Those Riddlesome Moleskine Stickers

If you're like me, you collect those little stickers that come with each Moleskine book. They're labeled "Quality Control" and they combine two aspects: color and design. I haven't kept track of which sticker comes with which type of book, but I have an awful lot of the little gridded ones, in green, orange and yellow. I have one or two of the other designs.

Stickers are fun. Who would throw them away? But the thing is, I don't know what they're for. I held onto them in a little ceramic teacup until I could decide on their function.

The first instinct was to simply lay them out on a piece of paper, organized by design, to have a large one-page collection of them, but I felt they should have a better purpose. My second idea was to use them to seal the backs of envelopes, and that would be sufficient but I still felt there was a reason for them I didn't perceive. In the back of my mind, something nagged that they should go on the books themselves.

Today We Mourn An Address Book

In the process of moving into a new place, in the process of taking things out of boxes and finding places for them to go, one is forced to reconcile with what one wants to keep or [donate/regift/trash].

Red Horseshoe (link in my sidebar)
provides many fun and exotic
accouterments for letter-writers. 

This process also happens when one is packing things up in the first place. One is compelled to touch and handle every single stupid object one has accrued, and after 10,000 repetitions of this action one has to wonder how much stuff one really needs.

We have augmented this process with a third step in the middle: placing all our crap into storage. It happens in the middle. We packed everything up, placed it in a climate-controlled storage facility, and now we're shipping it from the facility to our new apartment. When one puts things in storage, one is compelled once again to weigh the worth of each object and how badly one needs to keep it in storage.

I love Moleskine notebooks. I love them so much, I've bought too many of them. I've rationalized and bargained my way into getting more. Why? I dunno. I love the concept of them, I love the color and texture of the paper (though admittedly Clairfontaine/Rhodia is consistently better), I love the reputation that comes with them. I traveled throughout Asia happily penning (most of) my adventures in a Moleskine, and it was no rare occasion to see other tourists with their Moleskines doing exactly the same thing, as tourists have done for decades.

Not personal information: that's no longer my number,

and my name/e-mail are easily had through this very blog.

But if you use a notebook sufficiently, there has to come a time to get rid of it. Obviously I would never throw away a travel journal, but there is a point when an address book has outlived its usefulness. Like when you fill one up, lose contact with many of those people, buy a new one, transfer the addresses you need, and that new one also comes with a smaller address book that could be used for some special... addressy... purpose. Yet to be determined.

So what happens to the old one? You could tras-... no, you could keep it. It's like a souvenir of an era, right? A chronological souvenir of where you've been in life's journey. And you have to protect those addresses, too. Even if you're no longer speaking with some of those people, you don't want to just hand out their addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses to anyone on the street, and if you put it in the trash you're basically doing that. Trash is public access, after all. TV and movies are full of people finding all sorts of things out about you by going through your trash, even stealing your identity. And that starts with knowing your address.

I decorated the interior with labels from sheets of collectible

 stamps, an original linocut, and misc. stickers.

That sounds good, but when the fervor dies down and your vision returns, you know you've got to get rid of it. It's no good keeping it. Small as it is, it's still taking up room and it still needs a place to go. I have a much better one and though those addresses are also going extinct, it's easier to paste over them with Moleskine paper from another notebook because this new address book is larger. So when you want to throw away something you want to keep, what do you do?

It's easier now than it was before: take a picture. In the past that would've meant turning film in for development and waiting a week to pick up another physical object to take up space in your life. Now, however, I can take a digital picture and store it on my laptop. So everyone can take a moment and meet one of my beloved Moleskines even as it's on its way out the door.

Mystery (Partially) Solved

The astute reader may recall how proud I was of constructing these accordion-sided envelopes for distribution, how I'd labeled them with these address labels from Red Horseshoe, and how one fell off of the envelope in the mail, so the letter was lost but the post office delivered the address label (bereft of envelope and missive) to the intended destination.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? The post office's behavior? "Sorry about your letter, it's gone and trashed, but we thought you would value this address label."

But how does an address label fall off of an envelope? The paper of the envelope I chose is stout and porous, any adhesive should hold to it. Except the Red Horseshoe adhesive does not: with a liberal soaking, it can't get up enough gumminess to adhere to anything, though a sticky paste is formed so it's clear that this is the intent. I finally did get the label to hold to the envelope by gluing it down with glue stick, and when the label fell off I was afraid the cheap-ass glue stick had failed. The astute reader will recall my rejoicing at having found an "extra strength" glue stick.

