Spending a few days in Montreal on my brief vacation, I came upon a stationery store near the B&B where we are staying. The store stocks all kinds of European and Asian stationery, including Apica notebooks, Clairefontaine, Rhodia, etc. I spoke with the man at the counter to find out which stationery is fountain pen friendly, and he told me everything they stock has to pass his fountain pen test. Turns out he is a fountain pen user who has been to pen shows in D.C., NY/NJ, and Boston. He's very, very kind person, as fountain pen folks tend to be.

So I picked up a handful of Apica notebooks and my significant other bought a few things as gifts for friends.

The products aren't cheap, but it's a pleasure to find so much great stationery in one place sold by a fellow fp enthusiast. I highly recommend the place. In fact, I may even stop by again today and buy some more paper.

The store is located at 3416 avenue du parc.

(Just noticed this is in the wrong forum. Admins, please feel free to move it.)

Ack! and you didn't try Whitelines and report on it?

Shame!



Yes, they seem like very good people to work with. I should have my shipment of Whitelines in soon.

I will be greedy and not tell anyone anything about them.

Adding rather than editing just to make sure everyone reads this who is interested.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang moments after I posted the above and there was a lovely box from Canada! OH CANADAAAAAA...

I haven't actually sat down to write yet. I'm going to get my lunch and do so. I received notepads and two notebooks of Whitelines. Can't wait to see how my XF, XXF, and XXXF nibs feel on it. I'm in a phase.

Also got a sample of some "French-lined paper." I'll have to look up that thread that I never read because I never expected to see the real thing. Have no clue how to use it.

Also got an Apica notebook. Haven't tried it yet but ooooh is that smooth or what?

So. I just want to reiterate how great the folk are at Papeterie Nota Nene. In particular, my thanks to Russell who facilitated this order and didn't laugh at my Texas accent.

I'll post a mini-review of each paper sometime. But it may be a while 'cause life is gonna get interesting the rest of this week.

I keep meaning to review the whitelines I received a couple of weeks ago. Jst haven't got round to it yet.

Very well behaved.

/edit to say: I shouldn't try and post while having a conversation with SWMBO.

I meant to say that I found Whitelines to be very well behaved, only the tiniest occasionally discernable bit of feather, no bleed, pleasant surface, and a surprisingly appealing look.

Very expensive to obtain in the UK, though.

I am glad to see that people are catching on to the whitelines - hopefully they will get a North American/US based distributor soon. Once you see the paper, it is so obvious.

Enjoy!!!

KCat, where did you order from - Sleuth & Statesman?

BTW, I did post a scan of a page of whitelines with different inks and nibs a while back. Here is the link:

http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...p;hl=whitelines

The fellow gave me a free Whitelines notebook, but I've been so busy running around playing tourist that I haven't tried it yet.

I'm happy to read some of you are enjoying my favourite stationary store in Montreal. Russell is indeed a FP user with a strong leaning toward Lamy.
If I bring a new pen in the store or I use some new ink, he will get some notebooks out just to test the quality of the paper. I tested my Densho filled with Noodlers black on the sample of Whitelines before he received his first shipment.

Kcat, I hope we can read your review soon.

Samovar

Ok, Ok..... I can't restain myself any longer.... WHAT IS WHITELINES????

From reading the above posts, I'm getting the distinct idea that eveyone else on this forum knows what Whitelines is except me.... and that I'm missing out on something very important!

Please enlighten me. (Sorry to shout.)

It's ok,
Whitelines is paper and notebook company from Sweden http://www.whitelines.se/eng/
It's white lines on a sort of greyish paper. The paper takes FP very well.
It's really worth a try.

Samovar

It's new and hard to find still so don't worry, you're not entirely out of the loop. Scroll up a couple of posts. Mike posted a link to his post about this paper.

Mike - I got it from the store in the thread title. Don't know why. Could have gotten in it from S&S I'm sure. S&S didn't have an on-line store so I was drawn to PNB instead. The Whitelines products were not listed on the web store yet so I ended up calling anyway.

I will continue to do business with Russell, I'm sure. Though I still have hope that this product will make the US distributors someday.

Ok... I finally understand. Whitelines is the next cool paper! Here's a question for anyone who actually has it. Besides LOOKING cool, how does it perform with fountain pens? Is it slick like Clairefontaine? Is it more like Rhodia? Like Black N Red? Like 24 pound inkjet paper? Does it feather or bleed? Inquiring minds wish to know (because itchy fingers wish to type an order!).

Charlie,
The paper is amazing with FP and I've written in it with at least a dozen pen and almost as many ink. No bleeding or feathering at all. I use Clairefontaine, Apica and Rhodia on a daily basis and it's way up there with the best. I don't know anything about Black N Red. The paper is less slick than Clairefontaine, the grey paper is really nice to the eye and the white lines brings the word on the page forward.

Samovar

First impression: it's good stuff! Designed with all writing instruments in mind from my testing thus far.

Second and other impressions: you'll have to wait.