Weekly Update: Mars Yard 3.0

My Tom Sachs Nikecraft Mars Yard 3.0 sneakers arrived! I worked so hard to earn these and they were so expensive that for a moment I wondered if I’d ever wear them. But then I saw the bottom of the box:

The box is so well designed:

There are even hidden ten bullets:

There are two sets of sockliners that come with these shoes, one made of cork and one made of mesh:

And here are the shoes themselves:

Yes, I am wearing them, and yes, they are very comfortable. They aren’t in any way loud or attention grabbing, but that’s part of why I like them so much.

I’m nearing the end of reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie. It’s a powerful narrative, but I think that “With the Old Breed” packed more punch. I also went to the Pelikan Hubs 2025 and you can read all about that here. I’ve now only got Pelikans inked up (and one Platinum Preppy), which is an interesting experience.

I sketched a new barista at my favourite cafe. The customers kept cutting off the view so I gave up on sketching the rest of the counter at some point. I was using my arttoolkit palette, which is ultra portable and contains a different set of paints than what I’m used to using. The notebook is a Stillman and Birn pocket Beta:

I went to develop film last week, and also went to an artist’s open house and splurged on a new painting. Have good art on your walls. It makes a difference.

Have a great week!

Pelikan Hubs 2025 and On Being A Female Pen Collector

Yesterday was the 2025 Pelikan Hubs event. Pelikan is so wonderful to organize these events, so generous and thoughtful with their gifts, and I love the company and their pens so much that I’m really heartbroken that this isn’t just a glowingly happy post.

This isn’t Pelikan’s fault. Their organization was as usual, impeccable. Their gift was tremendous – a beautiful box, with the Edelstein’s ink of the year Apricot Achat, a postcard and a notepad. Everything was so well designed it was breathtaking to open the box and see it all laid out perfectly.

Here’s the open box and the postcard:

Here’s the notepad. You can see the design on the cover better in the next photo, but the paper is smooth, thick and perfectly fountain pen friendly.

I love the design of the cover of the box, the postcard and the cover of the notepad. It’s playful but elegant, and it works well together and ties in well with the typography and the design of the Edelstein box. That’s a 10/10 for design and quality.

Everything that was in the box: postcard, Edelstein Apricot Achat ink, and notepad

The that we received is the Edelstein Apricot Achat, which is the ink of the year 2025. The bottle is gorgeous, and the ink is non-shimmer this year, so it should be easy to clean out of pens.

The ink itself is indeed an apricot ink, with a hint of shading. It’s bright but light – a tad too light for me if I’m honest. I think that this exact ink just slightly more saturated would have been the perfect orange for people who like their orange right in the middle of the orange spectrum – not too yellow or too red.

I filled a Pelikan M215 Rechteck (rectangle) with this ink, but I chose poorly, forgetting that it has an EF nib. Pelikan EF are on the wide side, but this ink would fare better in a medium or even a broad nib. I will still enjoy it as it works well with the other inks I currently have in rotation, but if you are looking to use this ink I’d suggest wide and generous nibs for it.

I tried it on the Postcard. The paper isn’t coated but is still rather sleek:

The postcard with an ink swab and writing sample

So thank you very much Pelikan for organizing this worldwide event and for your wonderful gift! I am actually considering buying the matching M200 because I like the look of the ink.

Now for the sad and ugly part:

Pen collection has a misogyny problem. I have experienced it during the previous Pelikan Hubs, I have experienced it when I tried to buy pens in brick and mortar shops, in flea markets, from pen makers. I experienced it during this year’s Pelikan Hubs and I’m tired of it, and kind of tired of all the talk about how wonderful and welcoming the pen community is. It’s wonderful and welcoming if you’re a guy, and time and again I have seen it close ranks and snarl if you’re a gal.

Just during yesterday’s event, where I stayed on for less than an hour (and even that was just to be at the edge of the group photo), I was told several times that:

Women don’t collect pens.
Only men collect pens.
I am not a real pen collector.
I can’t possibly be a pen collector.
I can’t possibly have enrolled to the Pelikan hub.
I am there as someone’s plus one.
Women don’t understand pen collecting.
I am a rare bird, the exception to the rule.

