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19 July 2013

Free For All Friday No 244

My family and I are going to Orkney for a few days this summer, and I am so excited!! It's a place I've been wanting to visit for a long time because I'm fascinated by the Neolithic sites there. I decided to create my own Orkney guidebook with pages of information on all the sites I want to see (when built, features, etc.) to take with me for easy reference when I'm there. For this awesome task I have chosen my gorgeous raspberry compact Chameleon that I got from a friend in a swap (you know who you are! ;D  ). The compact size will be perfect for the trip!

Have you started using any of your Filofaxes in a new way recently?

And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring-bound related.

Happy Friday everyone!

30 comments:

  1. Hi Steve, is the moderation box ticked? Lately returned from London, I responded to a comment on the FFAT this week, only to be told it would be visible after approval!

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    1. It is on for posts over a certain age (15 days I think) but no nothing else has altered. I noticed you had commented on any old post the other day.

      Steve

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  2. Yes. About to travel myself and my a5 luxe now has all our boarding passes and car hire vouchers, a section of paper for my journal, the year planner on which I record my yoga sessions ( sea view yoga ... Yeah!!) some watercolour paper for holiday sketching a couple of finance pages to note spending and my passport in the pocket.

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  3. Where are you off to Helen? Is this connected with end of term, either necessity to fit in or necessity to escape from? :)

    I do love the fact that when I pick up my FF, keys excepted, I know I can't have forgotten anything. And as I can't go anywhere *without* my keys, that's taken care of too!

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    1. Dubroknik - fortunately we are no longer tied to term times but I fancied a little get away. Nothng but reading, sketching, swimming,journaling yoga and eating! Also have my currency and a few diary pages in a compact Malden Zip along for the ride. I swapped from my personal last night ready to go thinking I really didn't need more than the diary for when we are there to record what we did. Twice today so far ( still at awork) I have needed pages I left out! Grrr

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  4. Oh dear oh dear.....seems like we have Spammer Scum back in the house. Block, ban and report, Steve? I hear the SAS are available....trained killers, utterly charming, to quote Hugh Grant from Love Actually......

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    1. Cheeky whatsits aren't they!!!

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    2. nasty

      we should develop a spray......

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  5. Hi David, seems to be like the nasty big flies in Summer - they're everywhere to many one's chagrin.
    I was also wondering what that post abour service software was doing here! Hope we can get that fly out of our kittchen.

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  6. I intend to prepare two personal Urbans as travel faxes for a mutual holiday week in September. The second one will be the travel fax for my mum as I'm going to share a raw food spoiler week (yes all yummy fresh dishes without the work involved in preparation) at a lovely little hotel in the German Harz, close to where they celebrate the traditional walpurgis night.

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  7. And yes, love to join in - Happy Friday!

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  8. Well after what must have been the busiest week for me in a long time today is a bit calmer. I was a slave to the keyboard yesterday dealing with about 400 emails. At this point in time we now have over 230 correct competition entries.

    But I've been smiling all the time because people have been contacting me about the review and thanking me for the work that went in to the review. It was great fun to spend 3-4 days doing all the photographs and writing things up. I took over 120 photos of the organisers and scaled it back to what you saw in the review. Keeping quiet about the review and the lead up to it was difficult! But it was a great surprise to spring on people when it appeared on Wednesday.

    The competition entries though have been fun because you can almost see the locations of entries going around the world in a wave as the time zones are in day light.

    However, I will not be sitting around sitting on laurels of appreciation.. There is web finds to compile for your enjoyment tomorrow. I'm also putting my collection to full use by doing a comparison post for next week sometime. The photos are taken.. I've just got to put some words around it all!

    We have almost got enough Readers Under the Spotlight to take us to the end of August, but please keep coming forward folks, I love discovering about our readers!

    Have a great weekend everyone.

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    1. Steve, your Gillio review was wonderful. I'm looking forward to you telling us about more about the planners you have. Good photo of your line-up on the facebook group.

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    2. Really enjoyed the Gillio review - what lovely binders! It's great to get such detailed pictures - as a filofax users you know what we want to see!

      Happy holidays everyone!

