I was fortunate enough to stop by the Toyooka Craft table at the 2022 San Francisco Pen Show, and I was excited to pick up something to give away on the blog this week. The Small Pen Tray is a features a stained Alder wood frame, stained plywood base, and a tan rayon liner designed to hold 6 pens. This is a beautiful desk accessory that anyone would be excited to own. Read the rules below and get to entering!
Zebra Sarasa Nano 0.3 mm Gel Ink Pen Review
The Zebra Sarasa Nano Gel Pen caught me slightly off guard. What is Zebra doing here that they aren’t with one of my all-time favorite pens, the Zebra Sarasa Clip?
Let’s explore!
The two obvious differences between the Nano and the classic Clip are aesthetic. The Nano has a solid color barrel (similar to the Vintage Series,) and a metal nose cone, which is new to the series. The clip uses the same excellent Clip of the namesake Zebra model, and the exact same refill.
The only refill tip size available is 0.3 mm, which is perfect for me. The marketing on JetPens calls this pen “Ultra-fine yet delightfully smooth,” which is just asking for trouble. It’s difficult to pin “delightfully smooth” on a pen tip this fine. By nature, it’s not. It almost can’t be. Now, they are relatively smooth to other 0.3 mm tipped pens, but not compared to other, more mainstream, 0.5 mm tip gel ink pens.
“Ultra-fine” is much easier to agree with, and the Nano is. The lines in this group of pens, the Think 4 Color set, are awesome. They are clean and consistent, and the colors-in this case Magenta, Gray, Night Blue, and Viridian-are excellent. Even the light shade of gray is readable on the ivory page of the Write Notepads Engineer Notebook. Night Blue is the easy winner of this group, but I enjoy them all as a collection.
There are four other 4 Color sets available as well, but if you are interested in this pen, I would start with a single color. Why? They cost almost twice as much as the standard Sarasa Clip, for no good reason that I can see.
Metal nose cone premium, maybe? It’s not the “cushioned by an inside spring to absorb shocks as you write” premium, because I can see no technical difference between the Nano and the Clip in that area. Same refill, same spring, same interior design.
$1.75 for the Sarasa Clip, or $3.30 for the Sarasa Nano? The Nano is not a bad pen-not even remotely-but it provides poor value. I’m happy to have this set of four, but I’ll be shopping in the Clip aisle if I’m looking to add to my Sarasa collection.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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Misfill, London Autumn Pen Show Edition
Each week in Refill, the Pen Addict Members newsletter, I publish Ink Links as part of the additional content you receive for being a member. And each week, after 10 to 15 links, plus my added commentary on each, I'm left with many great items I want to share. Enter Misfill. Here are this weeks links:
— The tale of the Lady and the Scholar: my London Autumn Pen Show 2022. (Fountain pen blog)
— rituals: galen leather the old school molded pen case for five pens (a fleeting ripple)
— Notebook Review: Midori MD A6 Notebook (Fountain Pen Pharmacist)
— Van Dieman’s Cloudburst on Midori MD (Inkcredible Colours)
— Pilot Music Stub vs. Signature vs. Coarse 14kt gold fountain pen nibs (Gourmet Pens)
— ‘People were panicking over whether I could do the Ian Curtis dance’: how we made Control (The Guardian)
— Paper Review: Endless Recorder (Regalia Paper) (The Well-Appointed Desk)
— The NY Art Book Fair Is a Whole Scene (Hyperallergic)
— Tracing the History of Railways in Japan Through Art (Spoon & Tamago)
— Sheen with purpose and ink mullets (mnmlscholar)
— Hieronymus XH5 Notebook Review (Blake's Broadcast)
— Papier Plume Rougarou (Figboot on Pens)
— The Pen Addict Ink: Fire on fire (Stationery 🍕)
— Gadgets to help you stay happy at work this winter 2022 (Creative Boom)
Want to catch the rest, plus extra articles, reviews, commentary, discounts, and more? Try out a Pen Addict Membership for only $5 per month!