They had facts to back it up, they said. Their closed pen collectors group only had three women in it. That proved the point. I eye-rolled so hard. I had met and talked to one of the other female collectors at last year’s event and I fully understand why she didn’t brave this treatment to collect her gift this year. It’s because nobody wants to go out of their way to spend their precious free time with a bunch of *holes.

There are women collectors, they have every right to enjoy this hobby, and if you’re a guy and you don’t see women in your group, it’s not because they don’t collect pens. It’s because you’ve created a group that women don’t want to join.

Do better.

End of rant – and to end on a more positive note, I did manage to do a few 2-3 minute sketches while I was waiting for the group photo:

Sketched with Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl F nib and Montblanc Maya Blue on a Pith Kabosu Sketchbook

Sketched with Pelikan M605 Stresemann M nib and Sailor Ink Studio 123 on a Pith Kabosu Sketchbook

Thank you again Pelikan for the wonderful event. I intend to return next year even if the menfolk find my presence abhorrent. There were a few nice fellows that were willing to talk to me, and I will not let the trolls dissuade me from participating in a hobby that I have been enjoying for close to 20 years.

Currently Inked Fountain Pens – Pelikan Hubs Edition

Tomorrow is the Pelikan Hubs 2025 event, and to prepare I have inked up a whole flock of Pelikan fountain pens.

Here’s my current lineup of fountain pens and ink:

The top four have been inked way back in the beginning of August, but because of my travel schedule I’ve yet to write all of them dry. You can read about the Radius 1934 and the Pelikan M205 here as well.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe – F nib – Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple – great pen and ink combination. I wrote this pen dry just after writing the sample above.

Parker 51 Plum – F nib – Sailor Jentle Peche – all vintage Parker 51 fountain pens are fabulous and this one is no different. The plum colour is very rare, but I decided to “use the good China”. The ink is a long discontinued Sailor Jentle Peche, a beautiful pink with great shading and outlining. Sailor used to make fantastic inks at great prices – in terrible bottles. It was a struggle to fill this pen, even with their internal ink reservoir dingus.

Pelikan M205 Petrol Marbled – EF nib – Pilot Iroshizuku Sui-gyoku – I was hoping that Sui-gyoku would be the green ink that I was looking for, but it’s more of a teal than a green. The Pelikan M2xx series is a solid workhorse kind of pen, and I highly recommend it.

Radius 1934 Settimo Cielo – F nib – Diamine 150th Anniversary Regency Blue – the ink has grown darker with time, to the point where it’s almost black. This isn’t surprising as it was a very saturated dark blue ink to begin with, and it’s had some time in the pen. I will likely write this pen dry today or tomorrow. The new Radius pens by Leonardo feel very much like Leonardo Momento Zeroes but with a slightly different design. That’s not a bad thing – they are gorgeous pens, and for now they’re slightly cheaper than the Momento Zeroes.

Last week I inked up a new Platinum Preppy 03 nib with De Atramentis Document Ink Black as part of a post that I am working on. It’s the first time I’ve used a Preppy with a converter and not the Platinum cartridge it comes with – and it works well.

I inked these pens today for the Pelikan Hubs event tomorrow:

Pelikan M605 Stresemann – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 123 – a classic and elegant pen and ink combination. The Sailor 123 is really that good, and the generous medium nib shows off its dual shading properties.

Pelikan M320 Pearl – M nib – Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown – my rarest Pelikan, always a crowd pleaser at the hubs. This tiny pen came with a tiny brilliant brown bottle and so far I’ve filled it only with that. I bought it about a decade ago in Berlin on a whim, and I’m so glad that I did.

Pelikan M800 Blue O Blue – F nib – KWZ Exclusive for epiora.pl Błękit Warty Poznania – this pen was a very expensive birthday gift and my first M800 Pelikan. I bought it at a local pen store that no longer exists. The ink is even more special – it’s my first KWZ ink, gifted to me from the store that it was exclusively made for. I had purchase my M600 Glauco Cambon there just before they were closing for the day on the last day of the USK Symposium in Poznan. The name means Poznan Warta Blue – and it’s tied to the unique blue of the city and the Warta river. It’s a gorgeous blue and it reminds of Poznan, the store, the lovely seller and the nice symposium volunteers that saw me in the store and helped me out with my purchase.