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    3. I agree, the review was absolutely wonderful. A great balance of "oooh lovely" type descriptions and practicalities too.

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    4. I was also appreciative of the acknowledgement of entry. You don't see that often. Nice touch :)

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  9. I'm wondering about the Portland mini and pocket. I haven't seen photos of the insides of the mini, but when I was looking at the pocket I noticed they have a zip pocket on the left. Today I saw one with a curved full height pocket on the left. The embossing of the name is also a little different. Are there two versions of the pocket Portland or is one a good copy? Does anyone know if the mini had a zip pocket on the left?

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    1. There is this

      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Filofax-Pocket-Portland-Unused-excellent-condition-Mid-blue-soft-leather-/251240974265

      and this

      http://www.trademe.co.nz/business-farming-industry/office-equipment-supplies/stationery-supplies/diaries-organisers/auction-616474099.htm

      Maybe there were two versions?

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  10. Laurie, are you a telepathic?
    During past six´ish months I´ve had swift medical encounters that have whisked me to ER in an ambulance (trust me, this story will get to an organizer, promise) followed by anything from between emergency surgery to medication and observation etc etc etc. Until now I´ve been happily using two binders- A5 as a desk binder including everything, and a smaller calendar with only necessities on my tote.
    Some time ago I completely fell in love with the whole idea of Midori TJ and butchered an old messenger bag to make mine. I liked it but the TJ needed to be even more rustic so I butchered another old tote (fret not, these were thrift store finds and cost me a few euros)and now achieved the rugged feel to the Notebook. I stored the first TN for future purposes- the leather was gorgeous, shiny chocolate brown leather. I also printed calender sheets to the rugged one. I made my own signatures to journals, watercolors and acrylics. I loved the bulk of it but journaling and occasional painting became challenging with the mere heft and bulk of the Notebook. So I took away the two signatures of calendar and kept the TN solely for artsy endeavors. NOW it works. As is, only for artistic endeavors.
    So I started to use the personal sized binder, that my son bought me, as my "on the go"- binder. I bought new inserts to it and put some of my old Filofax inserts and the familiar Today- marker to it. Needless to say, it felt like home. I even got craftastic and created fabulous tabs from craft paper and cardstock and the binder looked interesting and inspirational with well organized and categorized inserts. Only... the binder was, however lovely ( since my Cherub got it for me), not leather.

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  11. One of these nights I got an inspiration to cull through my sewing closet. I opened the door and there was this awesome outside pocket of a totebag staring at me. Accusing me of abandonment. This was the same leather from which I made the first TN. Clearly, the outside pocket was destined to be a binder ant it demanded some action, yesterday already! So I measured the width of leather- piece. Can you imagine it was exactly a size of a personal binder. It was destiny!
    I took some ideas from the concept of Midori TN- like a rubberband as a closure, the overall rustic appeal and this was underlined because the leather was beautifully worn from the lower edges. The corners were rounded but years of using the bag had stretched slightly the leather and rubbed the edges beautifully. So I took carefully removed the old closure from the pocket, undid its seams, rounded the upper corners as well and cut the first TN to fit the outer piece of leather. I did have to sew additional strip of leather to the very middle. I sewed the beauty, then went for a hunt for the rings. I had bought two binders while living in Greece, in personal size and the rings the personal FF (this has always been my barometer for personal size- when I got my Balmoral, I bought FF pages also in personal size and what I really mean is I bought enough to equip a very organized army. Or a village.) I took the larger rings from the other binder. I suspect they must have been 23´ish mm´s. I didn´t measure, though. I managed to wrestle the rivets out and then, in the middle of a night, came to a realisation I had none at home. So I did what I did back in the days. I took copper nails, cut them shorter and started banging them flat. Back in the days my joint were better. Back in the days, a stunt like that would have been done already (working with leather, you need to be pals with your power tools). These days, I only managed to butcher the ring system and did very little to the copper nails- no matter how soft copper is. Frustrating.

