
39. Surfed the interwebs until I fell asleep with the iPad on my chest…
40. I did not mow the yard again. The gods of lawn maintenance are displeased with me.

Ever since Dr. Shipman converted me to Moleskine notebooks many years ago during a climbing trip, I have coveted little black notebooks to record my thoughts, doodles, designs, to-do lists, etc… I drank the Kool-Aid and now I share a little “problem” with what seems to be a quarter of the world’s population: finding the perfect notebook.

The Moleskine was great for a couple of years, but they do not work great for fountain pens, the binding is lackluster, and I wanted some paper different options. Thus began my hunt for the perfect little black notebook. I have used Field Notes, Moleskine (pocket, large & cahiers), Blank Books, Knox-Japan (only sold in Japan and France), Pocket Blanks, Gallery Leather, Rhodia, Guildhall, No Names, Rite in the Rain, Piccadilly, Leuchtturm 1917, etc… Some have been great and some have come apart within weeks. I have fallen for the paper of the Rhodia and love the Leuchtturm format – dots, page numbers, and index. The Moleskine blank sketchbook has great paper, but not enough of it – I also keep busting the binding. The Leuchtturm’s paper will bleed a little, even when using an EF nib – as will most everything but the 90# Rhodia. The Gallery Leather has tear-off corners, but no page numbers and I can split the spine on a Webbook without even trying. In the last ten years I have come to decide that no one journal works for me for everything. Here is my current quiver of little black notebooks:

Knox-Japan A5: calendar and work notes/design
Gallery Leather: pocket notebook
Leuchtturm or Rhodia A5 Dots: Travel Journal

I am still looking for a 90g, acid free, sewn binding 32-64 page A5 Cahiers for everything but my pocket notebook, which I would switch to a 3″X6″ sewn Cahier. I would prefer to have single signature/section, using them up before they were utterly destroyed, and I would like to have the ability to bind then together if the mood were to ever strike.

Driven Outside

Tag: Rhodia

Weekend Update – the gods of lawn maintenance are displeased

My search for the perfect little black notebook