My Summer Six Pack Isn’t Made Of Beer

After months of testing nibs and writing reviews, the crew on my desk exploded into a massive invasion. Eighteen is simply too many so now it’s back to a smaller group of pens and inks. Last summer two bent nib pens were all I wanted, but this year I added fines and extra fines. I’m calling them my six pack.

These are the ones that made the cut:

1. Jinhao 82 EF Transparent Gray and Diamine Twilight
2. Jinhao 82 F Transparent Grey and Diamine Violet
3. Delike New Moon 2 Bent Nib Green Marble and Diamine Eau de Nil
4. Delike New Moon 2 Bent Nib Blue and Waterman Mysterious Blue. Sailor Sky High when refilled.
5. Jinhao 82 F Ivory with Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses
6. Jinhao 82 EF Transparent Coffee with Sparkles and J Herbin Lie de Thé

Twilight and Eau de Nil are likely to get the most use. Do you pare down for the summer? If so, what made the cut for you this year?

 

Ideas For Pairing Pens And Inks

Deciding which pens and inks to put together can be anything from a pleasant endeavor to a time-consuming frustration. Do you have rules for matching pens and inks? I don’t after more than twenty years of using fountain pens. However, I have developed a few observations that help narrow my choices when either a pen or an ink is begging for a workout. More often than not, the pen comes first and then the ink. These guidelines help refine my search.

• Dark green and red inks work best with narrow nibs.
• Blue, brown and black work with all nibs.
• Orange and purple suit medium and wide nibs.
• Turquoise and burgundy go well with medium nibs.
• Pastel and pale inks are best paired with wide nibs.
• Blue, teal and brown inks are good with fine to medium fude nibs.
• Wide fude nibs bring out the best qualities of gray inks.
• For the palest pink inks, only the Platinum #3776 Music Nib will do.
• Sailor Peach Pink, Sailor Sakura Mori, Iroshizuku Kosumosu, Herbin Bouquet D’Antan are pretty with any wide nib.
• Characteristics like sheening, outlining and shading are best revealed with stub and italic writing.
• Often I will forget which ink is loaded in which pen, so I keep a scorecard nearby.
• I track how pens and inks perform together by writing a few words in a dedicated pen and ink notebook.
• If there is an outstanding combination, like Diamine Violet with a TWSBI 580 1.1mm stub, that gets noted, too.
• I can be guilty of matching inks to pen colors though on occasion to shake things up, I will put together complementary ones. Red pen with green ink as an example.

Perhaps too many guidelines, but they suit my needs. Most came from analyzing how I put things together without giving my actions any prior thought. They help me narrow my search, and with the size of my collection, they are essential. Your list will be different, but creating one can be a helpful action if choosing pen and ink mates is challenging, frustrating or even too time-consuming. Or you might just do it for fun.

Van Gogh Palette

A Dozen Distractions From The Pen World And Beyond

An odd mix of things that provided much-appreciated distraction this past week…

• UK Fountain Pens: 10 pen experiences to try before you die
• LED Project Nexen R&D facility, Seoul, South Korea (mesmerizing)
• Gourmet Pens: Oddly Satisfying Writing
• Anderson Pens: Aurora Ink In Colors (55ml bottles and 3ml samples)
• UK Fountain Pens: Franklin-Christoph Model 20 with Masuyama Needlepoint
• Survey to Help Choose Next House Color
• 67 Beverly Park Court
• Anderson Pens: Endless Works journals are made with Tomoe River Paper
• From The Pen Cup: EDCC: My Everyday Covid-19 Carry
• Paris Breakfasts: Paris Outside
• The Well-Appointed Desk: Top Ten Pens (Non-Fountain Pens)
• Cigar Aficionado: A Fine Line: The Joys of Fountain Pens

Five years on, I still love this duo.

An Autumn Ink Palette Inspired By Van Gogh

My favorite season has returned though where I live, you wouldn’t know it was autumn. One way to compensate for that deficiency is to let my ink and pen selection represent the color variety that the local flora does not. Could my current maximum rotation of five pens do the season justice? After extensive perusing of ink swatches, I was not satisfied with any combination and put aside the project for another day.

Then I noticed a book of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, a gift from family earlier this year. Why not consult a master? Eventually, I settled on his painting, Rocks with Oak Tree, and found a few inks in my collection that approximate the colors.

• Herbin Ambre de Birmaine
• Iroshizuku yu-yake
• Iroshizuku ina-ho
• Herbin Lie de Thé
• Noodler’s Dostoyevsky
• Waterman Florida Blue

The two pens already on my desk were filled with Sailor Tokiwa-Matsu and Diamine Violet so adding six more would be too many. Three inks were returned to the shelf, leaving a manageable number.

