The ever-generous Stuart Lennon of pocketnotebooks.co.uk dropped one of these little gems in a recent order and I’ve been enamored ever since playing with it.
Before we get into the full story, let’s wrestle with that name: Der Zettelwirt. I typo’d my first translation attempt (zettlewirt) revealing “the warping host.” Hmmm…can’t be right…correct spelling provides “the note host.” Makes more sense.
Der Zettelwirt is a small, user-fillable sturdy cover using a rubber-band top binding system that I’ve seen once before in some notebooks out of the Hamilton Wood Type Museum back when Field Notes’ Two Rivers was first released. The pack comes with about a dozen pages loaded in the sturdy cover (material is the same as that used for waist-labels on jeans) plus a fat stack of spare pages. A user can thus load up as many or as few as they’d like to carry, a cool feature that I can see has some practical uses.
I liked the concept, the materials, and the paper took anything I threw at it (excerpt Sharpies…they bleed through nearly every paper). There is only one downside I see to these, and even that, depending on the type of stationery nut you are, may or may not matter. More on that below.
Der Zettelwirt nerd-specs:
- Size: 3″ x 4-1/8″ (7.4cm x 10cm) – A7
- Cover: Top fold-over, water- and tear-proof cover
- Binding: Rubber band around page block and back cover, secured by side notches in both pages and back cover
- Page count: 64
- Paper weight: 90 g/m² (~60#)
Der Zettelwirt is, I think, a great note pad to carry with its variable page count and small form factor, but it’s not inexpensive. At roughly $10 US for the cover and refill pack, it’s about twice the cost per square inch of page as a Field Notes, so it won’t appeal to everyone, but for those who like something unique, it could find a home in your shirt pocket, or with the soon-available desk stand your desktop too!
Currently available to the U.S. through pocketnotebooks.co.uk. Internationals can get them through pocketnotebooks of course, and also Offlines, the maker’s site.
