Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
Ellen Ashford · September 1, 2026
Best Watches Under 100 Dollars I Would Actually Wear Daily There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes from a cheap watch. Not that it breaks — most of them do not — but that you stop reaching for it after three weeks. It sits in the drawer, technically functional, quietly unloved. I have … Read more
Ellen Ashford · September 1, 2026
Best Blue Fountain Pen Inks: 10 Bottles I Have Used and Ranked Blue is the most crowded shelf in fountain pen ink, and most of the differences that matter are invisible in a swatch. A colour that looks gorgeous painted on Rhodia can feather into a smudge on a photocopier’s paper, take ninety seconds to … Read more
Ellen Ashford · September 1, 2026
Best Everyday Pens for People Who Lose Pens: My Rotation I write about fountain pens that cost more than some watches. I also lose pens — in coat pockets, in the car, in other people’s houses, at a hardware store counter in 2023 where I definitely left a pen I still think about. For a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · September 1, 2026
Premium Rollerballs That Write Better Than Most Fountain Pens This is an awkward thing to write on a site with this much fountain pen content, so let me be direct: for a lot of everyday writing, a good rollerball is the better tool. Not the more interesting one. The better one. A rollerball starts instantly … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 24, 2026
Sixty-two dollars changed hands at a flea market table for a pen that, frankly, I could’ve bought new for less — and that transaction is what got me thinking about this whole tier of collecting in the first place. By the time you’ve filled a stack of notebooks with entries from my under-$50 picks, you … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 23, 2026
Search collector forums long enough and you’ll run into two pieces of directly opposed advice: one camp swears a decent pen will always beat a pencil for daily writing, and the other insists any cheap disposable pencil does the job just as well as a good one. That second camp is wrong. After a decade … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 4, 2026
Two years into this hobby, I made a rule for myself: nothing under $80, because anything cheaper had to be junk. I held to that rule right up until a friend handed me a $28 pen she’d bought on a whim, and it outperformed three of my “serious” pens on the spot. That rule cost … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 4, 2026
Fountain Pen Buying Guide Under $50: Nib Sizing, Fill Systems, and 8 Pens Worth Buying Ten years ago, I dismissed fountain pens as nostalgic affectations. Then I spent $35 on a pen that changed everything. The smoothness of the nib, the intentionality of every stroke—it wasn’t a gimmick. It was better than ballpoints in ways … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 2, 2026
Caliber 1012 — that’s the movement stamped inside my 1970 Omega Seamaster, a bi-directional automatic I’d just brought home and wasn’t wearing often enough to keep alive on its own. Seven years back, staring at that number in a repair manual, I decided the fix was obvious: buy a winder, keep the rotor spinning, problem … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 2, 2026
Seiko 5 Review: The Watch I’ve Bought Seven Times and Keep Coming Back To I own seven Seiko 5 watches. Not as a collector’s flex—I genuinely wear most of them. The SNK805 sits on my desk right now, case brushed to a soft matte from years of field work. The SRPD55 with its ocean-blue dial … Read more