I'm finally a member of the Malden club!

Yesterday I went to the Philofaxy meetup in Edinburgh, which was so much fun!  I did a separate post on it, but meanwhile I couldn't wait to show you my new Personal Ochre Malden!  Woo hoo!!

I've been looking at these since I first saw one in London when I was there 2 1/2 years ago. I liked Steve's so much at lunch I decided I really needed to get one. At The Pen Shop I dug around behind their main stock searching for an ochre Malden and lo and behold I found one!  I couldn't help feeling it was meant for me.

But this morning as I was loading it up I discovered, much to my astonishment, not only does it not lie flat but it doesn't even stay open by itself! Here it is in the process of closing on its own:

If I have pages to the left, it stays open but definitely not flat:

I wondered what the heck was up, because I've heard so much about the Malden's legendary flatability. Upon further inspection, I discovered there's some kind of reinforcing material around the spine between the leather layers. I can't tell if it's plastic or some kind of cardboard, but it makes a kind of crunching noise when I forcibly open the binder out flat. Below you can see where the cover bends at the edge of this reinforcing material inside the binder:

Here's the front cover:

And here's the back. Unfortunately the edge of the plastic or whatever is right where the front and back full-length pocket slits are, making it difficult to get things in and out of those pockets.

Well dang it. While I was at the store I examined the rings so much to make sure they didn't gap I didn't even notice the stiffness around the spine!  Maybe it's for the best, because I think a totally floppy cover might be too floppy? Oh well it's mine now, and aside from the stiffness I love it.

The only other issue I noticed was when I first put my pen into the leather non-elasticated pen loop, a piece of the leather from inside the loop came out the bottom of the pen loop. I pushed my pen back up from the other direction in the pen loop to stuff that scrap of leather back in, then once the loop was opened up it was fine and I can get my pen in and out of there without the scrap sticking out anymore. The leather loop holds a relatively thin pen. (I told my husband the moment a Filofax has a pen in its loop is like the moment it actually comes to life. It's ready to write in and use!)

I'm using it as a wallet with my payment cards in the front card slots and all my loyalty cards, library card etc. in business card holders at the back. I love that my phone fits into the back pocket:

Here are my tabs:

The Malden came with A-Z tabs, which I took out to save space. It also came with four blank tabbed dividers, which I took out and put in the tabbed dividers from my other Filofax which I already had set up so I just stuck them in there.

I have month on two pages calendars and a 4-year pull-out planner, financial stuff with the calculator on the rings,

an Information section with maps of Scotland and Edinburgh (which would have been handy to have with me yesterday!)

There's still tons of room left on the rings so if I wanted to add more pages there would be plenty of room.

Today's the first day I'm using it as a combined wallet + info book, and so far so good.  I keep my coins and bills in a separate coin purse so the Malden has only cards in it.

It feels good to have a Filofax as an information-on-the-go book again!  And I do love the leather of the ochre Malden. It already had a couple of scratches on the cover around the spine when I got it, so I don't have to worry about messing up a perfect cover. Plus the ochre leather has an antiqued look that I love, and any scratches or anything really would just add to the character of the book, making it look used and well-loved.

Does anyone else have a Malden with the stiffness issues of this one? If so, were you able to get it to lie flat eventually?

**Update June 2013: Eventually I realized there wasn't anything sandwiched between the leather after all. The hardness was the actual leather on the inside of the spine next to the rings. That leather was so hard it cracked and crunched when I bent it to try to get the binder to lay flat. When I held the binder in my hands I could feel the hardness around the spine and the distinct line of it through the cover. I did the Nivea treatment on it and although it made the leather look better (not so dry), it didn't penetrate to soften that piece of leather.

I continued to be so disappointed that this binder wasn't soft and buttery like I had expected a Malden to be. I never got over it and just never bonded with this Malden . So, I sold it to someone who I hope will love it like it deserves to be!