11 Things That Delighted Us Last Week: From Fountain Pens to Susan Orlean’s Bins

“A piece of parenting advice I’ve heard over and over is that you don’t need a lot ofexpensive toysandart suppliesto encourage creativity in young children,” our toy writer Liza Corsillo says. (She sees this firsthand whenever her 3-year-old chooses scissors and Scotch tape over the other fancy toys she’s testing.) To help a similar-minded parent supply their toddler’s “home office,” Corsillo rounded up a few of her favoritekid-friendly office supplies, including this hole punch that cuts flower-shaped holes that’ll zhuzh up homemade necklaces and garlands.

WhenSarah Shermangets in an elevator while wearing her signature scent — this eau de cologne she describes as “balsamic vinegar and wet dirt and piss” — she says she’ll often get comments like, “Whoa, patchouli.” That doesn’t bother her, though.In fact, she prefers Santa Maria Novella’s older formulation of the scent, which smells even stronger of patchouli. “So now I hoard all the bottles of the old formula,” she tells us. “If I find a half-empty bottle on eBay, I’ll buy it. I’ve bought a bottle that had literally one inch of it left.”

When our beauty writer Krista Bennett DeMaio air-dries her hair, her biggest issue isn’t frizz — it’s uneven drying. “Some sections puff up while others fall flat, and my hair can look wonky and unfinished,” she writes inour guide to leave-in conditioners. This week, she added her antidote to uneven drying — this lightweight “milk” from Davines — to our list of favorites. “Instead of coating my hair or trying to ‘style’ it, the formula keeps my strands soft and flexible as they dry,” she says. “It ends up looking smoother and polished, as if I did heat-dry.”

To round out a month of resting and resetting, we honored our fellow pen and paper freaks with our first “Stationery Week.” The lineup included a follow-up frompicky pen person(and Strategist deals writer) Martha Tuber, who, it turns out, ispicky about her paper, too. When it comes to writing, she prefers these dot-grid notebooks, which have very smooth paper with a nice thick weight at 100 gsm. “Best of all, my preferred style — which has 80 A5-size (5.7 by 8.3 inches) pages with a very sturdy wire-bound spine and rigid, semi-translucent front and back plastic covers — is an absolute steal at just $17 for a three-pack,” she adds.

If you prefer to write on paper but dislike the buying and rebuying, our tech writer Jordan McMahon recommendsthis pocket-size digital notebookthat can create an almost unlimited number of notebooks thanks to its included 64 GB of storage. It’s “laser focused on giving you one thing: a paperless way to take endless notes without losing the benefits — and for some people, like me, joy — of writing by hand,” he says. “I never leave the house without mine.”

When Strategist contributor Veronica Caldwell stumbled into therealm of fountain pens, they quickly discovered how much more enjoyable it made their entire writing experience. “The feedback and friction of the tip against paper made it easier to control and my writing more legible, and I liked finally having a pen that wasn’t as disposable as the ballpoints and Flair felt tips I’d been using,” they say. So if you’d like to join in on their newfound obsession, they recommend this option for beginners, which is the cheapest Japanese starter pen that takes cartridges (rather than bottled ink), “but it is also good-enough quality that it should last you for years.”

If you’re looking to upgrade your fountain pen, Sarah McNally recommends looking no further thanher preferred pen, a limited-edition Sailor, made in Japan. “It has a gold nib and a perfect converter for inks that I use in monthslong flings with colors like hunter green and mahogany brown,” she writes. “Barring mishap, it will last the rest of my life.”

Strategist writer Ambar Pardilla may have theBlack+Blum Prada travel cupon her mind, but she certainly won’t be buying it for $260. “Do yourself the favor of buying the non-Prada Black+Blum travel cup,” she writes. “I sip from it every morning a little easier, knowing I made one easy payment of $24.95 (plus tax).”

When Strategist junior writer Bella Druckman started spotting a distinctly fluffy, almost ruffled blanket pop upagain(andagain) on her social feeds early last year, she was intrigued yet skeptical. “The accompanying praise — from influencers touting it as “life-changing” tocelebrities we’ve interviewedcounting it as an item they can’t live without — was enough to make me wonder, really,What’s so special about a Lola blanket?” she writes. After sleeping, snuggling, and even traveling with it over the past year, she has a verdict: “So long as you buy it on sale (which is almost always possible, in my experience), I’d say it’s worth the splurge.”

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