A Bunch Of Links Including Your Favorites And My Lists

By number of page views, these posts were voted favorites for 2012:

• Field Notes Journals or Moleskine Cahiers
• The Rhodia Webnotebook vs Moleskine Journal Showdown
• Favorite Fountain Pens
• The Ink Blotter, A Dirty Little Secret
• Favorite Inks
• Handwriting Tutorials from Caliken
• The Kaweco Classic Sport, A Modern Pocket Pen
• Pelikan Edelstein Ink
• Favorite Stationery
• Favorite Brand Of Fountain Pen Ink – The Poll Results
• So What’s The Deal With Iron Gall Ink
• Big And Bold Namiki Falcon

Note that my favorite inks, fountain pens, stationery, and matches lists were updated today.

According to WordPress,

Crunchy numbers

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2012, there were 119 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 506 posts.

The busiest day of the year was December 15th with 838 views. The most popular post that day was Best Fountain Pen Product You Don’t Own.

The top referring sites were

1. Google Reader
2. penaddict.com
3. inknouveau.com
4. blogs.com
5. twitter.com

Most active commenters were

• 1 BT Irwin 46 comments
• 2 justdaveyb 14 comments
• 3 kp 12 comments
• 4 Bruno Taut 8 comments

A huge thank you to all who visited, linked to, or commented at An Inkophile’s Blog. You are THE BEST!

An Ink Blotter And Why You Need One

Blotters have come up in several posts lately so it’s time for a brief explanation for folks unfamiliar with or new to the concept.

By definition a blotter soaks up liquid. Nothing special about it. Something as simple as a tissue will do and I have used one on many occasions. A folded sheet of printer paper can work as well.

If you want something designed for the purpose or that is more absorbent, some retailers carry blotter sheets or smaller versions that are about the size of a bookmark. J. Herbin makes really nice ones.

J. Herbin Blotter Paper

My experience with using the real deal is they are worth the investment. The one below is at least six years old and just recently starting to fray.

My Old Blotter

A blotter can be used between pages when you close your journal to prevent smearing. A large one can be used behind the page on which you are writing to prevent ink bleeding through to the following page. It can serve as a convenient bookmark as well.

A blotter is a simple solution to ink smears and bleed-through for any type of pen but earns a highly recommended rating for fountain pens. This is one tool that everyone can use.