Sailor Pro Gear Graphite Lighthouse

I used to be a Pro Gear person before I turned into a 1911 person, but with this new Pro Gear Graphite Lighthouse, I think I’m returning home. The main difference between the Pro Gear series and the 1911 series is that the Pro Gear pens have flat ends, whereas the 1911 series have rounded ends—a matter of aesthetics.

The Graphite Lighthouse is new, but not really new. It’s been around for several months now, a recent North American exclusive, and we’ve had it in our shop for that same amount of time, but I’ve just been a bit wayward in keeping up.

The pen has a dark graphite grey body, with clear finials—hence, the lighthouse. What a beauty.

I have a penchant for Sailors in general, but it’s always nice when there’s a new model with a subtle difference to set it apart. It’s not too flashy, so you could definitely use this in the office or in a cafe without necessarily drawing too much attention.

And really, it comes down to the nib. I think Sailor makes my favourite nibs: they’re firm and smooth and so consistent to write with, but they’re also gorgeous. I can’t get enough of them. The imprint on them is nice and deep and the level of detail is perfect.

Sailor nibs together. Left is the the Graphite Lighthouse (broad), middle is Anchor Grey (music) and right is 1911S Transparent (medium). I typically have a highlighter ink in my Anchor Grey, because of the wide music nib—I did a blog post on that here. You can see the huge difference in the amount of tipping material, but all three are lovely writers.

Sailor pens are hard to resist. Once you start down the road, you end up with a collection before you know it, which is sort of nice because then you can pick and choose which to ink up based on season or whim. I’m partial to having these more neutral colours to round out a pen roll with a few brighter pens, but the clear finials on this Pro Gear (Slim in my case) make it an extra special edition.

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In other news, things are swimming along. Normally I try and squeeze photos and blogging and emails in the small sips of time after the kids are in bed or during nap time, which, since we’ve gotten back, has resulted in a haphazard posting schedule, but last week I found myself with a three hour chunk of time in a Starbucks in a hotel lobby, and it was a delight to be able to focus and get a bit of work done, to be able to get organized and work on the blog, spend a bit of time on an upcoming project. I have no idea how anyone else does it, but I’m beginning to suspect for our family, it’s going to look like putting Naomi in preschool next year.

It took me longer than expected—a long couple of weeks/months—getting re-adjusted to new schedules, with Caleb in SK now and new routines, and getting back into the swing of things with helping out in the studio shop, and new after school activities, and coming back from Hong Kong and Naomi’s nap schedule, and making some headway on some blog posts from our trip before they disappear into the abyss of my memory while still keeping up with shop stuff. But I’m making headway and slowly starting to check things off lists. Scriptus is coming up, along with a few other pretty exciting things for the shop, Caleb is doing his own exciting things, Naomi is hanging around me all day and creating chaos everywhere she goes.

Routines continue to be adjusted and tweaked, with holidays and birthday celebrations, and book sales at Value Village, and appointments wreaking their usual havoc, but we forge on.

Currently reading: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Currently eating: leftover macaroni with condensed cream of mushroom*
Current view: kids sleeping, Chicken in my lap
Looking forward to: my 2020 analogue system blog post, now that I’ve figured out a few of the finer details
Currently working on: trying to convince Jon to turn on the heat

*Don’t judge me. I make it for the kids.