Here are some pictures of the freebie red “FIELD N♥TES” pencils that Field Notes included with orders placed around Valentine’s Day last month. I received one with my “M × L × B × D” order (the “alphabet soup” edition) and another one with my “Heartbeat” Wednesday offer order the following week. Maybe my timing was just right because I heard some people didn’t get this pencil with their orders.
It’s a round, no. 2 pencil with silver ferrule and white eraser. It’s painted in a rich shade of red that I like a lot, and that reminds me of Red Blooded. Since the “Heartbeat” memo book and this pencil were both released into the wild around Valentine’s Day, I naturally think of them as a pair, but you can tell the red in the “Heartbeat” is a different shade.
The design down the side of the pencil is simple and matches the logo on the “Heartbeat” edition, with the “O” of NOTES replaced with a heart. Is this the first time they tweaked the logo for a specific release? The closest precedent I can think of is Renegade Pencils “Road to Mongolia” edition, where they translated everything, including the logo on the cover, to Mongolian, although this doesn’t seem like an appropriate comparison.
Wood looks a lot lighter than the cedar pencil.
Some writing samples
While the “regular” Field Notes pencil with cedar wood is very descriptive and has more info painted on the casing itself, this red pencil doesn't disclose any specs. It's a promotional pencil, so I didn't really expect it to anyway. The graphite core is a bit firm and light for my taste (see pic above for comparison), but it's smooth enough. I might be imagining it, but it feels teeny tiny bit softer than their cedar pencil, too. The white eraser on the other hand is just NG.
It's not going to be my daily pencil but I appreciate that Field Notes made another version of red pencils for Valentine's Day since I missed out on the 1st (?) version that said “FIELD NOTES loves you”. Overall, it's a very cool novelty pencil that I’m happy to have in my collection.