This group will do nicely for visual variety and writing pleasure.

• Iroshizuku yu-yake
• Herbin Lie de Thé
• Noodler’s Dostoyevsky
• Diamine Violet
• Sailor Tokiwa-Matsu

 

These inks may not reflect the season so much as Van Gogh’s color choices, but that’s fine since they will provide sufficient variety to meet my current writing needs. As the holidays approach, yu-yake and Violet will be replaced by Diamine Emerald and a bright burgundy to carry me into the new year. At least that is the current plan. I am quite fickle when it comes to ink, so don’t hold me to it. I am after all an inkophile. Aren’t you?

These items are available at Amazon.com. For qualified purchases, Inkophile receives a small commission at no additional cost to you.

• Van Gogh His Life and Works in 500 Images by Michael Howard
• Herbin Ambre de Birmaine
• Iroshizuku yu-yake
• Iroshizuku ina-ho
• Herbin Lie de Thé
• Noodler’s Dostoyevsky
• Waterman Serenity Blue (formerly Florida Blue)
• Diamine Violet
• Sailor Tokiwa-Matsu

 

Sunday Reads: Pens, Ink And Happy Hour

So what do pens have to do with happy hour? Read on.

• Pen Chalet: Conklin Duraflex Limited Edition Fountain Pens (If I were in the market for a new pen, this one looks just right.)
• Quick Fountain Pen Review: Nemosine Fission Gunmetal Quick Fountain Pen Review
• Teoh: IndiGraph – This fountain pen can use India ink
• Mountain of Ink: Ink Review #639: Jacques Herbin Ambre de Baltique
• The Pen Addict: Faber-Castell NEO Slim Fountain Pen Review
• Fontana Penna Furore Collection (I like the Arancio but I am always a sucker for that color.)
• Plooms Fountain Pens in the U.K. (Check out the blotters.)
• Forbes: Is Writing With A Pen Better Than Happy Hour?

From the archives, my kit from five years ago. Only one pen has remained a constant in my rotation. Can you guess which one?

Pens: Platinum #3776, Noodler’s Standard Flex, the Pilot Prera Italic and the Sheaffer Taranis Medium. Inks: Diamine Sepia, Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses, Noodler’s Black and Diamine Steel Blue. Autopoint Mechanical Pencil, a daily user that has never failed me.

Facebook Proves Analog Is Better

Using a fountain pen on paper is the perfect antidote to the reach of Facebook’s tentacles. Zuckerberg and his minions have vowed to implement changes that should have happened years ago. If the current promise of reform makes you feel safe from data miners and prying eyes, you might believe in unicorns and fairies as well. Now wouldn’t that be an interesting world, but the one we currently inhabit lacks such elegant creatures and the fantasy that goes with them. Mere mortals, we have the reality of Facebook and its “privacy settings” that are arcane and obscure.

Should you want to lower your Facebook profile, here are some links to info about how to do it.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqkVjhCr79o
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulajdbHLyHc

Now put those fountain pens to best use. Shred what needn’t be preserved and file what must be kept. Unless co-workers, family and friends decide to rifle through your shelves and drawers, your data will be secure though posterity may look askance at your rants and musings. I have put some doozies here and there in my journals. Should anyone ignore my instructions to burn the lot, they will get an earful/eyeful that ought to make them wish they hadn’t delved into my private thoughts. Oh, would I like to be a fly on the wall for that comeuppance!

Sunday Reads: From Montblanc To India To Bamboo Pens

Pens, inks and all sorts of other stuff…

• Phys.org: Vinegar offers hope in Barrier Reef starfish battle (Vinegar?!)
• From The Pen Cup: Inky Fingers Notebooks: Currently Inked
• Anderson Pens: Montblanc Shakespeare Velvet Red
• Office Supply Geek: Lamy Safari Petrol Special Edition Fountain Pen and Ink
• NibSpotter: Pens of the People: The Namiki Emperor Vermillion
• My Pen Needs Ink: Zenzoi Bamboo Fountain Pen Review
• The Well-Appointed Desk: Dot Grid Showdown
• Viviva Colorsheets (I signed up for two.)
• Top Ten Most Expensive Pens in the World (Gulp!)
• The Pen Addict: Sailor Jentle Ink Kin-Mokusei: A Review (Love the color.)
• The Serial Doodler: Coloring Pages (Very cute.)
• In a Paperless Age, This Mumbai Boy Hopes to Popularise Made-In-India Fountain Pens
• How to Type Accented Characters Without Annoying Alt Codes
• Ed Jelley: The Five Best Pocket Fountain Pens To Carry Every Day
• Pranks

Platinum #3776 Music Nib and friends meet a Stillman & Birn Sketchbook: