We’ve been, as the kids say, “Crazy busy” scanning, cropping and readying selected memo books for our “Vintage Memo Book Gallery” that is on the way. At last count, we were up around 200 examples. Really. That’s a lot.

And, we’re adding new ones to the master archives each Monday morning, once the weekend’s junkin’ routes have been pillaged, sorted and archived.

Special thanks to Field Notes “Sheet Team” member and all-around good guy Eric Lovejoy for having the guts to lovingly scan the whole mess in.

Here’s another beauty from the gallery from the good people at Federal Graduated Fertilizer. Their slogan: “The World’s Best Fertilizer.” We’ll take their word for it.

Joshua Talbot’s got some kittens to give away. And he said the nicest thing one could say about getting memo books in the mail:

It reminds me of when I received my Jedi Fan Club pack in the mail. Or being a Cub Scout and getting a new badge.

I’d take a kitten, Joshua, but I’m allergic and I already have two anyway. I could ask Drap, but I don’t know how Gary feels about cats. Man, they’re cute, though. Aw, look at that, just crying out for some misspelled Impact Bold.

(For anyone disappointed that this post had nothing to do with Kim Gordon and Julia Cafritz, here’s this.)

Something for your weekend: Aaron’s-girlfriend’s-friend-Ricky’s-friend, Peyton, sent this photo of a heavy-duty grill he’s building with his pops. “Can you believe that’s a penzoil can cut in two?” Anyone can make a grill out of an oil can, but this sort of specialized engineering is possible only in Traverse City, MI, and only with the help of detailed plans in a Field Notes memo book. Thanks, Peyton!

That reminds me, I need to find my scale drawing of the remote-control floating Deathmobile I designed for a hoity-toity “swimming pool flotilla” party, (we weren’t invited back). I don’t think I got any good photos before it caught on fire.

We mentioned a few weeks ago that Steve Makofsky, a chief architect at Yahoo, mentioned us on his blog, The Furrygoat Experience, with a promise to write more later. On Monday, Steve did just that, designating FNs as the memo-book equivalent of the MacBookAir. Steve is even taking David Yeiser’s lead and giving two of them away. He also posted a bunch of great photos on Flickr, including our favorite: Field Notes with its new buddy.

Speaking of Flickr, we’ve set up the Field Notes In Action Flickr group, with all the associated photo pools and discussion groups, so ‘friend’ us and post your photos to our pool, and all that stuff, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Thanks for the shoutouts, Sopa De Ganso, Accidental Creative, and Orange Yoyo.

We just printed a small run of co-branded Field Notes for our good friends over at An Event Apart. They really liked our Field Notes and thought it would be a great idea to give them away to their event attendees. We couldn’t agree more, so we printed their logo on the back of the notebooks and sent them on their way. They were so happy, they just placed another order.

Customize Field Notes for your event, company, website, youth soccer team, birdwatching club–you name it, we’ll custom-print it. We’ll accept custom orders anytime, but since we’re going on press soon to print more AEA books, the economies of scale come into play and now would be a great time to order and save some cash.

Picture it: your logo or design on Field Notes memo books. How great is that? Contact Michele for more information on customization.

“Trip Out” with some of Portland, Oregon’s own Jason Levins, and his “explorations of the mind” that somehow made it into his Field Notes. Hard to say what’s really going on here. Maybe some brilliance. Maybe some madness. You be the judge.

We try to keep things “down to earth” as much as possible. You know, simple ink on paper kind of stuff, right? For our brothers soaring in the 4th dimension: Field Notes can take on even the wildest of metaphysical wanderings.

Jason, for graph paper’s sake, be careful out there, in there, and whatever astral plane you are on right now.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to Richard’s Pens ever since we got this blog up and running, and now I have that excuse: they’ve reviewed Field Notes.

Richard Binder has turned his love of vintage fountain pens into a career, repairing and customizing old pens and selling new ones. Richard’s site is a huge fount (sorry) of information about fountain pen care, collecting, and history, written by Richard and (his son-in-law, my college buddy) Don Fluckinger and designed by Don’s wife (Richard’s daughter) Kate (Richard emailed to let us know he designed the site, not Kate). Don managed to get me using an old Wearever fountain pen, and I love it. I already have an obsessive hobby and can’t afford another one, so I haven’t dived into the pen world as deeply as I’d like to, but if you harbor any interest at all in fountain pens, Richard’s site should be your first stop.

Don gave us a great writeup in his “Extra Fine Points” column this week, with a great photo of Richard’s penmanship on our graphed pages. He and Richard agree that our Boise Offset 50#T White paper handles fountain pen ink really well. Amateur Economist/ pen collector Chris Meisenzahl said the same thing last month. We really appreciate the kind words, and encourage all you pen nuts to keep one in your pocket with your Parker Vacumatic and give it a spin.

Frank Chimero uses Field Notes. The proof comes to us in the form of a digital image showing us some of his thinking behind the Illinois offering of his amazing, “The States” illustration series. Don’t even think about not “checking out what this guy is about.” He’s got a case of Sears Tower-sized talent, we’re proud to provide the graph paper to keep it all on the up and up. Thanks, Frank. Keep up the good work.

Take Jared’s word for it: You don’t want to wash your Field Notes.

This pile of drying slop was sent up from one Jared Eberhardt of Long Beach, Calif. An “idea man” in his own right, he accidentally left his latest Field Notes memo book in the back pocket of his jeans and threw them into the wash.

So here’s a shot of him “drying out his ideas.” We hope everything works out, man, and thanks for yer support.

Our take on it: Don’t wash yer clothes. “Proper hygiene” is overrated.

(Addendum from Bryan) Andy at Pencil Things had a little bit better luck when he accidentally washed his Field Notes. We’ll do some more testing over the weekend, but for now, we still don’t recommend it.

If you’re in the habit of carrying around a memo book and a pen, you know it’s like carrying a very lightweight laptop computer, minus the internet. (It does have some built in games, I’ll cover that in my next post.) What I’m getting to is, Field Notes, like a laptop, makes a great babysitter. A couple hours into a long car trip, after someone left $120 worth of Disney DVDs in the gravel outside a restaurant in Indiana (I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just saying…), you’ll be grateful to still have a way of entertaining a 4-year-old in the back seat. Above, you can see my daughter’s vivid and disturbing imagination translated to paper. I’m pretty sure that’s some sort of evil princess, and that’s girl-frankenstein on the right. [Read more →]