The handsome and versatile FIELD NOTES Space Pens in matte black and the iconic chrome are now back in stock! They go perfectly with our virtually indestructible EXPEDITION EDITION of memo books.

Jimmy Stamp for Smithsonian Magazine on the history of the Space Pen, To Boldly Write Where No Man Has Written Before.

Field Notes is proud to be a sponsor of the Ninth Annual Tournament of Books over at The Morning News.

Our pocket-sized memo books are perfect for recording notes, quotes and sketches while you make your way through all 16 books. They also serve as a handy way to keep track of your Rooster picks during all five rounds of matches.

Buy anything in the Field Notes Shop while the tourney is on and be sure to enter coupon code ROOSTER before you check out (Coupon expires April 1, 2013). Doing so will score you a special red, letterpressed memo book stamped with the ToB Rooster and bound with our heavy duty Field Notes Band of Rubber.

We hope you enjoy the 2013 Tournament of Books!

We’ve been working hard to get our Field Notes into shops all over the world and sometimes we are lucky to meet people who “get” Field Notes and our philosophy immediately. We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with the great folks at Hightide to increase our presence in the Japanese market. Yuu from Hightide took the time to visit us at Field Notes Midwest HQ and we spent a nice afternoon chatting about how we could work together. We’re excited to be partnering with such a smart and influential brand. Onwards!

Our new(-ish) black carpenter’s pencils look as good with formal eveningwear as they do in your overall pocket. Just yesterday, Skyler was cleaning the back room and found a fairly large stack of FN/RC No.001 Carpenter Pencil Sharpening Reference Cards that shipped out way back with our “American Tradesman” COLORS edition. So for the first time in nearly two years, we’ll include hard-copy instructions with your carpenter pencil 3-pack, while they last.

Thanks to Lawrence Kids for a lovely shout-out on p28-29 of their Spring 2013 issue. They write “Our kids use them just as much as we do,” which is great, and certainly true on our end of the supply chain too.

We love being surprised when our notebooks show up unexpectedly. Michele was skimming Pitchfork the other day, and clicked on the gorgeous, dramatic video for “The Beauty Surrounds” by the band Houses, who recently relocated from our sunny Chicago to the barren wastelands of Los Angeles.

We asked Houses’ Dexter Tortoriello how he uses FIELD NOTES, and how they ended up in the video:

I carry a Field Notes notebook everywhere as a sort of daily place to jot things down, collect pieces of paper, press flowers etc… I’ve filled quite a few and have them in this small box in my bedroom. When talking about the video, we had decided to use a mix of things actually personal to us as well as some real props to set up the shots. The notebooks were special to me, so I brought them. I felt that they fit the concept of the video really well and I had actually drawn out a lot of the shots for the video inside them.

I use Field Notes as a sort of safety net. I don’t always trust technology with important things. There’s something really comforting about keeping a notebook and knowing that the contents aren’t going anywhere unless you want them to. For touring, I’ll usually paste in maps of areas where I’ll be as well as embassy information, close family and friends’ phone numbers, and vital information at the start of the book. Everything after that is open for writing, notes, drawings… whatever, really.

“The Beauty Surrounds” is available now on iTunes.

For those keeping track, we’ve just printed the 13th run of Field Notes kraft-cover notebooks. That means Mixed 3-Packs (graph/ruled/plain, shown above) are back in stock (available in the shop). As we run out of other 12th-printing 3-Packs, you’ll start seeing those in your online orders and in shops, too. What does this mean for you? Nothing, really, there’s been no change to our kraft books over the last several printings, we just wanted to share this milestone and let you know about the Mixed 3-Packs.

Subscriptions to our Expedition edition are now sold out, along with individual 3-Packs. The good news is, we’re gearing up to print a second Expedition edition and once they’re back in stock, they should remain available indefinitely.

If you’re the “leap of faith” sort and want to be sure to not miss the next four editions, Spring 2013 Subscriptions are available now, though of course we can’t tell you what to expect quite yet!

We’ve replenished our stock of Red Blooded FIELD NOTES just in time for Valentine’s Day, and for a limited time, each red 3-pack will ship with a freebie red “FIELD NOTES loves you” pencil. Red Blooded, and all our other good stuff, is waiting for you in the shop.

We made this video last year, and guys, let me tell you, if you want all the ladies fawning over you, just make a video about how much you love your wife:

No coupon needed. We’ll include one free “FIELD NOTES loves you” pencil with every 3-Pack of FIELD NOTES Red Blooded notebooks, while supplies last. Order soon to ensure timely shipping for Valentine’s Day!

Stephan Mantler is a professional photographer based in Austria, specializing in outdoor and adventure sports. Stephan uses Field Notes to keep track of his assignments, travel, and to, erm, take notes… in the field. Our new weatherproof Expedition Field Notes came in handy when he traveled to Martigny, Austria for the ISMF ski mountaineering race on assignment for the German and Austrian national teams and a major sponsor (see Stephan’s ISMF Alpiniski 2013 photos). Here’s his report:

On Friday there was a sprint race, in which athletes qualify in individual time trials for subsequent heats. My Field Notes contained the bib numbers and individual start times of the athletes I needed to cover, so I always knew when to have the camera ready for the next athlete and when I’d have enough time to change my position on the course or check up on the two GoPro cameras I had mounted on the course. These cameras were running in time lapse mode, so I took note of the start time to have an estimate on when to replace batteries or memory cards. After qualifications I also kept track on which athletes were assigned to which subsequent heats all the way to the finals.

The individual race followed on Saturday. Individuals are always a bit more involved, because the best photo spots aren’t easily accessible unless you can score a helicopter ride (it happens, but not this time). So I checked the course maps for potential locations (and shortcuts, to catch the athletes twice or even three times), and talked to the trainers on the day before to have an estimate on when the athletes would be coming through. Of course this all was taken down in the Field Notes again and provided valuable reference information in the field, ensuring that I had ample time to explore a few potential angles before the lead athletes arrived. One of the guys I need to cover usually comes through in the lead or top three, so it’s essential I’m all settled in and ready to shoot as they arrive.

The weekend was a fairly typical assignment; driving a total of 2200km (1,350 miles) in four days, covering two races in alpine conditions, editing and transmitting photos at night with little sleep in between means my tolerance for bullshit products is really low. I love the things that I can rely on, and Field Notes is one of them. I’ve come to prefer the durable Expedition Field Notes, because you don’t end up with soaked, smeared and torn pages when things are a little rough. And they always are when you’re an adventure sports photographer at 2500m elevation.