London Haul: Fountain Pens and Inks

I was about to write a post about my currently inked pens, when I realized that I hadn’t finished writing up and publishing this post. Such is the state of my blogging backlog that things have been languishing in it since May.

My April London-Paris trip was the first one I made where I had nowhere to buy vintage fountain pens from. Henry the Pen Man (Henry Simpole) had passed away, and Mora Stylos in Paris had closed his shop in the end of December 2022. Would I even buy any fountain pens?

The answer is of course, yes. None of these pens are rare or expensive, but they are fountain pens nonetheless.

The haul: Lamy Joy, Kaweco Sport, Platinum Preppy pens and Platinum ink cartridges, on top of much needed blotting paper.

I had one thing that was a “must buy” for this trip, and I almost didn’t find it: blotting paper. I’m using a Stalogy notebook as my journal these days, and with some juicy ink and nib combinations a piece of blotting paper is necessary. Alas, I was unable to find any in London: not in Choosing Keeping or in Present and Correct or in any bookstore, stationery store or antique/vintage/flea market that I looked in.

Here Paris came to my rescue, with its fabulous Latin Quarter stationery and art supply shops. I found blotting paper, and then got carried away and added a few cheap fountain pens and ink cartridges to my bag.

I already have a Lamy Joy, and they make for great sketching pens, but I wanted one in black and red and to try and sketch with the included 1.5 nib instead of automatically switching it out for a fine or extra fine. There’s a charm to sketches made with bold, thick lines, after all.

The Kaweco Sport in Blueberry was just an impulse buy, because I liked the colour and I have cartridges languishing around that I want to start using. The Platinum Preppies though, there’s a bit of a story there.
I bought a few Platinum Preppies in my very early days with fountain pens, and I purchased o-rings and silicon grease with them, intending to convert them to eye-dropper pens. They all cracked. Immediately. After the first use. One of them was even cracked before I used it.

I’m very gentle with my fountain pens, so I was very disappointed with the plastic quality on these, especially after I learned on the Fountain Pen Network that this was a common occurrence. Well, as I couldn’t care less for the ink cartridges supplied with this pens, I didn’t use them. For me the Platinum Preppy was trash.

Time passed and the Preppy kept getting recommended as a great beginner fountain pen, to my bafflement. It cracks, so why recommend it? Then again, I stopped seeing reports of cracked Preppies. Could Platinum have changed the plastic? Were they all using boring old Platinum blue cartridges and ignoring the cracks?

So when I saw a bunch of Preppies in a Paris art supply store (the wonderful Rougier & Plé) I decided to take a closer look. Wow! They come with purple ink now! And there’s a black ink one too… I decided to give them a try and add a few ink cartridges to my purchase too. The Platinum cartridges are proprietary ones, but I do have a Plaisir, so if all my Preppies crack, I can always use them with the metal-bodied Platinum Plaisir.

I also purchased two Sailor Studio inks at “Choosing Keeping” in London. The Sailor Studio 340 is a calm greyish powder blue and the 743 is an electric purply blue, and I love them both. These are expensive inks, and so they’re a rare treat for me, one that I indulge in rarely.

Brown Paper Bag Sketch

This is a 5 minute sketch of Belle, the Australian sheepdog. It was done with a Sailor Fude 40 degree fountain pen and Graf Von Faber-Castell carbon black ink on a paper bag that held my sandwich.

Quick Update and Currently Inked

I returned on Saturday afternoon from a 17(!) day trip to London, York and Paris, and I’m still in the process of adjusting back to my routine. It was a perfect trip and a perfect break from the hard reality that I normally live in, and so it’s been tough getting back. I missed my cats, and I missed my running routine, but I didn’t miss the slew of doctor appointments and medical related bureaucracy surrounding my cancer and my mom’s cancer, and I didn’t miss the political situation here at all.

So I’m trying to find comfort in journalling, in talking to friends, in enjoying the things that I got from abroad (of course I bought pens, paper, pencils, ink, cool vintage stationery, art supplies, etc). And I’m returning to blogging regularly. I have quite a few reviews in the works, and one more post in the “Ghosts of Planner’s Past” series, plus as I’m getting back to my reading routine more books will be featured here.

