August was a pretty exciting stationery month for two reasons: the Hobonichi 2026 previews, and the Newcastle Pen Show. Let’s talk about Hobonichi first!

Hobonichi 2026

The Hobonichi line up for 2026 has now been fully announced and is on sale, although surprisingly I haven’t bought anything yet! 

I’m holding out for the 1st October for the release of the One Piece stuff before I place my order, and am just hoping the other things I want will still be in stock.

I expected much of my shopping list to from the One Piece collab, and I was right. This year I want the A5 black Luffy cover, as well as the A6 HON. I’ve been loving my A6 HON this year, and I love the Chopper themed pattern on the 2026 version!

An unexpected collaboration that I’ve been incredibly excited about is Tamagotchi! I am a big Tamagotchi fan (I have several!), and all the stuff in this collection is so cute!

The items on my wish list are mainly the A5 cover, the A5 cover-on-cover (it’ll look cute on the Dreamy Soda Hobonichi cover I have!) and maybe one of the pencil boards.

I love the Tamagotchi Weeks, but I think I’m starting to come to terms with the fact I never actually end up using my Weeks for the whole year, and that I don’t need one. 

You may also notice that’s 2 different A5 covers I’m planning to get, but no Cousin… I’m considering a Cousin as my journal next year, but ultimately I might decide to just do what I’ve done previously and put an A5 Stalogy notebook in a Hobonichi cover as my journal. Me and dated journals don’t always get along, since I don’t necessarily write every day.

Newcastle Pen Show

I’m doing well for Pen Shows this year, as I not only went to the Northern Pen Show in April, but this past weekend I went to Newcastle for another one.

I knew this would be a smaller show, and it’s over 3 hours away from where I live, but Jay and I decided to make a weekend of it, and explore the city of Newcastle while we were there.

And it was great! When we got there on Friday night we went to the Metrocentre, which was probably the biggest shopping mall I’ve ever been to, and on Saturday we explored the city centre and went to the Discovery Museum.

Then on Sunday, it was Pen Show day! The venue was nice, and perhaps because it wasn’t as busy as the Northern Pen Show, it felt a lot easier to move around and browse this one, even though the room itself was smaller.

I unfortunately didn’t have a huge budget to spend, but I had fun browsing around, and I saw some beautiful handmade pens that were incredibly tempting! In the end though I stuck to my budget and just purchased a few things from the Under the Rowan Trees stall. 

I picked up the Kaweco Sport Honey that I’ve been eyeing for ages (and it goes perfectly with Pilot Iroshizuku To-Ro!).

And I also got a food/bear themed Pentel Energel that I thought was super cute, and a Penac Tri Eraser 301, which is a retractable eraser.

I was really happy with these purchases, and I had a lovely time at the show, and in Newcastle. I’d definitely go again!

So how was your August? What have been some of your stationery favourites of the month?