Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

It’s day 17, and the calendar is full of stars and there’s a nib snowflake on it. This bodes well, right? It’s going to be a phenomenal new ink today, I can feel it.

Annd it’s another burgundy red. Day 17’s ink is Diamine Poinsettia and it’s so similar to Diamine Noel that I would have trouble telling the two apart if I saw swabs of them both side by side.

Diamine Poinsettia is a standard ink that shades really well. It will benefit from a broad or italic nib, and Tomoe River paper will of course bring out its best properties.

Despite not being labeled a sheen ink, there is some green-gold sheen present, as you can see at the top of the uppermost petal.

Now compare that to this:

This is Diamine Noel, another burgundy red that’s labeled as a “sheen” ink. While there’s a little more sheen present here, there isn’t an extraordinary amount, and it’s offset by having a slightly darker shade and so less colour variation than Diamine Poinsettia.

I really don’t understand why both of these inks are in the calendar. Diamine could have easily kept just Diamine Poinsettia and given us a festive orange or purple instead.