Pelikan M400 White Tortoise – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 767 – This is the green I was looking for! I purchased this ink last month at Choosing Keeping in London, and it’s the perfect bright and cheerful green that I was looking for, with some great shading to boot. The Pelikan Tortoise pens are gorgeous, and this one is a particularly nice one.

Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl – F nib – Montblanc Maya Blue – I have been priced out of Montblanc inks (there’s only so much I’m willing to pay for ink) but this ink was heavily discounted at the Montblanc boutique in Heathrow. It’s a lovely bright turquoise with great shading, and it works well coupled with this pen.

Pelikan M600 Art Collection Glauco Cambon – F nib – Pilot Iroshizuku Ajisai – this is the pen that I purchased at Epiora in Poznan, and while I saw it online and loved the concept, I never thought that I’d buy it because of the price. Seeing it in person changed my mind because no photos can do this pen justice – the pattern on it glows! It’s beyond vibrant, and the pen body itself feels different than other Pelikans – heavier and cooler to the touch. The ink is also a Choosing Keeping purchase, and I love the colour very much.

Pelikan M620 Place De La Concorde – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 162 – this is one of my rarer Pelikans, one that I bought a year or two after the series had been complete and no longer for sale. If ever there was a series of pens that I wish that I owned it was the Pelikan M620 City series, and for years I searched for an Athens pen before giving up – it was just too expensive.

The Pelikans left to right – Place de la Concorde, Glauco Cambon, Ocean Swirl, White Tortoise, Blue O Blue, Pearl

Apart from my inked Pelikans, I’m also taking three uninked Pelikans with me – one to fill with the ink that we’ll be getting, and the others just to share.

Pelikan Flock – left to right – Stresemann, M215 Rectangle (uninked), vintage M400 Tortoise (uninked), Stormtrooper (uninked)

Left to right: Parker 61 Plum, M205 Petrol Marbled, Radius 1934 Settimo Cielo, Platinum Preppy

Are you going to a Pelikan Hub? If so, what pens did you bring with you?

Paris London 2025 Trip Part 1

I recently returned from a pretty long trip to Paris and London with my family. I ended up sketching a lot more than I normally do during trips, largely thanks to things that I learned during the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan (more on that in a later post). Here is part 1 of some highlights from my trip.

Quick sketch in a Stillman & Birn pocket beta while I was waiting for my flight

Centre Pompidou, my favourite museum in the world, was closing down until 2030 (!) so I went to pay it a last visit. Already parts of the colourful outside facade have been repainted white, and I’ve never seen the area around the museum so deserted.

The library was the only area still accessible, and it had been turned into a giant project playground for German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans to work with. It was something that only Pompidou could do, and it was breathtaking, thought provoking, fun, interesting, and unique. I wish I could have spent hours there, but at this point in my trip I became badly ill and for the entire Paris leg of the trip I was struggling.

I ended up largely not eating in Paris, but this was my first meal there – in the fantastic Patisserie Viennoise in the Latin Quarter.

Stillman and Birn pocket alpha watercolour sketch

We also went to a new museum, the Bourse de Commerce and I saw this great artwork on the way there:

The museum was in between putting up exhibitions, so while a large part of it was closed we managed to view some great and moving art pieces with relatively few crowds and at a discounted price. I did a VERY quick sketch while I was there:

This is the artwork that I was sketching.

And this little fellow is also part of the art exhibits there:

We then took the Eurostar to London. This is where I switched sketchbooks – this sketch of a boy and his father having lunch at a table across from me at Wagamama is the last sketch I created in my Stillman and Birn pocket beta. The beta has decent watercolour paper but it’s not half as good as the paper in my Etchr labs watercolour sketchbook, and the glued in pages make it a struggle to create full page spread sketches, as you can see here:

Last trip sketch in the Stillman and Birn pocket beta.