For now I’ve filled up four new fountain pens (none of which I’ve bought on this latest trip). The ASC Triangolo is a pen that I don’t remember buying at all, which is extremely unusual, and likely means that I bought it at Mora Stylos in 2022, on my first trip after finishing Chemo. Chemo brain is a real thing and I have chunks of that time (during treatment and a few months after it) that are completely missing in a very scary sort of way. The pen itself is an Omas 360 look alike, made with gorgeous arco verde material and has a “magic flex” nib. It’s the largest and one of the heaviest pens that I own, and the nib has issues (both problems starting and issues where it puts down too much ink). I filled it with Faber Castell Deep Sea Green, which from my experience is a drier ink, but that didn’t seem to affect it much. I doubt that I’d get much help from the Pen Family (their QC and service isn’t known to be the best though I will give them a try), so it’s a matter of seeing if I can fix it myself, and seeing what I can do to get it tuned locally, considering that the main guy working on pens here has recently retired. The ASC Triangolo is the big green striped triangular pen right beneath the writing.

The Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom is a pen that I bought on a whim in Choosing Keeping in London last year. I haven’t inked it since I bought it, but now I did, using the bottle of Sailor Manyo Sakura ink that came with it. This pen, unlike the Triangolo, perfectly fits my tiny hands (it’s the pink pen with the blue finials).

The two Lamy AL Stars (one on each side of the page) are a recent purchase from Pen Chalet. I wanted to try out a Lamy B nib, and I really liked the AL Star Petrol 2023 special edition, and the Tourmaline (2020?) one. They’re filled with Sailor Ink Studio inks that I purchased in Choosing Keeping during my last trip there.

The Leonardo Momento Zero Blue Hawaii and the FC Sparkling Rock travelled with me to London and back. They were a joy to use, and I’m glad that I took them along as they caused no issues – no leaks, etc – and were fun to use when I journaled during my trip.

Here’s a bit of a closer look at the writing sample. The Triangolo’s is unfortunately a mess. The Ink Studio 340 and 224 are my favourite inks of the bunch, though the Ama Iro and 743 are also great. The Sailor Manyo Sakura is too light of my tastes, especially in such a fine nib (the Sailor MF is like a Lamy EF).

Break out a nice pen or pencil to use. It’s the little things that can help make your day.

Currently Inked: Things Are Getting Out of Hand

I just finished logging my currently inked pens on the wonderful fountain pen companion and I was a bit shocked to discover that I have 30 fountain pens inked up (each one with a different ink). This is of course the result of the Inkvent madness and my insistence on actually filling pens with the samples in the calendar instead of just using a dip pen.

I’ve written Solar Storm (day 4) dry and I’ve dumped Spruce (day 3) because of the smell, but I’ve kept Pick Me Up (day 15) despite the smell, because of the rich chocolate shade that it has. Since creating this list I’ve also written Jingle Berry (day 8) dry and Spiced Apple (day 5) is about to join it. I’m likely going to be forced to dump and clean out some of these pens, but my goal is to try and write and sketch as many of them as possible dry.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Sketched with a Pelikan Pelikano M nib, Diamine Memory Lane ink on a jHahnemuhle Cappuccino sketchbook.

Diamine Inkvent 2022 Day 25: Best Wishes and Closing Thoughts

It’s the final day of Inkvent, and so it’s time to both review the final, 30ml bottle of the set, and review the calendar in its entirety.

Day 25’s ink is a larger, 30ml bottle. It’s called Best Wishes, and it’s a very dark and saturated green with green shimmer and a lot of red sheen.

It’s quite a dramatic combination, the dark green base being almost black, the red sheen being very prominent and the green shimmer on top. More Halloween appropriate perhaps than Christmassy.

My camera had a rough time photographing this ink. It’s the combination of the shimmer and the dark ink maybe that made it a bit blurry. In any case, the base ink is so dark that you can hardly tell that it’s a green at times.

Here it is from another angle:

This ink takes ages to dry, because it’s so saturated. I smudged the sketch above and this writing sample took a good long time to properly dry. If you’re left handed, I’d steer well away from Diamine Best Wishes. If you like the drama, then maybe it’s the ink for you. Personally I would have preferred a lighter or more interesting green with a chameleon effect and no sheen.

