May 2026’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

It’s been a while since I’ve inked up new fountain pens, and this month’s pen roster is both much larger than usual and has some rarely inked pens and new inks.

The list totals 16 pens, which is the most that I’ve had inked since the Inkvent days. It’s split into three major categories: leftover pens from previous months, pocket pens filled with cartridges, and full sized newly inked pens. The last category has a small sub-category of pens in it – the “use the good china” pens. I’ll explain it when we get there.

Leftover Pens

These pens were inked in the end of February (Kanilea, Lamy 2000) or the end of March (Leonardo).

Kanilea Haleakala Silhoutte – fine nib – Sailor Ink Studio 224. I bought this pen secondhand on the Pen Addict slack channel, and it’s a gorgeous pen that is absolutely not worth its retail price. Am I glad that I got it? Yes. Would I ever purchase a Kanilea pen again? No. There are better pens to be had for much less money. The Sailor Studio ink is also overpriced, but in this case the price difference isn’t such that it would hurt to buy it. 224 and 123 are my favourites of the series, but you can get a similar enough experience for less money with Diamine Earl Grey.

Lamy 2000 – medium nib – Sailor Black – workhorse pen, workhorse ink.

Leonard Officina Italiana Bohemian Twilight Momento Zero – fine nib – Robert Oster Fire and Ice – a gorgeous pen that’s one of my favourites. Robert Oster Fire and Ice is a good teal ink, and this bottle dates from the days that Robert Oster was new to the ink scene and all the rage. It’s a good ink but again, the hype was overblown. It’s taken me a long time, but I’m less and less interested in following the latest pen or ink craze. It has rarely been worth it. That being said Robert Oster makes good inks at decent prices, it’s just that they may be harder to obtain depending on where you live. Don’t feel like you’re missing out if you don’t get to try one of their inks.

Leftover pens from left to right – Leonardo, Kanilea, Lamy 2000

Pocket Pens

I bought a good amount of ink cartridges when I was in Paris and I wanted to test a few of them out. I don’t usually ink up pocket fountain pens as I find them inconvenient to use (they require posting and unposting every time you use them), so it’s been a while since I’ve used these (with the exception of the Franklin Christoph).

Schon Design Multi-color Pocket Six w/ Matching Grip, 3D Teal x Matte Black – fine nib – J. Herbin Bleu des profondeurs – my first Schon Design pen (I only have two) and the only one that I bought full price directly from Schon Design. The ink is a relatively new offering from J. Herbin (released in 2018) and wasn’t part of their offering when I started collecting pens and got into J. Herbin inks. It’s a good blue-black with a tiny bit of shading, and it’s a “wet” ink, which means that with more generous or wider nibs it’s likely to feather on the page.

Schon Design Faceted Multi-color Anodized Aluminum “Pocket Six” – Patina – medium nib – J. Herbin Orange Indien – my favourite pocket pen in terms of looks, but still overpriced for me, so I bought this one second hand. This ink is a hard, hard starter, and I’ve had a lot of trouble with it before. I don’t know how it behaves in bottle form, but I really don’t recommend these cartridges as there’s clearly a flow issue with this ink.

Kaweco Collection Sport Iridescent Pearl – medium nib – J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen – a really nice Kaweco Sport with a magenta ink. There’s some nice shading with this ink.

Franklin Christoph 45 Sage – Fine nib – J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage – the most comfortable and ergonomic pocket pen of the four that I have inked. Lierre Sauvage is the perfect green for spring and summer.

Writing Sample – Leftover pens and pocket pens

Full Sized Newly Inked Pens

I’m dividing this category into two – the “use the good china pens” and just pens that I wanted to use.

Just Pens

Edison Nouveau Premiere Macassar Ebonite – 1.5 stub italic – Pilot Iroshizuku Yu-Yake – I had managed to misplace this pen and so for years it hasn’t seen use. It’s a 2013 limited edition Edison pen made in collaboration with Goulet Pens. I love the shape of this pen, and the ebonite feels warm and light and just right in the hand. The nib is wide and generous, and felt suitable for the Iroshizuku Yu-Yake orange ink that I just bought. This combination will be used for titles, highlighting and journaling.