I created my first sketch in an Etchr lab cold pressed watercolour notebook while in the Greenwich Park herb garden and the paper is astonishingly good. Here’s the ink sketch (my tree sketches have gotten so much better thanks to a workshop I took in Poznan):

And here is the watercolour:

The paper not only makes the colours pop, it actually allowed me ample time and space to work with the washes, adding layers of well blended colours that gave depth and life to the scene. Never have I ever seen the importance of good quality watercolour paper demonstrated so well. I have about half a dozen sketches of this garden throughout the years and this is by far the best one.

That’s it for part 1, I’ll try and upload part 2 later this week.

Edit: part 2 can be found here.

Radius Settimo Cielo Blu, Diamine 150 Regency Blue, Diamine Forever Raven, Pilot Iroshizuku Sui gyoku

I just received a package from Fontoplumo and I immediately added the pen and inks it contained into rotation. While I already have a good amount of pens inked up, I really wanted to give the Radius 1934 Settimo Cielo Blu a try as soon as I got it. Not only is it a gorgeous looking pen, but I was also curious to see how it compares both the the vintage Radius fountain pen that I own and to my Leonardo fountain pens, as they are also the makers of the Radius.

Apart from the Radius the package contained two inks that I was interested in using as soon as possible, so I inked up a Pelikan M200 Petrol with Pilot Iroshizuku Sui gyoku and a Lamy AL Star with Diamine Forever Raven. The Radius got inked up withe Diamine 150 years Anniversary Regency Blue, a rich royal blue with moderate red sheen that fits the blue swirls on the pen body.

From left to right: Pelikan M200 Petrol, Lamy AL Star Black, Radius Settimo Celio Blu

Comparing the Diamine Forever Raven to Sailor Black reveals that the Sailor is slightly darker than the Raven, but both are dark enough to count as proper black inks (and not dark grey or brown). They both have a bit of shading, but the Raven interests me as a waterproof ink, so I’ll be testing it with some watercolour sketches later on.

The Pilot Iroshizuku Sui gyoku isn’t what I expected. I was hoping for a more prominently green ink, but Sui gyoku is more of a turquoise than a green. I like turquoise inks so that won’t be a problem, but it means that I’m still on the lookout for an interesting, bright, readable green. The shading on this ink is delightful.

Diamine 150 Anniversary Regency Blue is a rich royal blue with some red sheen. It’s very saturated, especially in the Radius nib.

The Radius interested me not so much as a revival of the old Italian brand since the original Radius was a minor pen manufacturer, and I wasn’t blown away by the vintage Radius that I own. It seemed to me that the old Radius brand was busy making local copies of what Parker was doing at the time, which is understandable. However, Radius as a sub-brand of Leonardo is interesting since Leonardo have been hiking their prices lately but the Radius remains more affordable and offers resins and pen bodies that are just as attractive as what Leonardo has to offer.

I love both the blue, white and brown swirly resin of this pen and the art deco-ish band. It’s a big wide pen, like the Leonardo pens and Viscontis, but light and comfortable to use.

One tiny minus with my pen is that as the bottom part of the body tapers down, a smudge of brown resin was left, making it look like there’s permanent dirt on the pen body. Not ideal, but it’s something I can live with.

Here’s a writing sample of all three inks on Col-O-Ring cards.

And as a silly little treat I also bought two cartridge boxes of Lamy Pokemon ink cartridges. They are filled with regular black Lamy ink cartridges, which I knew, but is still disappointing – a teal and a red would have been better.

July’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

A mixture of some pens left over from last month, coupled with a slew of new pens in mostly long unused inks characterizes this month’s lineup.

The paper is Hobonichi Techo 2024 this time (I bought it on Black Friday, to compare with the original Tomoe River Paper in my 2014 Hobonichi). The paper in it is almost as good as the original Tomoe River Paper for showing off ink properties.

From June’s rotation I only have:

The mauve Sailor Pro Gear Slim with a music nib and delightful yet discontinued Sailor Jentle Apricot. A readable reddish orange ink with generous shading.

Kaweco AC Sport Carbon fine nib with Diamine Ultra Green. It’s almost written dry but has seen less use than I planned since I’m not in love with the ink colour. It is growing on me though.

In the end of June I added two new pens into the rotation:

Franklin Christoph x Stilo x Stile 03 Sparkling Rock EF nib with Diamine Earl Grey. Earl Grey is still one of my favourite inks and if you want a readable, interesting grey I highly recommend it.

PenBBS 456 Smog with a RM nib and Pelikan Edelstein Golden Lapis ink. I have no idea what possessed me to fill a vacuum filler with this ink, but I’ll pay for that later. Golden Lapis was a gift from the Pelikan Hubs and has turned out to be my favourite shimmer ink.

The proper July inked pens are:

Franklin Christoph 46 Polar Ice EF nib with Diamine Inkvent 2019 Holly. I reviewed this ink here and I liked it enough to purchase a full bottle of it, though I have rarely used it since. Holly is a dark blue green with a wild red sheen and is saturated enough to pass as a serious businesslike black at a cursory glance, so you can sneak it into office use 🙂

Pilot VP Matte Black M nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Chiku-rin ink. I used to use my VPs a lot more, especially to take notes in meetings, but now I rarely use them because they have a tiny ink capacity and are a bit of a pain to clean out. They do have beautiful nibs, and I wanted a cheerful green ink so the pairing works well.

Visconti Homo Sapiens Lava black EF with Sailor Shikiori Yama Dori – this is the original Homo Sapiens pen, before Visconti did dozens of versions of it, when it took the pen world by storm. I bought mine at Mora Stylos, and they customized the finial with my initials. Yama Dori is a peacock blue with red sheen, and is a wonderful ink in Sailor’s annoying flat Jentle ink bottles.It was almost impossible to fill this pen due to the bottle shape.

Esterbrook Estie Sea Glass Journal nib with Diamine Aurora Borealis. I love the Journal nib, and it really shows off the gorgeous teal of Aurora Borealis. There’s some shading with this ink and a hint of red sheen. This ink is one of the few I own in both bottle and cartridge format.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe F nib filled with Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple. A wild pen and a wild ink that have wildly jumped in price over the past year or two. I have a handful of Montblanc inks, but I’ve been priced out of the brand now. Leonardo makes great pens, but I no longer feel the need to buy every limited edition they come out with. The Beatles purple is a wonderful PURPLE – bright, not muddy and perfectly midway between red and blue.

Last but very far from least Parker 51 Plum F nib with Sailor Jentle Peche. A rare 51 and a long discontinued ink coupled together to make sure that I use the good china. Parker 51 pens are my favourites, and this one is a gold capped aerometric with a fantastic nib.

The pens in order of appearance here, from top to bottom.

What have you got in your pens this month?

June’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

A new month means a new set of inked pens. From my previous rotation I still have the Lamy 2000 inked with Diamine Silver Fox, the TWSBI ECO Saffron inked with R&K Helianthus (and just about to run dry) and the Manufactus Cappuccino Brown filled with a Diamine Bilberry cartridge, also just about to run dry.

This time I chose the ink hues and inks before I matched them with pens (I usually do it the other way around). I wanted a blue-black, an orange, a pink, a teal and a bright green. The only ink that was completely unknown to me was the green – Diamine Ultra Green in a cartridge. It was also the only ink that I’m unhappy with, and one that I had issues with, but more on that later.

This is the lineup:

Writing sample with all of the inks and pens. The notes were written using a Platinum Preppy 02 with black ink. The paper is a Rhodia dot pad.

Parker 51 Aerometric Teal with a Lustraloy cap and generous fine-medium nib filled with Diamine Denim – vintage Parker 51s are my absolute favourite fountain pens, both for their look and feel and for the way they make my handwriting look. I haven’t used this specific one in years, and I like the pen body colour but I specifically chose to fill it with the blue-black and not the teal, to mix things up a bit. Diamine Denim is one of my favourite go to blue-black inks, and I love it because it’s well behaved, dark and offers some shading.

Kaweco AC Sport Carbon fine nib Diamine Ultra Green cartridge – I wanted to try Diamine Ultra Green as I thought that it would fit the bill as the bright green that I wanted, but it didn’t. Two things happened – I flipped the pen upside down for a few minutes to get the cartridge going and I left it that way for too long, which meant that I got a mess. You can see it in the first writing sample and you can see it in the green ink splotch on the left of the page above. That would have been OK if the ink colour was to my taste, but it isn’t. Diamine Ultra Green is a viridian green, which is an unnatural shade of green that isn’t what I was looking for. In retrospect it looks like Diamine Kelly Green (which I don’t have) is closer to what I was looking for. The Kaweco AC Sport is nice but overpriced and I wouldn’t recommend it over an other Kaweco Sport. I got mine at a steep discount when an art supply store was closing down and looking to liquidate its stock.

