Moleskine Cahier Pocket Notebook

Since I am predominately a fountain pen user, Moleskine isn't exactly my first choice when it comes to daily-use paper. Over the break, a dear friend sent me one of these Moleskine Cahier pocket notebooks as holiday gift so I decided to make it as my new daily memo book (since the Rhodia pad I have is running low).

That's immersion oil (for high power lens on microcope) by the spine...

  The cahiers come in blank design with beige/black cover and matching stitch binding, it's supposed to be simple and no-frill that you can take it anywhere with you (apparently not near water, since I dropped it in a lake later when I tried to do an elaborated glamour shot, oy). 

There is a back pocket for note cards, receipt and things like that. The corner are rounded so the cover handles wear better. There are 30 sheets of off-white, textured and seemly fibrous paper with medium (as in non-faint) gray rule.

These artwork of Russian cityscape (drawn by Zhenya Vassiliev...) is transferred onto the notebook by my friend (don't know how) since she knows I am mildly obsessed with all thing Russian (mainly pianists, ballerinas and poets). Hmmm, I wonder if she would get in some copyright issue since it's a one off item and not for profit...

The first 15 pages are normal pages while the second half are all micro-perforated. 

I have heard plenty of stories about Moleskine's encounter with water-based ink so I am not surprised to see how the ink (De Atramentis J. S. Bach, a watery ink that bleeds more than others) feathers and bleeds through (do I even need to include the picture?) like a mofo. Anyway, since the paper texture is quite different from the other Moleskine I own (the green lego notebook), I suppose the quality isn't uniform across the whole brand. 

Overall: Meh...I guess I can still use it to jot down the location of metaphases (the number in the above pictures)?

Moleskine Green Lego Pocket Plain Notebook

Notebook is one of the items (along with shampoo, toothpaste and body wash) that I don't like to spend too much (or at all?) on. For note-taking, I usually just take those misprinted paper from libraries recycle bins (which are 99% blank anyway), organize the loose notes with staples and folder then toss them all at the end of semester. Ever since I started to visit the blog of Mattias Adolfsson(who draws on a Moleskine with fountain pens), I developed a desire for a Moleskine sketch book despite the fact that I am not a fan of the hipster brand image.

Two weeks ago, I ended up ordering a 2011 limited edition Moleskine pocket notebook with a green lego brick affixed to the cover. Evidently, the combo of limited edition and the color green never fails (to get) me. The 11-dollar price was a rip-off (somehow my cheap self was expecting it to be full sketchbook-sized) but I guess that's the price every wannabe pays, when she/he initializes the hipster transformation.

As soon as I have placed my order at Amazon, I started to come by all those horrifying reviews (saying how bad it bleeds and feathers) on Moleskines paper , done by fountain pen users in FPN, blogs and Youtube. By that point, all I could do was preparing for the worst, welcoming my first pack of bounded-toilet-paper with open arms.

To start off the easy way, I went with Noodler's Bulletproof black, an ink that's deemed Moleskine-friendly by many (not to mention it was used with EF nib of Pilot Penmanship pen). Beside some smudges caused by the slow dry time of the ink, there is no feathering or bleeding. However, there is a significant amount of show through as the paper is not very opaque (In fact, if it weren't the small size, it would work as tracing paper). Not only it's impossible to draw on both sides of each sheet, there is also quite a bit of over-lapping once I flip the page.

On a side note, I do like how the warm ivory paper is smooth and non-absorbent, which takes water color like a dream: all I do is place the brush on the paper and it would just let the water and pigment just glide on the paper. I barely get any wrinkle once the water dries and the water rarely rush outside the drawn boundary.

Since my plan of using it as a drawing book somewhat failed (I guess I will just keep the drawing a few pages apart, separate by writing, to avoid any destructive interference...Wait, is it constructive? I totally forgot everything about waves), I went ahead and tried more inks with the note book. Beside there were some feather with Lamy Safari Extra Fine + J.Herbin Poussiere de Lune, everything else worked fine including this juicy broad nib of Pilot Custom Heritage 91 (inked with Lamy Turquoise). Frankly, I can't really blame the feathering on the paper, consider that my Safari EF is sharp and (still...after months of using) very scratchy.

The two gray dots are dust on the sensor...I don't know how to clean DSLR.

At the back cover of the notebook, there is a small pocket (with green fabric trims) housing two sheets of Lego stickers. I like stickers (or just useless and cute things of the sort) but those are too simple and juvenile, it's like they didn't even try...

Overall: Beside the thing with show through, I do like the paper (not enough for the price though) and I haven't experienced anything I had read about in those horror story. I suppose this is one of the better stock? Anyway, I guess I need to hunt for a new fountain pen-friendly sketchbook with thicker paper...