Moleskine memo-pockets: useless?

Moleskine Memo Pockets: Useless?
Is the memo-pockets the most useless Moleskine variant?

One of the charms of the Moleskine notebook is the useful backpocket. So why not add even more pockets? Why not go even further and remove the paper, and offer a Moleskine with nothing but pockets? Well, this has actually been done.

What one gets is the world’s most expensive unusable accordion folder. I bought the small version two years ago. My intended use was to help organize a trip. But even in 2003, most tickets and receipts were much too large for the Moleskine pocket. There are only six pockets, so what can be done with them? The pockets are not labelled, and it would probably be quite hard to do so, due to the need to fold everything back into the cool Moleskine form factor.

My fault I thought – I need the large model. Wait – it’s still too small for train tickets, hotel receipts, and most documents that I’d want to put in there.

So – what can be done with them? Any ideas?

Musgrave Unigraph

Musgrave Unigraph 1200

The Musgrave Pencil Co. has a solid history in the pencil industry, though their website indicates no products other than novelties. It appears the general use writing and drawing pencil is on the decline compared to advertising and novelty pencils.

It was a surprise to see some of their pencils at a small bookstore this week. And by “some”, I mean hundreds and hundreds! The pencils caught my eye right away. Many pencils don’t state a country of origin, let alone anything more specific. These state:

Musgrave Pencil Co.
Shelbyville, Tenn.

The name is “Unigraph” and the model is “1200 Drawing”. Alas, of the hundreds of pencils I saw, all were H hardness. The staff told me that was all they had.

The pencil has a dark forest green varnish, and a pink eraser attached with a gold ferrule with red band. The stamping is gold in colour.

The pencil sharpened easily and writes quite nicely. I don’t have too many H pencils on hand, but it seems a tad darker than a Staedtler Mars H, for example. The lead is quite strong, as one would expect in a higher quality pencil.

I liked the pencil’s association with it’s origin, and can definitely recommend the Unigraph as a good pencil, though I’d really love to try a version with a darker lead.