Lamy AL Star Flamingo – fine nib – J. Herbin La Perle des Encres Rouge Amarante – A new Lamy AL Star. Do I need it? No. But I like Lamy pens and they’re solid enough yet not precious enough to be great for ink testing and as workhorses. The J. Herbin is a new ink, and I bought it mostly because it was the last bottle in this hue in the store. I love Diamine Amaranth and I’m curious to see how this ink measures up against it.

Platinum 3776 White – Ultra Extra Fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kujakuryoku – I haven’t used this fountain pen in a while. I love the nib but it does provide a lot of feedback when writing – not scratchy, but very close to it. I purchased four Kuretake Ink Cafe inks and wanted to use all of them – but I forgot to log this ink once I filled my Visconti Homo Sapiens. I then decided that I must have forgotten to use it, and so I inked up this pen. The result is two pens with the same ink in rotation at the same time – something that I don’t think I’ve ever done. At least it’s a colour that I love…

Use the Good China Pens

I recently filling in paperwork to get insurance for some of my most expensive pens – which made me realize that I haven’t used most of them in years. So I pulled some of them out and decided to “use the good china” because they’re meant to be used, not admired from afar.

Montblanc Meisterstuck Writers Edition Homage to Victor Hugo – medium nib – De Atramentis Archive Black – this is a relatively new addition to my “expensive pens” collection. I don’t buy limited edition Montblancs, and my other Montblancs are all vintage ones. I purchased this one at a discount on the last week that Mora Stylos in Paris was open, and even though it’s heavy and I don’t love the death mask on it, it commemorates the Notre Dame, and that’s one of my favourite spots in Paris. The ink is a new (to me) waterproof black from De Atramentis. I’m interested in seeing how it works for sketching.

Nakaya Cigar Piccolo Negoro Kise Hon Kataji – elastic flexible fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kuroganeiro – My one and only Nakaya, ordered from Mora Stylos and it was a whole thing to get it delivered. The price, the effort, and the fact that it was made to order makes it so, so special. It also has one of my favourite nibs – a bouncy flexible fine. The ink is a Kuretake Ink Cafe ink, this one a dark pine green.

Henry Simpole The Jasmine pen – medium nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Shikon – A pen that is a work of art. I used to visit Henry the Pen Man’s stall every year in Portobello Road, and I always wanted one of his overlay pens. Eventually I purchased this one, and I regret not buying another one when I had the chance. It’s a Conway Stewart button giller with a fantastic gold nib and a wonderful sterling silver overlay designed and made by Henry. The ink is a lovely dark purple, one of the four Kuretake inks that I purchased.

Sailor Professional Gear Sapporo – Naginata Togi Cross Emperor – Kuretake Ink Cafe Ebicha – a nib that has a pen attached to it – that’s the story of this pen. I purchased this pen solely for the Naginata Togi Cross Emperor nib, which is a nib that behaves more like a brush than a standard fountain pen nib. The Ebicha ink is an interesting maroon colour that shows a lot of shading with this nib. It will be interesting using this pen after so many years, as the nib takes some getting used to in terms of writing angles.

Visconti Homo Sapiens – Extra Fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kujakuryoku – The original Visconti Homo Sapiens, bought at Mora Stylos the year that it was issued and took the pen world by storm. The lava like material, the brass, the nib, the weight – this is a pen with a presence. It will be interesting comparing it to the Platinum 3776 as they are both inked with the same turquoise/teal ink – Kujakuryoku.

Wahl Eversharp (Vintage) Sterling silver floral – fine nib – Waterman Mysterious Blue – I wanted to ink up a vintage pen, and this one is very “bling-y” and sports a truly flexible vintage nib. It’s also a lever filler, which I hate cleaning out, so Waterman Mysterious Blue (i.e. Blue Black) to the rescue. This ink is my benchmark, my desert island ink, the one ink that I can trust in any pen.

