A penchant for pens and inks
The Fountain Pen UK group (FPUK) recently commissioned a couple of purple inks from Diamine. After a number of rounds of polling on colour, then specific sample variant, it became apparent that just one of the purples would not be enough. Thus, once the final naming poll was complete, two purples went into production and Scribble Purple and Monboddo’s Hat were born. Continue reading “Too Many Purples?”
My whim purchase of the Delike Alpha arrived this morning from China. I chose the pretty mid blue (“Noble Blue”) aluminium pen and I was intrigued enough to buy it with the EF “bent” nib. Since the nib units just screw in, it seemed rude not to try a couple of other nib options as well, so I also bought standard EF and F nibs. The whole lot set me back around £20 and even comes in a nice tobacco-sized tin, just like the Kaweco Sport it is copying.
What makes a good pen? Well, it isn’t necessarily the price tag. Some of my favourite pens cost me less than £5. My Yongsheng 016, for example, is a lovely little pen. Slim, pretty, metal-bodied, with a surprisingly good fine hooded nib, it is a very good writer for the £2 and some pence that it cost. Of course, at that price, I have no qualms at all about filling it with shimmer or sheen inks. Though just because it was cheap, does not make me value it less or treat it carelessly. Continue reading “Cheap As Chips”
Today’s review features the Italix Chaplain’s Tankard. Italix is a brand of pens with a predominantly clerical theme, made exclusively for Mr Pen, a London-based retailer. As an owner of their Deacon’s Doodle, (a favourite of mine), I can attest to their quality.
The Chaplain’s Tankard is a fairly ordinary looking black lacquer pen with gold trim. This is in no way a detriment, unless you happen to like your pens with more bling than Liberace. It has a pleasingly simple and stylish quality that is lacking in many more expensive pens (and, indeed, Liberace). It comes in a compact black cardboard box, which is all the packaging that is needed for a pen IMO. (Don’t get me started on the space taken up by unnecessarily large and fancy pen boxes!)
After a flying start to December’s Inkvent calendar, things rather ran away with me and it was all I could do to keep up with just swatching the inks each day*. Consequently, the posts on here rather dried up and the review I should have undertaken also fell by the wayside. Anyway, setting the excuses aside, I have now had a chance to have a play with the Lamy Aion, albeit a brief one, for the purposes of this review.
Well, you can’t expect a post every day!
Day 2
I didn’t get around to Sunday’s ink, Pelikan Edelstein Aventurine, until quite late and then had a bit of a near miss as I tried to fill a pen that already had Cornflower blue ink in it. I don’t think I adulterated the sample as it’s still a nice deep green, but if you are familiar with the ink and it looks wrong, please let me know.
I have to admit that I cheated! Today’s ink should have been the Diamine Shimmer Mystique, but since I only just reviewed that and FB seems to have chosen that particular image for the blog post link, I decided that would be a bit dull and blind swapped it with another day. Thus, today’s ink was actually Pelikan Edelstein Ruby, along with a Rose Cream chocolate.
Tbis year I decided that, since I have so many ink samples, a good way to utilise them might be the have a “sample-a-day” Advent Calendar and use that ink for the whole day. Obviously, it would make a certain amount of sense to review the inks whilst I was at it. Continue reading “Inkvent Calendar”
You can probably guess from the title that I’m more than a little taken with Diamine’s new Shimmer range, of which Diamine were kind enough to provide me with a sample set for review.
I was truly excited to receive a sample set of Nick Stewart’s CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK) inks, thanks to the United Inkdom group. The idea behind them is that you can create the entire colour palette from these primaries in the same way as inkjet printers. Thus, if you only have room for 4 inks, these will enable you to create any other colour you need.