Galen Leather is always designing fun and functional cases, and this Leather TwinFlip Case is a great take on the traditional three pen holder. The exterior leather is smooth and soft, and the case is lined with an Orange silk and cotton fabric. I have one to give away this week, so read the rules below and enter away!
Penedex, Your Digital Stationery Companion (Sponsor)
Just in time for summer travels, Penedex has a new feature for all users — the Stationery Store Map! Now you can discover independent stationery shops, printmakers, and pen stores near you, whether you’re at home or traveling to a show. Check out store details, get directions, visit their websites, and log the date of your visit to keep track of your adventures.
The store database is handcrafted by Connor Rose, a community member and the solo developer of Penedex. If you’re a shop owner and would like him to add you to the Penedex map, please reach out within the app or at hello@penedex.com. And if you’re a user whose favorite shop isn’t in the app, please let Connor to know and he’ll be happy to add it!
Penedex is your digital stationery companion, where you can catalog your pen and ink collections, prepare for a pen show, or check out what stationery stores are in your vicinity. You can add details to your pen and ink entries, such as nib type, pen material, ink color, shimmer, dry time, photos, and more. You can keep a daily log of your pen usage quickly and easily. Penedex will also keep track of how often you use your items and display a range of statistics about your usage. You can also add pens and inks to a wishlist to save for later — like when attending a pen show.
If you’re visiting the Chicago Pen Show this week, it’s a great opportunity to try out the Pen Show Planner & Organizer. Add important events to your show checklist or use the built-in budget tracker to make sure your pen show haul won’t blow your budget. And don’t forget to use the new map feature to find a local pen store and support local businesses!
Check out Penedex for iOS at Penedex.com or on the iOS App Store by searching “Penedex.” The app is free to download.
If you want to say hi, you can find Penedex on Instagram @penedexapp or you can find Connor Rose on his personal home page.
LAMY ABC Fountain Pen Review
“Brad, why would you ever review pens made for kids?”
Well, I’m a big kid, and I love stationery. Plus, most pens that focus on helping children how to write are fun, and who doesn’t want that in their choice of writing instrument?
The LAMY ABC has been on my radar forever, but I was never compelled to try one out until the new Black Model was released. Blue and Red are the classic colors of the ABC, and are always available. I guess I needed my new kid’s fountain pen to be a special edition to buy it? No problem detected.
The ABC was released in 1980, and designed by Bernt Spiegel. From the Spiegel Institute:
The ABC was developed to be a writing utensil for writing beginners. While observing the behavior of children beginning school, important features were developed and compared with the guidelines of the association “Spiel gut” (Play well) for good toys. The product’s design featured a combination of wood and plastic, adapted ergonomically to children’s hands with a thicker and condensed body and a cube-like design to keep it from rolling away.
Given that brief, this pen checks all of the boxes. For starters, the design is begging any user to pick it up and try it out. It looks like a mini baseball bat or baton, with a wood barrel and an ABS plastic cap and end piece. It’s chunky, too.
When uncapped, the rubberized grip is molded in two spots to help kids with finger placement when first leaning to write. While grips morph and change as you get older, LAMY at least provides a good baseline to start. Later in life, this type of grip may not be comfortable for you to use.
The nib of the ABC is what LAMY calls an A nib. It writes a Medium line with its rounded tipping, specifically designed for beginners. I’m not sure that it differs all that much from their standard Medium nib, but this one does do a nice job writing at various angles.
The final kid-friendly aspect of the ABC, which I didn’t realize until I bought this pen, was that each pen comes with a sticker to write your name on and attach to the cap. There is even a clear plastic sticker designed to be applied over the color sticker, and a matching color dot for the end of the barrel so you can match up the different parts when they are inevitably lost in a sea of 3rd graders. Or on my desk.
Deskmat from Mintlodica.com - they rule!
For my use, I’m having a lot of fun with it. It is legitimately fun to pick up and sling ink with this wet A nib. I used the stock LAMY Blue cartridge that shipped with it for the full grade school experience, and it is a perfect match. The only thing I don’t like is that the grip is wide in diameter (11.0 mm vs 10.4 mm on the LAMY Safari,) and the molded sections don’t extend up the grip as far as on the Safari, either. This is a pen designed for small hands, so I get it.
How will I use this pen going forward? Big writing with the A nib, and possible artistic destruction of the wood barrel? It seems like a perfect platform for that.
Give its start as a school pen, would I recommend it to kids as their training pen? Maybe. For starters, at $20 it is a bit expensive to take a chance with. Then again, other popular school pens (meaning pens with a molded grip for grip training, and a durable build,) like the Pelikan Pelikano are more expensive. That’s just me shopping at pen retailers. I’m sure there are many $2-$5 pens that could be sourced in bulk for classrooms.
For more experienced users, like myself, the LAMY ABC is a blast. Not everyone will enjoy it for various reasons, but I do love bringing out the inner kid in me every once in a while.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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