It’s Day 4 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar. What’s behind today’s door?

It’s Diamine Spruce – a saturated dark green that’s (unfortunately) scented.

The ink is a dark viridian green with a red sheen and relatively little shading, as it is so saturated. It also showed a troubling tendency to stain pens, perhaps because it is so saturated or perhaps because of the pigments involved. It’s not a super sheening ink, which means that drying times are long but acceptable, but it will feather on even normally fountain pen friendly paper.

Diamine Spruce is a very Christmas appropriate ink, and I’d have no issue with it if it wasn’t scented. Diamine doesn’t normally make scented inks and I don’t like scented inks, which means that this is not only the first scented Diamine ink that I own, it’s the first scented ink that I own. Did Diamine even make scented inks before this Inkvent calendar? I don’t like scented inks enough to even check.

I filled a Lamy Safari with a medium nib with Diamine Spruce, and the air freshener smell it gives off is so unpleasant that I’ll probably dump the ink in the converter right after writing this review. It’s not an overpowering scent, but it is present, and I don’t like it. It reminds me of hospital toilets and car air-fresheners, and not in a good way. Definitely not an ink that I would ever buy or use.