Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
Ellen Ashford Ellen Ashford · August 7, 2026
The first time I tried opening a watch caseback, I did it wrong — and I have the scratched brass to prove it. The watch was a Seiko 5, a beat-up automatic I’d paid six dollars for at a church rummage sale in 2014, already knowing it ran but not caring much either way. I … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 6, 2026
You’re in a meeting. Someone asks you to jot down an action item, sketch a quick timeline, or note a decision. Your notebook needs to handle all three—fast. This is the moment when choosing the best notebook for office use matters more than you might think. The notebook question looks simple until you’re actually working … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 6, 2026
You’ve read my first pen refill compatibility guide, and you know the basics: Parker-style refills, G2-style refills, Schmidt upgrades, Zebra F-series. You’re armed with the knowledge that a Jotter refill fits a Lamy Safari ballpoint, and that most Japanese gel pens swap with each other. But you’re standing in your desk right now holding a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 6, 2026
The Pen That Skipped at the Worst Possible Moment I was signing a watch purchase agreement in a dealer’s back room in 2017 — a Tudor Black Bay I’d been chasing for eight months — and the ballpoint handed to me skipped clean across my signature, leaving a ghostly scratch instead of ink. I scribbled … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 5, 2026
The Routine That Keeps Ten Watches Running Without a Single Tool Purchase I own ten watches. At any given moment, three of them are being worn regularly, two are rotating through the weekly tray, and five are sitting in the box doing absolutely nothing. For years, that was fine — until it wasn’t. Building a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 4, 2026
The Bottle I Almost Threw Away Last winter I pulled a bottle of Diamine Oxblood from the back of my ink cabinet and nearly didn’t recognize it. What had been a fluid, wine-dark red was now a thick paste clinging to the glass walls like old jam. I’d left the cap slightly loose — a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 3, 2026
Somewhere in my second year of collecting, I told a stranger at an estate sale that her watch was “definitely a Longines” based on nothing but a dial font I half-recognized from memory. I was wrong. It took me an embarrassing amount of backpedaling and a proper look at the caseback to admit it. That … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 2, 2026
Ask around in pen collecting circles long enough and you’ll hear two completely contradictory pieces of advice about a pen with cement-hard ink in the feed. Camp one says the pen is done — retire it, harvest it for parts, move on. Camp two says give it an overnight soak in plain water and it’ll … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 1, 2026
Estate sale season rolled back around last spring, and with it came a folding table crowded with somebody else’s leftover life — a busted slide projector, a ceramic owl, and, wedged at the end, a battered wooden cigar box with a painted lid. Three dollars, cash, no haggling. Inside were roughly sixty postcards from the … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 31, 2026
A Watch Buried Under a Tray of Rhinestone Brooches No listing, no catalog entry, no manufacturer copy will ever tell you that a decent watch sometimes surfaces face-down under a snarl of costume jewelry on a folding table with a moving blanket draped over the legs for warmth. That’s a Sunday-in-late-October detail, and it’s the … Read more