It wasn't the glue stick at all. It was the address label.

I dug out the other envelopes I made and tried to pry off the address label, expecting to find a dry, crusty bed of failed glue stick. Instead, the paper address label lifted clean away to reveal a plastic backing, as though the address label were a sticker to be peeled off of its backing and affixed to an envelope! There were no instructions with this book of address labels (they're bound together on one side and you tear them off as you use them), and the process seemed fairly intuitive. I mean, the apparent back did have an adhesive on it that responded to moisture. But I was entirely unaware of this plastic backing to the label until ten minutes ago!

The back of the address label is slightly sticky, so it sticks slightly to the plastic backing but not to the paper of the envelope. Even if it was intended that you peel off the backing and apply it to the envelope, it would just fall off anyway! Does it need to be further moistened and adhered to the envelope, or do you peel it away from the plastic backing in order to have a clean surface for yet more glue sticking? I'm trying to find the pad of Red Horseshoe address labels so I can determine whether they are supposed to be stickers you peel off and use, but I can't find the pad anywhere so I may have thrown it away in a huff.

Oh, and mind: the plastic backing also flakes uselessly away from the front of the envelope. There is no part of this address label that is prepared to stick to the envelope, in summary. I love the retro restorative look to Red Horseshoe's products, but I'd much rather they work properly. (Note: I can't find these address labels anywhere on their Web site. I'm guessing they called it a wash.)

Project Pendemonium: Success!

It was awesome! Pendemonium is at the southeastern-most corner of Iowa, so we woke up early Saturday morning... dawdled... and then took off. My navigator slept through our turn at Mason City so I didn't realize how off-course we were until Des Moines, but my own superior navigation skills charted a new course to Fort Madison and we showed up at the store at half an hour before close!

I had a great talk with the owner, chatting about pens and paper supplies. He illuminated me as to the Rhodia/Moleskine debate. The fact remains that I love Moleskine but I understand not every pen will take to it well, as its batches of paper are inconsistent. Rhodia has released a "web book" that emulates Moleskine's hardcover and elastic binder function, but I don't think it looks as nice. I have a deep emotional investment with Moleskine and I can't casually switch over to Rhodia even in light of this new information.

I picked up a Shakespeare-nib quill, a Pelikan refillable calligraphy pen, a Turkish woven bookmark (such as may be had up here, but now I can look at it and say I got it at Pendemonium), some homemade stationery-themed cards, and an antique inkwell. Fort Madison is such a flat, small, and empty town--most of its businesses were closed for the weekend, and those that weren't were still closing at 4:00 PM--and I wonder how a specialty store like Pendemonium can stay open. They do seem to enjoy substantial online business, which is great, but I wonder if they could appeal to the kids by providing pen pal URLs (not the least of which would be Postcrossing) and give some pleasant diversion to teenagers otherwise whiling away their time in an empty town.

That's what I would explore, if I were stuck there (and not old enough to hang out in Lost Duck Brewery).

To Stick or Not to Stick?

I'm not one for cute little stickers, when it comes to crafting stationery. I don't feel it's enough, for a craft project coming out of me, to paste a couple stickers on a blank page and call it a day.

On the other hand, I have found some awfully cute stickers.

Pictured to the left is a selection of punk-themed stickers. These things are tiny, intricate, and in some cases fragile. The concept of Japan's impression of British punk (not the first time Japan has admired the traits of Great Britain) is irresistible to me. I love to think that it was some young Japanese artist's job to come up with an array of the accoutrements to punk music. Was she a fan of it already? Did the graphic design company actually hire some punky-looking Japanese kid off the street? Or was someone just tasked to sit in a room and study a bunch of old movies and music videos for reference?

Did that change his life? After the completion of this sticker sheet, did he abandon his proletarian values and take his burning message to the streets and stages of Tokyo, rebelling against the very establishment that created him?

Oh, one can only dream!

I also came into possession of a sheet of Doraemon stickers, very tiny, very cute. They featured him dressed in an insane variety of costumes and outfits, no repeats, dressed as anything from a samurai to a lobster. They were a nice accent on the corner of a page or envelope, just a subtle mark to catch the eye and cause to study, to wonder.