Sailor 1911 Pro Gear Slim Maroon music nib filled with Sailor Jentle Apricot – kids these days will turn up their nose on this pen body colour, but at the time it was the only Sailor that you could get that wasn’t black. I was into fountain pen nibs and didn’t really care what the pen body looked like, so long as I got to try the fabled Sailor music nib – a rare music nib that had only one slit and two tines instead of the usual two slits and three tines that other brand’s music nibs had. It still is a gorgeous nib that works very well with the long discontinued Sailor Jentle Apricot. You really see the shading with this pen and ink combination.

The magical Sailor music nib (yes, the ink flow is fantastic even with one slit):

Franklin-Christoph Model 66 Antique Glass medium nib filled with Diamine Yuletide – this pen is now unavailable through Franklin-Christoph and only through second-hand resellers. It was one of my first Franklin-Christoph pens and one that I couldn’t wait to eyedropper (it’s built for that). The pen has a body that isn’t completely clear – beyond the slight fogging in the material (which is to be expected) the antique glass finish means that it has a blue-green tint, like a vintage coke bottle. It works exceptionally well with teal and turquoise inks, which is why I have only ever filled it up with teal and turquoise inks. In this case the ink of choice was Diamine Yuletide from the 2021 Diamine Inkvent calendar. I like this ink, but I’m still on the fence about buying a full bottle of it as I have a few other inks in a similar tone, some of them even Diamine inks. If you’re wondering how I eyedroppered this pen, it came with an o-ring and I have a tiny vial of silicone grease which I applied generously to the threads when filling it. So far no leaks, though as always with an eyedroppered pen, be careful with how you store it.

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom Medium-Fine nib filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu – I was planning on using an orange OR a pink ink, but eventually decided to use both. The Sailor Manyo Cherry Blossom is my nicest looking Sailor pen, one that I bought a few years ago at Choosing Keeping in London mostly because it had an MF nib and I wanted to try one of those. Sailor has been dazzling the fountain pen community with a plethora of mix and match pen body colours, but I remember the brand as an innovator and artisan in fountain pen nibs (which is why I rarely buy Sailors these days and most of my Sailor pens are black). The nib is, of course, perfect, and the ink works well with it. Kosumosu is practically bubblegum coloured, very bright, very cheerful and surprisingly readable.

Which fountain pen and ink in this rotation caught your eye? What are you using this month?

Big Celebratory Birthday Update Part 2

A smorgasbord of stuff for your delectation. You can read part 1 here.

13. Big bold announcement: next month is Bloomsday, and after much hemming and hawing i’ve decided to reread James Joyce’s Ulysses and blog about it as I go along.
I’ve read Ulysses three or four times between 2009-2013 but I haven’t touched it since. While I still have some of my notes on this book, my goal isn’t to reconstruct them or to lecture on the topic, but to enjoy a very good book, and see how my memory of it fairs post-chemotherapy (which has affected my memory).
Why should you join along? Because Ulysses is a phenomenally good book that is enjoyable to re-read (but very challenging to read for the first time). It’s funny and touching, profound and full of adventure. It’s just built on very well crafted layers of language, meaning and context, and it’s paradoxically a book that is meant to be re-read, not read. Hopefully I will make it a bit easier and less scary to read for the first time for those brave enough to join me.

14. I have been switching my podcast listening queue around lately, which means that I got to listen to this wonderful two part episode of Alie Ward’s “Ologies”: Salugenology (Why humans require hobbies). Guest Julia Hotz talks about the things that we need to be happy as humans, and the conversation is fun to listen to and enlightening. I highly recommend it, and the “Ologies” podcast in general.

