All posts by ultcyn

A Wonderful Day of Pens, Paper & Ink at Peddler’s Village

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What better way to spend a day than surrounded by good friends, beautiful pens, wonderful stationery, and plenty of conversation?

Our recent pen club gathering brought 20 members together at Earl’s Restaurant in Peddler’s Village for a delightful afternoon of food, fellowship, and, naturally, all things pens.

Our special guest, Heatherjo from Bucks Bespokery, shared the story of her shop and gave us a glimpse into the wonderful world of stationery and writing goods she has curated. It was a pleasure learning more about her business and the passion behind it and her plans for the future.

Over lunch, the conversation flowed just as freely as the ink from our favorite fountain pens. As anyone in a pen club would expect, our discussions quickly turned to pens, paper, and ink—our favorite brands, new discoveries, treasured pieces, and, of course, the never-ending quest for the perfect combination of pen, nib, paper, and ink.

After lunch, many of us made our way over to Bucks Bespokery to see the shop for ourselves. We were absolutely delighted—and perhaps a little overwhelmed—in the best possible way by the wonderful selection of stationery, pens, inks, and other writing treasures. There was so much to see that it was easy to lose track of time browsing the shelves and admiring all the beautiful things a stationery lover could want.

It was especially wonderful to see the shop bustling with activity. A thriving local stationery shop is something any pen enthusiast can appreciate, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to support Bucks Bespokery and introduce more of our members to this special place.

We are grateful to Heatherjo for spending time with us and sharing her shop with our group. We look forward to growing our relationship with Bucks Bespokery and to many more opportunities to get together, talk pens, and support the wonderful world of stationery.

Until our next meeting at the Philadelphia Pen Show in January, may your pens stay full, your nibs stay smooth, and your paper always be worthy of another page!

Fall Meeting – October 3, 2026

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When: Saturday, October 3, 2026 from 11 am to 1 pm

Where: Earl’s New American Restaurant
2400 Street Road, New Hope, PA 18938 (Peddler’s Village)

This meeting will be a slight deviation from our traditional meetings. To start, I have teamed up with Heatherjo from Bucks Bespokery to put this meeting together. Second, the start time will be one hour earlier, beginning at 11am. Public transportation to Peddler’s Village looks challenging from Center City and New Jersey, so I encourage those who don’t drive to carpool with other group members. Third, Chef Evan and Steve, the GM of Earl’s, created a menu just for us. $30 per person (including tax and tip) will get you the following:

Choice of Soup or Salad
Soup – Tomato basil served with house made lavash
Salad – House mixed green salad or Classic Caesar salad

Entree choices (choose one)
Slow roasted pulled pork sandwich served with house made chips
Five hour braised short rib Mac and cheese
Vegetarian Vodka rigatoni with or without chicken

Beverage selection
Soft drinks, iced tea, or coffee

We will be seated in the Map Room at the restaurant. It is semi-private and space will be at a premium so I will not be able to do the “share the wealth” table. However, feel free to bring your donations which I will pass on to member Judith Fagin who will have a table set up at the Philadelphia Pen Show in January.

Please RSVP to me no later than Monday, September 28, 2026 at cstinger@philadelphiapens.com

Fall Meeting – Save the Date!

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I have been working with Heatherjo from Bucks Bespokery to coordinate our next meeting. We are working out the details but it looks like we have locked in on Saturday, October 3rd for our next pen meeting. It will be up by Peddler’s Village / Lahaska, PA area. Once I get more details, I will be sure to let everyone know.

Stationery Fest 2026

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This year I decided to go to the Stationery Fest in Brooklyn, New York instead of the Washington DC Pen Show. Here is a recap of my day.

I live in South Jersey so I started out my day at 8 am driving to the River Line light rail. I took the River Line up to Trenton, crossed the street and hopped a train from the Trenton Transit Center to New York Penn Station. I then had to navigate my way to the subway to get over to Brooklyn. My Google directions told me which train to take but failed to inform me if I should take the Uptown or Downtown train. Luckily, I chose correctly and headed Downtown. I had to switch to a second subway train and finally made it to Brooklyn just after 11 am.

I found the venue, a block or so away and got in line to check in. There was a beautiful courtyard with picnic tables and tents for resting, a large ink swatching tent, washi tapes for decorating your journal as well as other activities. They had a few snack and beverage vendors in case you needed a nibble.

I headed inside the building and started perusing the vendors. There was a lot. It was a great mix of fountain pen sellers, journals, stickers, washi tapes, journal charms, rubber stamps, and a ton of other things that you never knew you wanted until just then.