Writing sample – newly inked full-size pens part 1

Writing sample – newly inked full-size pens part 2

This was a long list of pens and a long post – I hope that you enjoyed it, and I hope that you have some nice pens inked up and ready to use.

New Sketching Challenge

It’s my birthday and I’ve decided to celebrate by starting a new sketching challenge inspired by Andrew James.

My rules are:

No black lines.
No natural colours.
One drawing every day until I fill the Stillman and Birn Epsilon sketchbook that I started.
No watercolours.
Don’t repeat colour palettes.

Here’s the first sketch:

This is way outside my comfort zone, but it was fun sketching this.

Weekly Update: Streaming Edition

I stopped using streaming services for a few months as I was studying for a certification exam, but as I now have more time in the evenings I’ve been back to watching stuff on my iPad. Here are a few things that I’ve watched over the last month or so.

“Shrinking” (Apple TV) – I bought a new iPad in December and so I got three free months of Apple TV. After I finished watching the fifth season of “Slow Horses” (excellent as usual), I watched the three seasons of “Shrinking”. It’s a wonderful show that manages to be both upbeat and constantly make you cry. The actors, the writing, the concept are all fantastic, and Harrison Ford (like Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses”) steal every scene he’s in. You tend to generally dislike the characters when they first appear on screen, and they gradually earn your respect and compassion, which is refreshing. My last experience with therapy was not good, and all three of the therapists in this show are deeply flawed, if very well meaning. It speaks to the quality of the writing and the acting that despite this I would be happy to have either one of them as my therapist.
“Murderbot” (Apple TV) – I love Matha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series of books that this is based on, so I was apprehensive about this series. After watching the first season I can say that it’s a good series, although it isn’t as good as “All Systems Red”, the novella that it is based on. The novella was adapted for the format, and while the result works and it’s a good sci-fi series, the TV murderbot lacks the humour and heart of the book one. I recommend watching it, and I recommend even more reading the books.
“Lilo & Stitch” and “Lilo & Stitch Live Action” (Disney+) – I didn’t watch the original animated film when it came out and until now I haven’t taken the time to watch it. I wish that I had – it’s an unexpected gem, a lovely story about family, love, being unique and belonging. I generally don’t watch live action adaptations of Disney animated features, but this one was highly recommended and it is very good. The story was changed to update it and fit the format and to update it for the times, and the result is delightful. I highly recommend both.
“Elio” (Disney+) – this Pixar film isn’t one of their classics, but it’s still a cute sci-fi story, with charming humour, and whimsical world-building. It lacks the depth or punch of “Up”, “Inside Out”, “Wall-E” and other Pixar classics, but it’s still a fun way to pass an evening.
“Elemental” (Disney+) – this Pixar film is supposed to be a rom-com but ends up being a preachy and lackluster story about first and second generation immigrants. “Turning Red” dealt with the immigrant story much better than “Elemental” – it was funnier, more interesting, and more relatable. The world-building in “Elemental” is patchy as is the animation (it moves from weirdly hyper realistic backgrounds to almost 2D characters), and I didn’t feel that there was chemistry between the two main characters. The world has some charming moments, but doesn’t hold a candle to that of “Inside Out”, “Monsters Inc” or “Wall-E”, and the humour isn’t really there. It ends up being a mediocre movie, and there are too many good things to watch to justify spending any time with this film.
“Scrubs” (Disney+) – the team is back after years for a new season, and it’s an absolute delight. I like the new interns, and I love how they accounted for the growth and age of the original cast – and yet how at their core they remain the same. The series manages to deal with the many shortcomings of the American health system without becoming preachy, and it still keeps a balance between humour and heart.
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” (Paramount Plus) – before this series aired I thought that only Star Wars had “anti-diversity bro” reviewers, but boy was I wrong. The pilot is important story-wise but is far from perfect, but the rest of the series has the Star Trek heart and vibe that are missing from “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard”. The mean reviewers seem to forget that Star Trek was always both “woke” and campy, and this series is both (it features a pacifist gay Klingon, which apparently is a bridge too far for the dudes). While I don’t like Captain Ake (I find her mannerisms more annoying than charming) the rest of the cast is wonderful and the cadets grow and evolve significantly throughout the series. This series features the best Klingon episode to date, as well as lovely homage to my favourite Star Trek series, “Deep Space Nine”. I recommend this series, despite the pilot and Captain Ake and her weird mannerisms, as it has a lot of heart, a lot of humour and a lot of good stories and good characters.

