Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
Ellen Ashford · July 21, 2026
No spec sheet lists “will eat an entire month of journal entries” as a possible outcome, but that’s exactly what happened when I trusted the wrong notebook with my then-favorite wet-noodle flex nib. It was loaded with Diamine Registrar’s — a heavily saturated, slow-drying formula — and page after page soaked straight through to the … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 23, 2026
Ask ten notebook manufacturers what their ruling actually does to your handwriting, and you’ll get a blank stare — that information simply isn’t printed on the cover or the packaging. I found this out somewhere past journal number forty, once I finally stopped reaching for whatever was closest on the shelf and started genuinely interrogating … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 22, 2026
7S26 — that’s the caliber stamped into a Seiko 5 I picked up at an estate sale for $40, and hunting down that reference number is actually what got a notebook into my pocket in the first place. I needed somewhere to scribble the serial, the caseback markings, whatever the seller could remember about its … Read more