Posts filed under Midori

Midori 2019 Diary Professional PRD-15 Slim Planner Giveaway

We are in peak 2019 planner season, and Midori brought their A-game to the table with endless options for all of you planning needs. I spent some time going through all of them at the Vanness Pens table at the Dallas Pen Show, and one of them stood out above the rest.

If I were going to use a planner for 2019 (and I’m not!) the Midori 2019 Diary Professional PRD-15 Slim Planner would get the call. Why? The two-page per week layout is perfect for me. Not to mention the paper size, quality, look, and feel - all the best of Midori in one package.

I have one of these to give away, so read the rules and enter below.

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Midori, Giveaways.

Midori MD Pencil Review

Have you ever had trouble deciding if you like a product or not? I’m running into that right now with the Midori MD Pencil.

That makes for a strange review. Do I like it? Do I love it? Do I want some more of it? I don’t know. It’s obviously good and I keep using it, but what is my opinion on it? What should I tell you about it?

It’s a pencil. That’s the hangup for most non-pencil people. “They are all the same Brad!” No, not at all. But this one. This one I can’t tell you what to do.

It’s not as good as my favorite pencils. That list includes the Blackwing 602, Tombow Mono 100, and the Mitsubishi Office 9850 for starters, and even more included in the Pencils For Pen Lovers Sampler Set. And I love using pencils. There is hardly a day that goes by where I’m not enjoying one of the many pencils that live on my desk. I LOVE using pencils!

It’s not as bad as bad pencils. I haven’t tried many bad pencils on purpose, and if you stick with brands that are sold by all of your favorite online vendors, you don’t have to worry about that either. You know bad when you get them. Scratchy graphite, non-centered cores, janky wood quality, and Wopex.

It’s expensive. It’s not egregious at $1.83 per pencil from CW Pencil Enterprise, but that is on the upper end of the pencil spectrum. As a pen person at heart, and as someone who pays hundreds of dollars for a single fountain pen, it is funny to call that expensive. But it matters. Just like any product, price vs. perceived value vs. competition comes into play when making a buying decision.

I enjoyed it while using it over the past couple of weeks. It has good point retention, which is one of the most important features of a pencil to me. Even as a B-grade, which is softer than my preferred graphite hardness. That gives it a nice darkness as well, another favorite feature of mine. The satin finish looks and feels nice, and I’m perfectly fine with the no eraser style. I may even prefer it.

So, what should you do? If you are a Midori fan, then it is a no-brainer. It fits their style and aesthetic perfectly, and, of course, they are high quality. If you are a general nice pencil fan, then there are better options out there. If you want to try good pencils for the very first time, I’m not sure this one should even be on the radar.

Reviewing middle of the road products is the hardest. If there is no one thing that is great, or no one thing that is bad, what do you hang your hat on?

Maybe nothing, other than enjoying it for what it is.

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Posted on September 10, 2018 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Midori, Pencil Reviews.

Midori MD Cotton Notebook A4 Blank: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

The Midori MD Cotton Notebook is a thread-bound notebook with 88 pages made from 20% cotton pulp. Like other MD notebooks, this one is minimalist in presentation, with a cardstock cover and see-through tape over the binding. It also has a ribbon bookmark.

Unlike the MD notebooks with Tomoe River paper (see review here), the cotton paper has a bit of texture.

This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, the cotton fiber absorbs ink more quickly than the Tomoe paper, so you won’t experience as much smearing. Fortunately, the paper’s absorbancy does not lead to bleeding or feathering even with the widest fountain pen nibs.

The paper is thin enough that fountain pen ink shows through (very slightly), but I didn’t experience any bleed through with regular writing.

When I tested the paper with my widest ruling pen and ink splats, I did experience bleed through, but you really have to lay a good bit of wet ink down for this to happen.

I also tested the paper drawing a picture with ink and using a water brush to blend the colors. The paper wrinkles up with moisture, so I wouldn’t recommend it for watercolors unless you don’t mind the wrinkling.

For writing, however, this is excellent paper. I wrote a portion of the first part of The Scarlet Letter and had no problems with fibers getting caught in the tines, ink bleeding, or smearing.

My one complaint about this notebook is that it’s not perforated, so if you want to remove pages, you wind up with a jagged edge. Other than that, the binding is tight and the notebook lays flat.

You can purchase the Midori MD Cotton Notebook in (almost) A4 size (Length is 27.5 cm /10.8 inches and Width is 21.0 cm/ 8.3 inches) from Jet Pens for $28.00.

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

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