The Looped Square

DC Pen Show 2023 - A Return to Form

In my 7 years of attending the DC Pen Show, I have never seen it as packed as I saw this weekend. The DC Pen Show calls itself the “Fountain Pen Supershow”, and for the first time in a really, really long time, I think it actually lived up to

DC Pen Show Recap - 2022

Say what you will about the DC Pen Show 2022, there is always something to talk about afterwards. A day may come where there will be a pen show recap of DC with no caveats, but it is not this day. That said, it's hard to place any

Glass Balls, Rubber Balls

What feels like forever ago, someone took a chance on me. They looked at a college kid with lots of passion and basically no experience, and they said "come work for me." In doing so, Mike Murray shaped my career not once, but twice. Some of the most

Draw Your Tools Wrapup

It’s over. It’s done. Thirty-one sketches/drawings of pens, nibs, one knife, one notebook, and one phone. It was a good challenge for myself, but it was also a little repetitive towards the end, that’s for sure. Over the course of the month, I jotted down little

Draw Your Tools…Tober

October has come around once again, bringing with it calls for Inktober. (We’ll set aside the drama around the “official” Inktober.) I almost sort of started a version of Inktober last year, and it ended a few days into it with expected results. While yes, a prompt system is

DC Pen Show 2021 Recap!

Pen shows are back! I’ve never seen so many people look so excited to slowly make their way through a crowded ballroom, even on Saturday at the DC Pen Show! This year was a little different for me, as it was my first time working for Vanness Pens [HTTPS:

2020 in Inky Review Part 2 - Market Trends

By the time I finished gushing over our communities and my own instruments of ink destruction, I realized how long the first post was getting. So, in a first, I’ve split my year-end review into two parts. Now, on to the market trends as I observed them! Paper Let’

2020 in Inky Review Part 1: Personal Trends and Collection

Well, that was a year, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t how any of us planned it panning out, so thank God we have our analog and digital diversions to keep what little bits of sanity we could salvage. Last year’s recap was full of hopeful optimism about

The Art of Impermanence

I’ve made no secret that I’ve been looking for new ways to use my fountain pens and inks. I am, and will always be, a writer, but I tend to find that there’s an upper limit to how much I will write by hand in a day.

2019 In Review

I love doing year end wrap ups. There, I said it. They're easy to write, and kinda fun, too. But I’m going to deviate from the smaller post I did last year [https://loopedsquare.ink/2018-an-inky-year-in-review/] and get in some hot takes and observations as I recap

DC Pen Show 2019 Recap

My wallet is empty, but my heart is full. Another DC Pen Show has come and gone, and while I’m sure it sounds like a broken record, this was my favorite DC pen show so far. While there was some drama around the early planning stages of the show,

How Do You Use Your: Nock Sinclair?

Sitting quietly in a beach house seems like the perfect place to write a little bit about my favorite stationery carrying case: the Nock Co. Sinclair [https://nockco.com/cases/sinclair]. First and foremost, while it may be advertised as a three pen case, I can probably count the number

How Do You Use Your...Traveler’s* Notebook?

It might come as a surprise to some, but I am not an organized person. At all, actually. I know people who are naturally organized (my wife springs to mind), but I’m not. As a result, I’ve had to put a bunch of systems in place to compensate.

Baltimore Pen Show Recap - 2019

And just like that, the pen show season is underway! The Baltimore Pen Show was this past weekend, and I’m still reeling from the great time that I had. Well organized, full of good people, and lots of good shopping, it was everything I had hoped it would be

How Do You Use Your...Hippo Noto?

One of my favorite things about pen meetups and shows is seeing how everyone uses different notebooks. You’ll see pocket notebooks, big pads of paper, and all manner of places to write in between. It always leads to great discussion around how people use their different kinds of notebooks.

Points of Interest: Work Trip Edition

Nothing like a work trip to totally throw off any plans you have. I like work travel, I really do, but the unpredicatability of what your day to day is going to look like makes it really hard to find time for things like writing and reading. Most of the

Points of Interest: Fire on Fire Edition

It's happened: Brad Dowdy from the Pen Addict [penaddict.com] has finally released his first ink collaboration with Robert Oster, and it's called Fire on Fire [https://www.penaddict.com/shop/fireonfire]. As expected, people went nuts for it, myself included. Brad is a great guy,

Points of Interest: InCoWriMo Edition

It's InCoWriMo time again! I've written in the past [https://loopedsquare.ink/incowrimo-2018/] about my experiences doing InCoWriMo, so I won't be writing about it this year. I won't be going for the every day challenge this year, but I'm

Points of Interest - Escape from Wisconsin Edition

Sunday night I flew to Chicago and then drove to Milwaukee for what was supposed to be a quick day of meetings, with a flight home on Tuesday afternoon. Instead, it turns out that I flew right in front of a winter storm, so I didn't get home

Points of Interest: 1/12 - 1/18

Null Refill: A synthetic paper for ink lovers [https://www.fudefan.com/2019/01/null-refill/] - The Fude Fan I’m incredibly jealous of anyone who gets easy access to Japan’s vibrant stationery market. Even with the strides that have been made in bringing stuff from there to America,

Paper

Let’s Talk About Tomoe River

In August of 2017, I wrote a blog post talking about how I wanted to highlight some of the wild, wacky, and amazing types of paper that can be found out in the market. And I feel like I’ve done a bit of that. I’ve looked at a

Points of Interest: 1/5 - 1/11

It’s Philadelphia Pen Show [https://philadelphiapenshow.com/] weekend! Pictures are already starting to fly across Instagram, and it looks like it’s going to be a great weekend. I won’t be in attendance, so I’ll be living vicariously through the pictures. Gotta start saving my pennies for

Pen Review: Platinum Procyon

Back at the DC Pen Show, Platinum’s distributor in the US had a new pen to show off: the Platinum Procyon [http://www.platinum-pen.co.jp/e_fountainpen_procyon.html]. You couldn’t buy it just yet, but it was there to be seen, and it was a really

Weekly Roundup: 12/31 - 1/4

I love going through what others found interesting in their browsing around the web. Even if I follow the majority of the same sites as someone else, their commentary or choice of links always provides something to read. So, I thought it was time to get one of these roundups

2019 Creative Goals

First things first. If you haven’t been listening to the Make Do Podcast [relay.fm/makedo], you should go fix that. It’s a fantastic, positive look at creativity and the feelings and processes around that, and it has become one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. Make