Apart from that I managed to get four short runs in this week (my runs are now laps around the bomb shelter) and I went to my favourite cafe and sketched my favourite barista at work:

Watercolours and fineliner on Pith sketchbook

Here’s the sketch before I added watercolours:

Faber Castell 0.3 fineliner on Pith sketchbook

And I’m back to building Lego, as it really helps reduce stress (at least for me). My brother bought me this set for my birthday last year and I haven’t had the chance to build it yet. It took me about two hours:

There’s a nice hidden Star Wars scene at the top of the “T”. Can you guess what it is?

Hoping that the downed airman is safely recovered and this war ends.

Journaling Under Stress

We have this vision, this ideal of journaling. It’s a ritual, perhaps done while sitting in a comfortable chair in a room with a lot of books and just the right ambience, our leather-bound journal resting on a antique desk, our expensive fountain pen poised to write our thoughts in the perfect handwriting.

There’s nothing wrong with that vision, with wanting that experience. There is joy in writing using a great pen on beautiful paper.

But this isn’t what this post is about. It’s about journaling in a poorly lit bomb shelter with little privacy and the journal balanced precariously on your knees. It’s about the soldiers who journal in the battlefield, writing in the margins of their Bible. It’s about the patient journaling in their hospital bed, using an exercise book and the cheapest pen they could find (because the good stuff gets stolen). It’s about the achingly tired parent scribbling a few words when their child finally drifts to sleep.

Journaling provides an immense and lasting source of comfort to those who regularly practice it. You gain insight, clarity and perspective when you journal. It is most needed when life deals the worst blows, the toughest challenges, yet at precisely those moments the mind balks at the very idea of picking up a pen and writing things down.

Writing doesn’t come naturally to us. It requires effort, it always comes with friction. The very act of writing means that you have, at least momentarily, not merely surviving, but reflecting, planning, detaching yourself from the current turmoil of your life. Writing will never be natural, mindless, effortless – that’s why people pick up their phone and doom-scroll to numb their pain, instead of journal their way through it. Writing means walking into the pain, describing it, facing it, dealing with it. It means that you have to think about what it is you are going through instead of avoiding it.

There is no “life-hack,” no shortcut, no magic pill that will make journaling easy. Anyone who promises you quick and easy ways to journal when you really need to, when life deals your a bad hand, is wasting your time. You will need to force yourself to sit down and write. Techniques like setting a timer, using reminders, chaining habits (journaling right after you perform a habit that is already ingrained, like brushing your teeth) can help, but you will still have to overcome the resistance to writing that you’ll have every single time you sit down and journal. It’s the same kind of resistance that you encounter when you exercise – your mind will find every excuse there is, every alternative activity there is, just to avoid doing what’s good for it. That’s just how it is.

