Daycraft Animal Pals Notebook

Recently I received a small consignment of notebooks (and one sketchbook) from Daycraft, a Hong Kong-based manufacturer. I shall review them over the next couple of days, and I thought I would review this, the Animal Pals notebook, first.

It's an A6-sized pocket notebook with soft covers, and designed with this cute abstract animal design stitched into the lilac-coloured "Italian PU" (sic) cover. Have you guessed what it is yet? Actually this one is a hippo, and is one of a range of five designs, each with a different animal from every continent. The others on the website are penguin and baboon; sheep and panda versions should be available in 2012, if I read the catalogue correctly.

First impressions are that this is a very nicely-made notebook indeed. The cover is soft and flexible, unlike the small Moleskine hard black notebook. At A6 size, it is also slightly larger than the Mole (106mm x 150mm, compared with the Moleskine's 90mm x 140mm). I wonder how hard wearing this cover actually is, though, inside a briefcase or handbag, because from experience, I have found the Moleskine to be pretty tough. I'm also slightly surprised that Daycraft have chosen Italian-made material to cover their notebooks, but they make a feature of "imported" materials for their range. It feels very similar to a soft leather, and only the plastic smell betrays its hydrocarbon roots. There's the regulation pocket inside the back cover for ticket stubs, stamps and receipts, and a baby-pink page-marker ribbon, too.

The paper, which is probably 100gsm stock, is printed with 6.5mm ruled lines. There's also a subtle animal print on some of the pages - you may be able to spot a monkey's tail curling across one of the pages below. The animal prints are very subtle, as I did not notice them at all until I began to write this review; they are more apparent on the photographs.

As far as the paper is concerned, I did not test it in quite the same way that AK from the superb Notebooks Loves Pen blog tested it when she reviewed Daycraft's Signature Sketchbook a little while back. She used a variety of pens including a felt-tip and found some significant bleedthrough. I am a fountain pen user, however, and tested a page with various pens and pencils I had to hand, and found very little bleedthrough. Some of my pens are a fairly stern test of the integrity of certain papers, so I am pleased to report that I could detect no readily-visible feathering or other defects, at least from the paper. I did note some minor changes to the lines of the fountain pen ink where the FP ink met the printed animal designs on the pages, where the printer's ink used (I'm guessing it is oil-based) forms a barrier to the fountain pen ink to bond with the fibres in the paper. This is the most minor of quibbles, probably of no interest to anyone but FP fanatics, and one I only noticed when editing this review. With a ballpoint or pencil, it is not an issue, but on the photo below you can see some thinning of the lines, for example on the sample I wrote with the Kelly Green ink:



With the fountain pens, drying time is normal, though as usual, the Noodler's Bulletproof Black took the longest to dry, hence the smudges on the page. The creamy paper is very pleasant to write on and the 6.5mm gap is a sensible size for most handwriting. It is case-bound, so whilst it does not lie flat on the desk, you can flatten it out to write in.

Overall, this is a fun, very well made notebook, which I think would appeal to children or adults who are young-at-heart. It appears to be available widely around Asia and Australia, and Poland, but nowhere else yet in Europe as far as I know.

Data:

Dimensions: 106mm x 150mm
Pages: 128 cream colour pages, 6.5mm lined, animal pattern printed
Cover: Italian PU (polyurethane)
Binding: Case-bound, with pocket inside back cover

My thanks to Mr Foreal Lee at Daycraft for the samples.

Sainsbury's Moleskine Reporter Notebook Knock-Off

I have picked up several of these Moleskine knock-offs on sale now at Sainsbury's. They have 96 sheets (192 pages total) made from 70% recycled material which is finished in an off-white colour. All sheets are detachable, by the look of it. The paper is ruled and looks reasonable quality; a quick test with my Pilot M90 and Parker Blue Quink showed no sign of feathering or bleedthrough, and it takes pencil well enough, too. There's even a little pocket at the back for ticket stubs, receipts, postage stamps, and other kipple. This notebook is covered in black polyurethane, which has a satin finish that picks up fingerprints and grease marks.



The best thing is that they are on sale at 75 pence each, making them less than one-tenth of the price of a Moleskine equivalent, which costs £8.99 and is certainly not ten times better than this. I suspect the low price is a close-out, so if you can get hold of one of these, give it a go.

Cahiers

One of my hobbies is astronomy. It's been an interest of mine since I was eleven years old, on and off. For some time I've been making observations of variable stars for the British Astronomical Association's Variable Star Section. If you don't know what a variable star is, here's a link to Wikipedia which gives the basics.



For a few years now I've used a Moleskine Cahier notebook to record my observations and now, finally, I've run out of space. I have already started the replacement, this time a Clairefontaine notebook with much nicer paper and a slightly bigger size. I've also changed pens: after using a Uni-Ball rollerball pen I bought a green Pilot 78G to use with the Cahier. Then I found the Pilot V-Pen (known as the Varsity in the US) which I emptied out of the original mint-green ink and replaced with black ink. Now, with a new notebook I have redeployed my Pilot Capless and filled it with the same black ink.


Although I have changed pens, I've not changed ink. I use Noodler's Bulletproof Black to record my observations, and at the rate I use this ink, my 3oz. bottle should last me years. I use bulletproof ink for its permanence; these observations probably are the only things I write which are worthy of preserving for the future, even though I have to write them subsequently on an Excel spreadsheet before they go into the BAA's database which starts in 1890. I also use it because of its waterproof quality as the nights can get quite damp here in England. But this is the only use I have for bulletproof ink; most of the time I use blue Quink or a pencil, even though, like many fountain pen users, I own a glut of ink in various colours from a wide variety of manufacturers.


Looking through the log, I see I started this notebook back in 2007. It doesn't have my earliest variable star observations, those are in another Moleskine I bought when I worked in London in 2005 (pictured, with the natty Duck Tape binding).


I own a few Moleskines, but I don't buy them now. I admit, I was taken in by the hype and the marketing ("the notebook of Picasso, Hemingway and Chatwin") but this was before I rediscovered fountain pens, and the fact that fountain pen ink bleeds like mad on the trademark yellowish Mole paper. The quality of the paper used is a constant source of angst on the Fountain Pen Network; I eventually found a nice replacement in the Clairefontaine, which I can buy locally too. Sometimes I wonder what Picasso or Hemingway would make of today's Moleskine notebooks. Would they complain about the quality of the paper or the fragile binding? Were they really that fussy about their paper or notebooks?

I've still got a few pages in the Duck Tape Moleskine but soon that will be history too. I also own a large plain Mole which has only a few pages filled in. I bought that to make sketches in but found the paper too thin, even for pencil sketches. Finally I have a small ruled Moleskine which serves as my general-purpose notebook and in which I write all kinds of things. When both notebooks are finished it's highly unlikely I'll buy Moleskines to replace them, however.



On the subject of Clairefontaine, I have several of their cahiers and an A5 pad of their drawing paper. Here's a picture of my new variable star logbook, this orange one being a handy size, with a cheerful colour (not that I can see it in the dark). The paper inside is superb: smooth and white, nicely-printed feint lines, no feathering, no bleedthrough. Couple that with a top-quality pen and ink, and the mundane business of recording a scientifc observation becomes a pleasure in itself.