Writing sample on 68gsm Tomoe River paper

It’s summary time! Looking at this year’s Inkvent, I’m very pleased with the selection of inks, the spread of ink properties amongst them, and the overall value of this experience. I like that we got new chameleon inks, and I appreciated that there were less red inks in this year’s edition, and quite a good number of uniquely coloured inks. Reviewing the whole 25 inks involved, I think that Dusted Truffle, Memory Lane, Solar Storm, Ghost, Olive Swirl, Arctic Blast, Deck the Halls, and One More Sleep are the stand outs for me. Olive Swirl, Memory Lane, Dusted Truffle and Deck the Halls are inks that I plan on buying full bottles of once the green edition bottles come out. Ghost and Arctic Blast might join them too. If you like red inks, the Spiced Apple is fantastic. There are other great inks to have here, depending on your personal taste.

It was quite an endeavour, to fill fountain pens 25 times with ink and write, sketch and post a review of an ink a day. I don’t know if Diamine will create a 2023 Inkvent calendar, or if I will be able to write another set of reviews like this, but it was a wild and fun ride creating these reviews for the blog this year.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. I hope you got some cool pens and ink under the tree.

Diamine Inkvent 2022 Day 24: One More Sleep

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! It’s day 24 of Diamine Inkvent.

Day 24’s ink is Diamine One More Sleep, a standard grey blue ink.

Diamine One More Sleep is a lovely grey blue with a lot a shading and a hint of lavender in the background.

I love this shade of ink as it works well for sketching and for writing. It’s also a calm and relaxing colour, very appropriately named.

Today’s writing sample is a little melancholy, as I reflect on the wave of well established pen shops that are closing down by the end of the year. This ink colour seems to encourage reflection, something I find myself doing more often since I received my cancer diagnosis a year and a half ago. If you don’t have an ink in this bluish grey light purple shade I recommend getting one, whether it’s Diamine One More Sleep or something similar by a Japanese or Korean maker.

Diamine Inkvent 2022 Day 23: Celebration

It’s day 23 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar.

Day 23’s ink is Diamine Celebration, a coral ink with shimmer.

Celebration is between pink and orange, a bright and vibrant ink with plenty of orange shimmer. It look like Diamine Coral with added pizzazz.

This ink would definitely cheer you up on a dark and gloomy day, as it practically glows in the page. Is it practical? No. Is it fun and interesting? Yes, particularly if you haven’t got an ink like Diamine Coral.

Would I use a bottle of this? No. I have a bottle of Diamine Coral already, and I don’t need another one but with shimmers in it. But this ink certainly belongs in this calendar, and I’m glad that Diamine chose this hue instead of another red.

Diamine Inkvent 2022 Day 22: Deck the Halls

It’s day 22 of Diamine’s Inkvent (check out that snowflake!):

Day 22’s ink is Diamine Deck the Halls, a dark purple chameleon ink, and an interesting one at that.

Deck the Hall is dark and saturated, with just a hint of shading and a fascinating chameleon effect. I was expecting something with a silver, green or blue shimmer, but Deck the Hall shimmers from coppery orange to pink.

I don’t really like this dark eggplant colour, bu the chameleon shimmer effect here works very well, because of its strong contrast with the base colour. The effect reminded me of a hummingbird’s wings flashing.

I don’t really like the base colour so I don’t see myself buying a full size bottle of Diamine Deck the Halls. That being said, this ink is very Inkvent appropriate and an interesting ink with a lot of character.

Bonus: the signature I mentioned in my writing sample:

Diamine Inkvent 2022 Day 21: Cosy Up

It’s day 21 in the Diamine Inkvent calendar.

Day 21’s ink is Diamine Cosy Up, a standard bubblegum pink.

Cosy Up is a bright and cheerful colour with a lot of shading. If you like Diamine Coral you’ll likely like Cosy Up too.

I’m not a big fan of pink inks, but this one made me smile. It’s a very Barbie appropriate colour, one that Elle Woods would have loved.

There are a lot of ink options in this shade of pink in the market, so there’s no reason to prefer this one when it comes out, unless you are a fan of the bottle. That being said, it was nice getting a little sample of this in this year’s Inkvent.

Writing at Large

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