If you’re wondering where to start, how to put into words the overwhelming experience you’re in, I can make a few suggestions:

Ground yourself. Start by writing the date, what day it is, what time. How much time has passed since whatever is started. Your location. Your physical situation. Stick to dry facts. This should be relatively easy to write down, it will get you started and it will give you a bit of your sense of self back.
Lists are your friends. They’re easy, they allow you to track things without worrying too much about the connections between items or sentences. If just pouring everything on your mind onto the page seems daunting, lists can help. List actions you did or plan to do. List people you saw that day. List what you ate. It doesn’t matter – anything you write is worth writing down.
Don’t judge, don’t edit. Nobody cares. Nobody is marking this. Make grammar and spelling mistakes, typos, be mean and vulgar, curse, write sentences that go nowhere. Everything that’s on the page is out of your mind, and everything that’s out of your mind gives you more breathing room. The point of writing is writing, not producing masterpieces for future generations.
If you can, try to find something funny or interesting or kind that’s happening around you and write it down. A young man trying to impress a group of young women in a bomb shelter by performing card tricks. The two X-Ray technicians that try to make everyone around them laugh by clowning around as they rush from bed to bed in the hospital with their portable X-Ray machine. The young woman who paid for part of the groceries the old lady in front of her in the line couldn’t afford.
Try to find a few things that you are grateful for even now. The point isn’t to be a Pollyanna, it’s to convince yourself that it is worth trudging on, putting one foot in front of the other. It’s the difference between letting yourself give up on your life, and finding enough strength and light to keep going on. The darker your life is, more important this is.

I don’t normally publish excerpts from my journals, as they are private, but in this case I thought it might be useful to see a few snippets of what journaling under stress looks like.

Journal excerpt from my first hospitalisation in an Internal Medicine ward. Written in bullet-point (i.e. list) format on a Moleskine using a gel ink pen.

Journal excerpt from a few days later. I was suffering from cancer related stress disorder at the time but it would be months before I realised it and got treatment. Journaling allows present me to see things that past me couldn’t see at the time.

Messy handwriting because I wrote this balancing my journal on my lap, cramped in a chair in the corner of a bomb shelter packed with people.

If you happen to be in an extremely stressful situation, I hope this post helps you find a way to journal through the experience. I promise that it’s worth the effort.

Happy Passover

Quick Cafe Sketches

Quick cafe sketches done between the rocket alerts.

Schmincke Random Grey 2026 Watercolour

Once a year Schmincke, the German art supply company (makers of the best watercolours in the world) produce a limited edition colour out of the leftover pigments they have. The pigments come from their pastel production- which uses almost 100% pigment.

In 2024 the made an acrylic Random Grey. In 2023 the Random Grey was a pastel.

This year’s Random Grey is a watercolour. It’s a warm grey, granulating, and semi opaque. While I normally prefer cool or neutral grey’s, this colour looked interesting enough for me to give it a try.

The paint comes in a 15ml tube and though it’s a series 1 pigment it cost double the price of Schmincke’s usual series 1 watercolours (note: professional watercolours are usually priced differently by the kind of pigment they use. Blues tend to be more expensive than earth tones, for example. Schmincke’s series 1 are the cheapest and series 4 the most expensive). I’m not surprised as it’s a limited edition, but if you’re just looking for a warm grey Random Grey isn’t the most cost effective option.

I filled three half pans with Random Grey (one for me and two to gift) and there was plenty more to go around, so if you’re interested in this watercolour but are price conscious you can try finding other artists in your area that would be willing to split the tube. Schmincke’s watercolours are superb and it’s very easy to fill a pan or half pan with paint, let it set for a day or two and then use it.

The shade really surprised me. Yes, it’s a warm grey, but it’s not too far away from a neutral grey to become unusable for all but certain lighting conditions. It does not have that yellowish brown tinge that makes warm grey’s so… atmospheric. I enjoyed using this pigment, its granulation and layering possibilities enough to add it (at least temporarily) to my watercolour palette.

Is this a bit of a gimmick? Yes. Is it also a fun and interesting grey to have around? Also yes. I look forward to mixing and combining it with some pinks and reds and seeing what comes out.

Note: I sketched this on Pith paper, which is not watercolour paper. On watercolour paper Random Grey’s granulating properties will be even more pronounced.

