Fountain Pen Friendly

The mention of Life Noble Note Plain, my favorite notebook for journal keeping is nothing new to these pages, and its praises have been sung in more than one post. It’s a longtime standby for me and I keep a stack of them on hand. I’m coming to the end of a notebook now (page 100), so went to my stash pile this morning for a new one.

Egad! Gadzooks! Nothing there! At the moment I spied the empty shelf space it came to me that a week ago I had grabbed up all those unused Life Noble Note journals and sent them off to Florida for use when I’m there. Nothing for it but to pull up an unused Rollbahn notebook. This is not a bad alternative, but there are two things about the Rollbahn I’m not crazy about.

First off, the A6 size is slightly smaller than what I’m most comfortable writing in. Over the years, the larger A5 (5.8 x 8.3 inches) has become familiar to my style of journal writing, and a sudden switch feels a little odd. Another feature of the Rollbahn notebook that doesn't thrill me is the graphed pages—lines both horizontal and vertical. This is more preferable to only horizontal lines, bu my real preference is unlined pages.

The advantage of the Rollbahn is the quality of the paper. The creamy yellow pages have a good thickness, and looking through an old, filled notebook I can find no bleed through or feathering on any of the seventy pages. That includes writing done with at least a dozen different pens, in probably two dozen different inks. The Rollbahn paper is very, very fountain pen friendly.

A few Rollbahn specifics…

Variety of notebook colors: black, white, red, blue (light or dark), green, purple, orange and pink

Size: A6; 4.1 x 5.8 inches (110 x 210 millimeters); available in 3 smaller sizes

70 pages; graph-lined creamy yellow with 5 full-page plastic pockets for cards, photos, etc in the back of the notebook

Wirebound, thick cardboard covers with an elastic band to hold the notebook closed