Show Notes
It's that time of the year again - time for something festive. In this special edition, episode 4 of 4, we offer up some advice and insights into things we would buy if money were no object. Rob breaks the rules on this one, Helen less so. Listen to the end for a magical and amazing idea we'd love to do, but alas, money IS an object. We cover: - Helen - Smythson Soho Luxury Notebooks. About £170 - £250 - Rob - Parker Bumble Bee - ebay link so may expire. £5000 for a pen! - Helen - Diamine Inkvent Calendar - this is SO cool. £89.95 - Rob - Antique Writing Desk - link may expire if sold. £3650 - Helen - Helen would like a pen made from the Apple Tree made famous by Isaac Newton. We believe you can only get them in the store at Woolsthorpe Manor, not online. Alternatively, Helen would like a pen made of wood from the actual York Minster. - Rob - My more reasonable choice (although still expensive) would be this amazing pencil sharpener by Labour And Wait. Epic. But is around £200. We make use of affiliate links which means you don't pay any more but we earn a tiny commission that goes to keeping the servers running. Subscribe to the newsletter to never miss an episode : https://stationeryfreaks.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/stationeryfreaksuk/
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.