A Review of the Pilot Parallel Pens
Calligraphy and other word art pens at their finest!
Welcome to February, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s/Galentine’s Day!
2025 has already felt so long, so much is happening. I hope February stays true to its shorter days and passes by quickly.
Review of the Pilot Parallel Pens
When I was browsing YouTube last year, I came across an interesting set of pens by Pilot called Parallels.
These are advertised as calligraphy pens that allow you to use whatever ink you’d like. The ink is dispensed in squared off metal tips. I’d call them “calligraphy fountain pens” but they’re not truly fountain pens. Also, I don’t know calligraphy so I find them to be good for general word art instead.
If you’ve never heard of these before, you get can a set of 6 pens ranging from 1.5mm to 6mm on Amazon for ~$45. You can also purchase them in individual sizes or in 3-pen sets at a more expensive cost per pen.
Each pen comes with a lot of stuff: 2 cartridges, a pamphlet with all sorts of helpful information, and a cleaner.
The Pilot ink that comes with each pen is just ok. It takes a little prep to get the ink started. I came up with a process where I squeezed the cartridge 10 times and then put pressure on the tip three times. That usually got the ink flowing the first time.
I’m not a fan of the Pilot ink that comes with the pen, however. I find it bleeds through most paper.
It is very wet, though, and makes the learning curve easier. Pilot does sell the cartridges separately, but there are limited colors. I plan to refill these with my own ink moving forward.
Save the cartridges. Once you use one up, you can refill it with your own ink. I already have a number of fountain pens and, therefore, a blunt syringe to refill ink cartridges with.
There is a small learning curve for these. If you want nice, straight, perfect lines, you’ll have to practice with them. Pilot recommends even pressure all the way across the metal tip. I found this to be hard to do when first putting the pen to paper. Once the ink gets going, though, it’s more consistent.
My favorite size is the 3.0mm. I find anything 4.0mm and higher to be too wide for my tastes.
Would I recommend the Pilot Parallels? Yes, but I’m not sure I would recommend purchasing the 6-pen set unless you know you’ll use them all. It’s possible I’ll never use 2 of these sizes.
Update: 2025 Planner Lineup
We’re now 1.5 months into the year. How is my planner lineup coming along? Last year I devised a strategy to use the following planners for 2025:
2025 Hobonichi Hon for daily journaling (once the the custom cut Standard daily journal was full - it magically became “full” just in time for 2025 :) )
Custom cut Standard Stalogy for 5-year journaling
a6 bujo for my EDC, which would switch to a Weeks size once it ran out
Half-letter discbound for quarterly planning for a specific business
I don’t know about you, but a lot of my friends have been hopping around these first two months, as is the usual for us planneraholics.
Did I planner hop for 2025?
I have to admit, I was tempted. At the end of the day, I made only a single change. I moved from my a6 bujo to something brand new (to me) that I haven’t seen in my plannersphere yet.
As a long-time fan of BaronFig, I moved to their 2025 planner. I even purchased a bright orange cover for it.
Why? My day job and personal life picked up in a big way. And since I wanted to make a weekly horizontal work, I found one large enough to handle the 12-20 tasks I need to track daily.
With this horizontal weekly format, I no longer have to draw out my monthly and weekly/daily layouts. It’s all pre-planned and with paper thick enough to handle the ink in my BaronFig pens. It’s very simple. Win!
Will it last? My contract was extended on my day job through September, so I think it will. I’m finding this size, which is slightly smaller than a normal a5, working out well. I do have to make it my own each week, but it only takes me ~15 minutes to add in all the checkboxes and markers that I need to track my tasks. Right now I need efficient and fast and this is great. I’m so busy I don’t even miss my bujo right now.
If my schedule changes, I do see myself going back to my a6 or a new Weeks size bujo. We’ll see if that happens later this year.
Personal Corner
Reading
I finished reading Onyx Storm! I have to say, I was sketchy about the beginning of the book. But after the 1/3 mark, it got a lot better. I ended up liking this book more than the second in the series.
Next in my romantasy lineup is the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. I was a big fan of her ACOTAR series (or at least the first 2 books), and I was told this one is also really good. Can’t wait!
Watching
My husband and I are saying goodbye to Netflix this month and will be taking a break from streaming in general. This past month we enjoyed watching The Gorge on Apple TV+ as well as Mo on Netflix. I’m also watching the new season of Love is Blind on Netflix that was just released.
It will be nice to take a break — my day job has gotten fairly busy and it’s going to continue through the end of the month.
Social Media Update
Some of you have noticed and have reached out to me through my Etsy store. I closed down my Instagram account. I wasn’t happy with its parent company, Meta, and the changes they were making so I decided to delete my accounts on their platforms. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
I will miss all of my friends on Instagram. Thank you for following me for the past 2 years and I appreciate your support and your wonderful posts. I have yet to find a suitable replacement, but it’s possible one might pop up.
I’m very excited about March’s newsletter post. Have you heard about the new print and cut sticker/photo machine made by Liene? They launched last year and I jumped on the bandwagon in January of this year. I looooooove it. I’ll post my review next month!
Talk to you then!
Love this update. I miss you on Instagram.💜💜