Almost every vendor had a rubber stamp and I filled up six pages of my Hobonichi planner. They also gave away a lot of stickers which I will share with my many penpals.

If you are just focused on fountain pens and ink, this isn’t the best place for you but if you like to journal, share stickers, decorate with washi tape and all the other stuff you can do with fun and unique stationery goodies, this is definitely the place for you.

If you want to go to the next one, set yourself up for success with the following tips:

1.) Buy a ticket as soon as the event is announced. They did sell out this year. If you want to join a workshop, sign up for those as well. The spacewalk does require a separate ticket.

2.) Wear comfortable shoes. There is a lot of walking and standing. You don’t want to make yourself miserable with a poor shoe choice.

3.) Pack your favorite snacks and water. The courtyard menu options were limited and I don’t think you can get re-entry unless you have a VIP ticket.

4.) Carry a bag or backpack. It’s a great way to hold all your purchases and snacks, leaving your hands free to collect the rubber stamps.

5.) Bring your journal or a blank notebook for the stamps. There will be a lot of them.

If you went, please share what your experience was like!

Spring Cleaning

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For those of you who attended our meeting on June 6, 2026, I hope you have begun your “homework” of cataloging your pen collection.  For those who were not there, let me explain.  Over the last several months, I have received numerous emails and messages from people who lost a loved one and have inherited a fountain pen collection.  The person has no idea about the collection or what it’s worth.  I assigned “homework” to everyone at the meeting to go through and catalogue their collection.  Perhaps, make a binder with manufacturer, model, material (hard rubber, plastic, gold filled, etc.), engraving; nib size and grind (fine, broad, italic, flex, etc.), and other interesting details, pictures, receipts, and other important information / provenance.  You will probably quickly find your collection is worth much more than anticipated.  You may want to call your homeowner’s insurance agent and have it insured.  For inspiration, check out gopens.com, mainstreetpens.com and vintagepens.com for some formatting and description ideas.   Two excellent sites for learning more about your pens are: richardspens.com (Richard Binder) and vintagepens.com (David Nishimura). Binder and Nishimura are very knowledgeable, freely share what they know, and their websites are well organized and easy to use.

Some people prefer a digital system. One of our members set up an excel file like this:

Please feel free to leave a comment about your own spring cleaning experience.

Since I’m in a spring cleaning kind of mood, I also took the opportunity to clean up our website Pen Links page.  I fixed broken links and removed links where the store was confirmed to no longer be in existence.  That has left room for new links!  If you have a favorite pen related website, please send me an email at cstinger@philadelphiapens.com or drop a comment below and I will add it to the page.

I would also like to put together a list of resources that loved ones can use when they want to sell off a collection.  If you know of any reputable people or businesses willing to evaluate and/or purchase a fountain pen collection, please email me.

It’s all about the paper

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As a fountain pen user, you know that even if you have the most perfect pen and the most beautiful ink, if you try writing on awful copy paper, it leaves you feeling disappointed. Good news! Komorebi Stationary has put together FIVE fountain pen friendly paper samplers to suit everyone’s tastes and / or needs.

Here is the link to peruse and, perhaps place an order. https://komorebistationery.com/collections/new-items?omnisendContactID=67c5ec3ab609ef72a6c73da7&utm_campaign=campaign%3A+20260616+New+-+Paper+Tasting+Writing+Pad+Sets+%286a30fd992f1e7eb60029b4ff%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=omnisend

June 6, 2026 Meeting Recap

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Another successful group meeting took place this past Saturday in Philadelphia. We converged at the Hard Rock Cafe and had a very large private room all to our own. A total of 27 people were in attendance. For several, this was their first meeting. In addition to our usual pen conversations, we also reviewed the results from the recent group survey. The survey was sent to our mailing list of 500 and of which, 54 people responded.

The insights provided were valuable in planning our future meetings.

To start, a lot of you really appreciate getting emails on club news. This will happen more often. Next, almost everyone drives or takes public transportation to the meetings. This will help shape the kinds of places we choose for meetings in the future. Ease of parking is at the top of the list. The largest concentration of members are in Philadelphia County but we have a surprisingly large amount of people from New Jersey as well. In addition to the quarterly PA meetings, I will also attempt to schedule one or two NJ meeting per year to include these members. Finally, I got a strong idea of what people are looking for at the meetings. I have reached out to the Philadelphia Calligrapher’s Society to see if they have any upcoming workshops or if they will host a workshop just for our club. I am also working with Bucks Bespokery to have them join us for a meeting. In addition, if anyone wants to share anything pen related at a meeting, please reach out to me.