St. Louis Pen Show, June 22-25, Make Your Plans Now! (Sponsor)

It’s almost time for the 2023 St. Louis Pen Show!

From Thursday, June, 22nd to Sunday June, 25th, the pen world heads to the Gateway City. Have you made plans yet? If so, great! If not, here is a sampling of what is in store:

Over 170 vendor tables.
Around 20 classes over the three public days, featuring calligraphy, cursive handwriting, journaling, letterpress, vintage pens, Pen Repairs, and others.
KWZ Missourah Crawdad! Your first chance to pick up this show exclusive ink.
Low admissions rates at $5 for a single day pass, $10 for all three public days, and $30 for the four day trader pass.
Great hotel rates, which include breakfast daily.
Tons of door prizes throughout the weekend.

Time to make plans to meet your friends in St. Louis! Head over to the St. Louis Pen Show website for all of the details, buy tickets, and book your hotel for the pen show rate, which always sells out.

My thanks to the St. Louis Pen Show for sponsoring The Pen Addict this week.

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Featured Sponsor.

Midori MD Letter Pad Review

Midori MD Letter Pads are designed with a purpose. As the name dictates, they are primarily letter writing pads, but, as someone who doesn’t write letters, I think they are useful for all types of creativity. There are a couple of things they aren’t for, too.

Midori makes some of the best paper products on the market. Not only that, but I would be hard pressed to find another brand with this much variety in their lineup. It’s astonishing, and borderline overwhelming. Even the letter writing focused pads have several different formats and layouts.

I chose a standard letter pad layout in the Midori MD Stationery Horizontal Ruled A, which includes 50 pages of Midori’s proprietary paper. Paper I know, and I love. The line format - soft grey lines 9.5 mm apart, with wide margins - is the unique factor here. This is paper with a purpose, and that is to create something fun, interesting, and beautiful, for someone other than yourself.

What it isn’t is a desk pad, or a journal. Technically, you could use a Midori Letter Pad in this manner, but why? If you love Midori, you have a dozen other choices to solve those problems. Same with the stack of unused notebooks sitting on your shelf right now. You know who you are.

So this notepad isn’t for everyone? Absolutely not. It has a reason to exist, which needs to match your reason to buy it. My reason is that I love Midori, and I love how my handwriting looks on these wide lines and wide margins. Why are the margins designed this way? To make the words in the center of the page stand out. I love the visual it provides.

It’s a large visual, too, with the paper size outside of the normal A5 boundaries. It sits at a similar 210 mm tall, but is 168 mm wide, 20 mm wider than standard. I have no idea why, but it will be wider than A5 envelopes for mailing.

Being a Midori product, my expectation is that will handle every pen, nib, ink type, and pencil I throw at it with ease. It did. It’s not the elite fountain pen ink shader or sheener that paper designed for those characteristics will show, but it shows plenty. All of my currently inked pens performed well on the page, with no feathering, bleed, or show through. Gel ink, rollerball, ballpoint, and pencil all worked great as well.

The only negative I ever list with Midori is its stock cream-colored paper for those preferring a stark white page. I like the cream, and don’t find that it takes away from my ink colors enough to take away from all of the other great features.

Another great feature? The price. This Midori Letter Pad is $8 for 50 sheets. That’s very fair, and in line with the full Midori lineup. That said, this is a specialty product, and if you write multi-page letters with one line per line, and one side of the page, you could work through one of these pads quickly. If you have smaller handwriting, you could fit two handwritten lines between the lines, which is something I may try.

Midori Letter Pads are something you may consider trying, if it fits your needs. Like I said, they have a few specific tasks where they will shine, and aren’t a big commitment. Plus, they are Midori. It doesn’t get much better than that in the world of paper.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on June 5, 2023 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Midori, Letter Writing, Notebook Reviews.

Misfill, SMASH 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:

— Review: Pentel Smash Mechanical Pencil (Shellshore)

— Leaving Notebooks Unfinished — Dime Novel Raven (Dime Novel Raven)

— Ensso Italia Primary Manipulation IV Fountain Pen Review (SBREBrown)

— Sylvia Plath's Visual Notes (Noted)

— Rachel Spelling Meticulously Fills Vintage Paint Swatch Booklets with Vibrant Miniature Paintings (Colossal)

— Teacup Sketching: On Failures (Writing at Large)

— The Life-Changing Magic of Keeping a File Index (Analog Office)

— Pen Review: TWSBI VAC 700R (Stationery 🍕)

— PenBBS Season 27 Part 4 (Mountain of Ink)

— Fountain Pen Reivew: Benu Skull & Roses Crow Fountain Pen (The Well-Appointed Desk)

— Sakae Tomoe River Notebook Review (Blake's Broadcast)

— Ink of the Week – Iroshizuku Syo-ro (Fountain Pen Love)