Yak Leather Pen Sleeve & Pen Case (with GIVEAWAY)

The good people of the Pen Boutique Ltd. sent me a pen sleeve and a 12 pen case for review. I’ll start with the one I liked, the single pen sleeve in brown.

Fun fact, we can’t remember the last time the complex mowed the grass. I’ve got catnip growing in my backyard!

The leather is smooth and sturdy, with the Yak Leather logo stamped at the top. It’s been a perfect little holster for one of my currently inked clipless Vanishing Points. In spite of not having a secure closure at the top I’ve had no issue with my pen falling out. The stitching is neat and even. And the leather smells AMAZING. I wish there were some way for you to be able to smell this through the internet. It smells like Good Leather. Picture me, sitting at my desk, covertly sniffing this leather pen sleeve, because it’s so good I just want to keep smelling it.

I also kept smelling the catnip. It smelled like mint!

There’s not much else to say about the pen sleeve—it’s a straightforward product, made well. The sleeve, I’m keeping.

Then there’s this 12 pen case.

This could be yours someday, if you’re lucky. Or if you buy your own

The good: it’s also seemingly well made. You’ve got protective cushioning to the covers, two zippers with leather pulls. The leather is a pebbled texture, which I’m guessing will better hide any blemishes it may pick up. The zippers unzip far enough to almost get it to lay flat when open (perhaps with time the leather will relax to do this without needing help). The velvety divider in the middle is removable, presumably so you can use it to lay a pen out on, the better to look at.

Or the better to one day forget to put back in and lose. Hey, look, a size comparison!

Now for the perplexing and annoying. This case is an inconveniently large size to only be carrying 12 pens. I can easily fit 12 pens in a Nock Sinclair and only take up half the space. Maybe if all of your pens are those honking jumbo oversized novelty fountain pens–but even those don’t fit!

I will award points for being unusual, but minus all those points for practicality

The pen loops used here are not intuitive. At first I thought these were just excessively wide leather loops, and this case was only for people who like big, chunky fountain pens. It wasn’t until I saw a YouTube review of the case that I realized there were elastic loops underneath the inflexible leather loops to hold pens in place. But unless the pen you’re putting in comes to a point, you’ll have to use two hands to finagle reaching under the leather loops to hold up the elastic loop and slide the pen in.

It took more time than I feel it ought to putting 12 pens into individual loops

When the case only holds 12 pens, I presume it’s meant to be carried on the go. But this case is too large and cumbersome to properly put pens back into to be one I wanted in my everyday carry. But it might just be me, that’s why I’m giving it away!

You might love it! I might just be crazy!

The rules:

1. Since I can only afford so much postage, I’m going to limit this giveaway to the U.S. only. Just leave one comment on this post any time between now and May 31st 2018 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.
2. One winner will be picked at random from the comments section of this post. Only one comment per person! Comments in excess of one shall be deleted. The comments will be numbered in the order they are received, i.e. the first comment is #1, the second #2, and so on. I will hand-number the entries because that’s still just how I roll. The Random Integer Generator at random.org will be used to pick the number of the winner.
3. I’ll post the contest winner on June 1st 2018. Winner will have one week to email me. There’s a link to my email at the top of the right sidebar.

Yak Leather Single Pen Sleeve (Brown) at Pen Boutique

Yak Leather Premium Leather 12 Pen Case (Black) at Pen Boutique

(Pen Boutique provided this pen sleeve and pen case at no charge for reviewing purposes — opinions entirely my own)