Show Notes
In the first podcast of the year, (I know, we're slack), Helen and Rob chat about recent stationery finds, purchases and goodies. Helen geeks out with a colleague who loves Fountain Pens - and is an expert on paper quality.They head to Gilbert House Pens to spend money. Helen buys a feather resin pen. Brad Herrington from Gilbert House Pens is helpful and guides Helen to the right pen.
Helen is now obsessed with inks, especially after we had Urban Hafner on the show. Helen is now using shimmer inks of various colours.
Rob is taking out extra loans to cover his addiction to Domestika courses. Rob is now finishing a small lettering course by Little Hannah (amongst other courses!) Rob has therefore bought some Pentel Brush pens for the course - sorry, Rob referred to them as ink pens in the podcast - they are not. They are brush pens. Rob apologises if you head to Domestika and up remortgaging your house. Their courses are brilliant.
Helen has convinced friend of the show, Helen Callaghan (Guest on Episode 20), to set some constraints and coach / mentor Stationery Freak Helen on writing. Helen has finally found a use for her "top of the class" Mark and Fold notebook - you know, that notebook that is super special. And now Helen has replaced it with another "top of the class" notebook from LeVan notebooks. A beautiful hand stitched notebook, that lays flat, and is covered in Japanese silk/linen.
It turns out Helen keeps her unused notebooks (of which most Stationery Freaks have hundreds) on display. Rob finds this unsettling as it would remind him of all of the potential he has yet to release. Rob keeps his hidden away in his writing desk
Rob is following the wonderfully talented Play Attention Now on Instagram - he has inspired Rob to keep learning to draw.Which is why Rob has purchased another Ottergami notebook.
Helen has signed up for a writing workshop that takes place over 30 weeks with Alison and Jenny who run "A Novel in a year" Rob mentions his upcoming book "Take a day off" over on Cultivated Management Rob has bought an old school Rapesco pencil sharpener. Helen has bought an ergonomically challenged pencil sharpener of her own - that slices fingers in the process of sharpening pencils.
Rob has bought a book called "Japanese Colour Matching" from the wonderful CounterPrint books. Stationery Freak Helen and author Helen Callaghan are taking their "creative constraints" workshop to conferences this year! How exciting. Until next time. Rob and Helen
More from Stationery Freaks
After a few months away — and a very welcome "petition of one" from Stacy in Florida — Rob and Helen are back. Rob has been building a public commonplace: twenty-five years of learning, typed onto index cards (possibly breaking his typewriter in the process) and slowly taking over his studio wall. Helen has been redistributing her notebook collection to a room of grateful authors, which may or may not count as cheating in the great notebook challenge. See original hoarding cast here and a revisit to the challenge of using notebooks here. Along the way: why old publishing offices were built around attention rather than productivity, a typewritten daily planning ritual that's quietly replaced Todoist, the strange magnetism of Midori paper, a beautiful Japanese storage haul, giving away index cards to parents and why the whole world seems to be drifting back to analogue. It's like old times. Which is rather the point of the cast. It's good to be back. If you'd like to see images, and more about the show - check out the companion newsletter to this episode. https://stationeryfreaks.substack.com/
In this episode of Stationery Freaks, Rob and Helen dig into the messy, essential world of scrap notes: desk pads, Post-its, legal pads, envelopes, voice memos, and the “grab whatever’s nearby” capture habit. They explore the real question beneath the stationery: what’s the process for turning a quick note into something useful — and what happens when your capture system becomes a pile of open loops.
It’s our first Stationery Freaks episode of 2026, and we’re going deep on goal setting, as we usually do for the first cast of the year.
It’s the last Stationery Freaks episode before Christmas, and after a slightly chaotic month we’re back with a free-form catch-up full of notebook temptation, planning experiments, and advent calendar joy. Helen reviews two very premium stationery advent calendars — Martha Brook(s) and Tom’s Studio — including what you actually get, which one feels more “decorative vs functional,” and the one item she absolutely refuses to touch (again). Rob shares his new structured SmartPlanner time-blocking experiment (and why he’s moved from pen to pencil), an everyday-carry bag confession featuring nine notebooks, and an early idea he’s calling The Wallpaper Method: learning notes on a giant scroll. We also chat about “analog wellbeing,” why January is peak notebook season, end-of-year reflection (hello, Collins ledger), and what we’ll be tackling in the first episode of 2026.