Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
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 6, 2026
The nib sits bent sideways in my palm right now — tines splayed apart where a notebook spiral caught them and yanked hard, a $120 lesson in what happens when a Pilot Custom 74 rides loose in a jacket pocket like spare change. That’s roughly how careless my carry used to be: pens tangled in … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 26, 2026
Eleven years and something like four thousand handwritten pages into this habit, the question I get most often has nothing to do with fountain pens or the notebooks I fill with them — it’s about mechanical pencils. For most of that stretch, I assumed the fault was mine: too much pressure, too little patience, lead … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 24, 2026
My case backs used to carry the scars of my own impatience. Nothing about a spring bar tool is complicated in theory, but in practice I’d end up hunched at my desk for the better part of ten frustrated minutes, loupe pressed to one eye, gouging a fresh scratch into the metal with every third … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 20, 2026
Right here on my desk sits a battered Staedtler Mars Lumograph next to a Zebra F-301, and between the two of them I’ve settled an argument that used to send me back and forth in the stationery aisle like an indecisive fool. Ten-plus years into hoarding analog writing tools — watches, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical … Read more