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  12. So I took the smaller rings from the second binder, only this one was attached so strongly to another piece of metal that I knew from simply looking at its rivets that there was no way taking it apart without breaking the system that I let it be and opted to glue it in. However, I didn´t have epoxy at home so I used another, industrial adhesive ( in renovation, the builders used a nickname "cement" for this gunk) regardless that it was nearly almost entirely old and not fluid anymore. So it now keeps it all together, but I envision to find a larger set of rings to fit my Filofax- papers (you know, the good, old quality) and then to either have it attached with rivets by somebody else with healthier joints, or then use strong adhesive to cement it in with the leather.
    So to continue this story with no clear logic... the crafty Steve then posted somesuch regarding Gillio planners. Oh. Heavens. Be still, my beating heart! Of course I HAD to- simply had to go to You Tube and was floored by the large rings and fancy leather.
    I love my new old binder that I made, I now want and need to find larger rings to it so I can also add DPPs to it. I already added the financial sheets to the personal size. The thing is, because of these near- fatal encounters with EDS and allergies and simply plethora of auto- immune diseases, I need to be capable to collect my belongings in half of a nanosecond if needed, and my life needs to move from two binders to one ( until now, it was A5 and a personal). Two binders was a habit of two decades and it worked like magic. But now, portability is a necessity.
    I actually found a students´ calendar with very lightweight paper that is identical in FF papers in height I only would have to arrow it a smidgen. I might get that and trust that, miraculously, a larger ring system just waltzes my way.
    We´ll see. But how funny that even when my new binder is only few days old, it feels like I´ve had it forever and I just can´t help sniffing and cuddling it constantly. I can´t believe I just typed it out loud. But I suppose, if you are about to type some strangeness, this is the place to do so.

    Happy weekend to all!

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    1. Excuse all the typos and rambling. At the end- ish of the saga I meant to write that the DPP- sheets would need *narrowing* in order to fit with the binder and its papers. Also, a clever person might have suggested that punching holes would come tremendously handy.

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  13. I suppose I'm like many filofaxers, and can't really stand it when I've crossed out too many things on a date in my Personal Month on a Page, or CC Week on 2 Pages. In an aha moment, I searched the internet, and found a place in the US that sells the perfect white stickers to cover both of these spots, sold one sheet at a time.

    www.labelsbythesheet.com offers 3 x 1 1/2 Rectangle White Label Sheet, which perfectly covers a single day that has gone awry. The 3/8 x 2 1/4 Rectangle White Label Sheet is easily cut down to 7/8" strips to cover the day/month when it is a mess.

    Sheets are sold individually; I purchased white, so I cannot comment whether ivory would coordinate with cotton cream.

    Sure, I carry white-out rollers for a quick change, but these redeem the hopeless messes that sometimes occur, and are easier to write on than white-out tape.

    Hope this is useful to another paper lover.

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  14. This morning, I find myself in FiloQuandry. After watching my first Adamsfilo video, I changed from my A5 to my Personal and am quite content; well, content until I saw a video from KentfromOz showcasing his A5. I love the size of the Personal but miss the space of the A5.....what to do....what to do?

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    1. This seems to be the ever-recurring FF-topic: Which size to use... I'm approaching the "crisis" myself as I just recently got hold of an A5 Hamilton to compliment my personal Hamilton. Love the A5 size but it's just a tad to big to bring with me everywhere especially now during the summer holidays!
      But I'll probably keep using it as my primary FF until after the summer break and then we'll see...

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    2. Oh good so it's not just women who change their minds constantly...whew...had me worried there for a moment!

      I love the idea of matching binders in the two sizes.

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  15. I added a couple of logs. One logs my symptoms for my physical therapist. The other logs all the suggestions from this year's volunteer event for when I volunteer at next year's event, so we can fix the problems.

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  16. I'm not using a new Filo for travel, per se, but my Malden has recently gained quite a few new pages of notes for our upcoming move! To pack in cars list, to pack in truck list, address change list, to buy for new house list, paint color ideas list, it goes on and on!

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  17. I finally got around to creating a Chronodex diary insert and am going to try that method out for a few months.

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  18. I haven't used my Holborn compact yet but I normally go into a compact for travel so i can't wait to use it. Although the review Steve did the other day on the journey travel companion has me intrigued! Well see lol

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