My new shipment from The Goulet Pen Company makes it feel like Christmas!

Six pocket notebooks and sixteen different colorful ink swatches arranged on a light wooden desk

I ordered their notebook sampler and got a random ink sample set for free.

I’ve barely tested the notebooks so far, but I’m really liking the Goulet notebook with Tomoe River paper. It felt silky smooth and the lines of the ink were the most crisp I’ve seen. All the notebooks seem great though. I’m going to have fun trying them out!

I’m a little bummed that the Goulet notebook came in the pocket size instead of the passport size, because I use a passport size traveler’s notebook as a pocket journal/wallet. In the future, I think I’ll be buying the Tomoe River refills instead of the standard Traveler’s Notebook (TN) refills. Although TN paper is from Midori and is quite nice too. I found that the TN paper was the most toothy of the notebooks in the sampler.

The notebooks all have “premium” paper ideal for fountain pens, and include:

In my random ink sample set I received the eight inks on the left, including:

The other inks pictured on the right were from a sample set I picked up from Goulet a while back.

I still haven’t gone in on a full-size bottle of ink. Back in college I had a Pilot Iroshizuku bottle, but I don’t remember what I did with it. I think I gave it to a friend. Now I’m having fun trying out samples! My journal is eclectic with different colors and shades all over the place, but I like that. It will be fun to look back and see what I was experimenting with at different times.

Maybe someday I’ll settle on a nice journal/pen/ink combo I can rock forever, but I’m okay if that never happens. Experimentation is where the fun is at!