Book Review: Queen Demon by Martha Wells

Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and starts where Witch King ends. Like the previous novel, this epic fantasy has a double narrative structure: in the present Kai and his companions follow up on Dahin’s theory of the Hierarch’s Well and the origin of the Hierarchs themselves. In the past, Kai becomes the Witch King, a leader in Bashasa’s rebellion, and faces some very difficult personal choices.

The pace is slower and more ponderous than in Witch King, because Wells spends more time developing her characters. We learn more about Dahin, Kai’s relationship with Bashasa, Bashasa’s role as a leader, witches, demons, hierarchs and expositors. We see less of Sanja, and I still feel like I want to know Zeide and Tahren more, but all in all Wells spends less time world-building and more time with the characters in that world. The scope of the tale may be heroic and epic, but we get a lot of small moments and individual choices.

Witch King was excellent. Queen Demon is very, very good. It’s not as punchy as its predecessor, but it’s still very well written, interesting and remarkable in the depth and complexity of character it manages to develop in such a relatively short time.

It does feel like a book that requires a sequel, unlike Witch King, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Wells has written a fantasy that is good enough to justify time away from her fabulous Murderbot books – and believe me, that’s high praise indeed.

Book Review: Walk with Weight by Michael Easter

I think that Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis is one the best self-help books around. I know that’s not saying much, as most self-help books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but The Comfort Crisis got me to change several things about my life that made it measurably better.

So when I saw that he’s published another book, this time about rucking (walking with weight, or yomping) I immediately bought and read it. I am interested in rucking as a form of cross-training for my running, and I think Easter is a capable writer, good at making scientific papers and ideas accessible to a general audience. My expectation was that this book would be a useful guide to getting more into the habit of rucking, and in a way I got what I wanted. The issue was that I also got a lot of what I didn’t.

I’ll explain.

If you know nothing at all about walking with weight, then this is a good book to get and read. However, if you have some familiarity with rucking, I think you will find this book a disappointment.

The issue is twofold:

Unlike in The Comfort Crisis there’s a lot of repetition and padding and fluffing to get the word count up. This is basically two or three blog posts inflated into a book.
Easter spends a lot of time selling merchandise from his partner company, WalkFully. The hilarious thing is that if you go to the WalkFully website you will find that the vests and backpacks he so enthusiastically touts are nowhere to be found. He currently sells a fanny pack (a form of carrying weight not mentioned anywhere in the book) and some minor weights.

So is this book a complete waste of time? No. There are still two or three blog posts worth of good content in it. There’s just also 100 extra pages of needless fluff – fluff that should have been replaced with an actual rucking experience Easter went through. As someone who regularly goes on long hikes in the wilderness, Easter just should have discussed his experiences if he needed to get to a certain page count. It would have been much more interesting.

If you’re completely new to rucking – this is likely worth the time and effort (it’s not a long book).

If you’ve started rucking or read about it a bit – you’d probably still get some use out of Walk with Weight. Just be prepared to skim most of the first part of it.

If you’re an experienced rucker, skip this book. There’s nothing new that Easter can teach you here.

Either way, carry on…

March 2026 Currently Inked Pens

I haven’t had the time or headspace to post this until now, but here’s March spring themed currently inked fountain pens.

Lamy Vista medium nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink. I wanted a pink ink in rotation and this is a new pen that I wanted to use. Kosumosu is a lighter pink so it benefits from wider nibs.

Franklin Christoph 45 Sage fine nib with a J. Herbin Vert Pré cartridge. Spring means grass green ink and Vert Pré fits the bill perfectly and works well with this pen. It was a little light at start but darkened with time.

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette fine nib with Sailor Studio 224. I haven’t used this pen in a while and I like grey inks, which is why I almost always have one in rotation. Sailor 224 is one of my favourites.

Leonardo Officina Italiana Mother of Pearl fine flex nib with Graf von Faber-Castell Deep Sea Green. I love this pen and this nib and I haven’t used this grey green ink in a while.

Lamy 2000 medium nib with Sailor Black. Workhorse pen with workhorse ink.

Writing at Large

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