After a horrible experience dealing with Field Notes* I decided to just start making my own mini-notebooks.
If you use printer paper, you can just cut it in half, then trim each half to 7", then take 12 sheets of these 5.5x7" sheets, fold them in half, stack them together, then bind them. The first notebook I made, I used a basic stapler to staple the booklet together which worked fine, but on the second I did a pamphlet stitch which is easy and doesn't have sharp pointy bits in the middle of the book.
For some future version, I want to use the Axidraw to design some algorithmic covers for each notebook, but really the possibilities for what kind of art you can make for these is limitless.
The next step is to use these notebooks for awhile and see if I need to improve on the paper, or covers, and then I can just make 30-40 of them and call it good for the year. (I seem to go through one of these a week.)
* It seems like the Field Notes brand has finally succumbed to enshittification. On the
last and last time I bought something from them, they automatically signed me up for a Linked(?) account, which is a helpful service
that tracks you around the internet selling all your data to whoever is willing to pay for it. While it only takes a few seconds for them
to setup your account, it takes 6-8 weeks (months? I forget) for them to delete the account I never wanted. This also means if you
were actually ever dumb enough to buy from the field notes website again, they would just sign you up with another account.