15. I’ve stopped buying eBooks from Amazon after they stopped allowing customers to download the books that they purchased (so you basically don’t own the book that you paid for if you buy in from Amazon now). I still use my Kindle Paperwhite, but I’m buying books from Kobo. I buy them DRM free where possible, and if not I use Calibre to strip them of DRM and then this site to transfer them to my Kindle (if they are DRM free you just use the sendtokindle site to upload them to your Kindle). It took me 30 minutes to get the setup working the first time, and it now adds 1-2 minutes tops to every book purchase, which is plus for me. It means that I don’t mindlessly purchase books that I don’t intend to read, and I actually think through each book purchase. I also noticed that the books I’m interested in are priced slightly cheaper on Kobo, which is a nice little bonus.

16. Using yellow ink (Rohrer and Klingner Helianthus) has been a challenge but also an education. Helianthus is readable enough to be used for my daily todo list, but thanks to this ink I’ve been learning to enjoy using a fountain pen for highlighting purposes. It’s more subtle and better behaved than traditional highlighters, and the colour pops on the page without resorting to neon shades.

17.I am thinking about the next inks to put into rotation, which is a bit unusual for me as I normally start with the pens that I want to fill, and then go find inks that go well with them. I want a blue-black for practical reasons, a cheerful green, a pink or orange, and a turquoise or teal. How do you select which pens and inks you use?

18. A bit of behind the scenes: I draft these posts longhand in a Dingbats notebook and a fountain pen. I think better on paper and it’s a way to use the pens and inks that I have. There are no AI/LLM agents/bots involved in this blog, and that’s the way it will remain. I enjoy writing, I created this blog as a hobby because I enjoy writing, and while I use AI agents as part of my job, I have no intention of letting them take away any part of the creation of this site.

19. Journaling tip #1: If you’ve been feeling down lately, take the time at the end of each day to review your day and score it. It doesn’t matter what scoring system you choose, but I recommend that you keep it simple and not too granular: -1, 0, +1 or 1, 2, 3, or “great”, “OK”, “meh”, “terrible”. You just want a quick way to know if the day was a good day, an average day, or a bad day.
At the end of every day for a week or two think back on what happened throughout the entire day, give it a score, and explain the score in no more than a sentence or two. So for me today was: “OK – was super tired at the start, but I managed to get two naps in and recovered enough to get most of what I planned done”.
At the end of the week, when you do your weekly review and plan ahead what you want to stop doing, start doing and keep doing, use these scores as an input for your decisions.
Repeat this whenever you feel the need to recalibrate.

20. Journaling tip #2: if you’ve stopped journaling and want to restart, don’t attempt to backlog the days that you missed. Forgive yourself the journaling “debt” and start fresh. This is easier to do if you switch something up in your journaling routine – use a new pen, pencil or ink, a new notebook, or write in a new location.

21. A dear friend and colleague has moved to a new job in a different company. While I’m happy for him and I wish him the best of luck, I already miss working alongside him. This brings me to the following journaling tip:

22. Journaling tip #3: Take a journal, either your usual one or a new one for a special journaling “events” and write down a list of names of people that have inspired or taught you something that you are grateful for, and write down what it is they taught you. Start with those that affected you by their positive actions (kindness, encouragement, setting good examples), and then challenge yourself to journal about those that taught you by being negative presences in your life. Did an office bully teach you to be kind? Did the talentless brown-nose teach you about how much you value your integrity?
You can write about both people you personally know and those in the public sphere, and you can return and edit or add on to this list whenever you want. It’s a good reference in troubled times to remind you of who you are, what you stand for, and where you want to be.

Manufactus notebook that I plan on using for journaling tip #3

April-May’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

In the middle of April I inked up a bunch of new fountain pens, and at the end of the month I added two new fountain pens to this rotation. At the rate I’m writing with them I assume that this pen rotation will be with me until around the end of May, when I’ll be putting more “summery” inks into use.

This is a rather eclectic group of pens and inks, but I was mostly looking for inks that I haven’t used for a long time or I haven’t used at all. Here they all are (I was in a rush when I created the writing samples so they’re messy, but life isn’t Instagram, so messy it is):

Mabie Todd Swan “The Swan Pen” 2 nib with Waterman South Sea Blue – a vintage gold plated lever filler pen, this is one of two vintage gold plated pens that I bought in Paris in Mora Stylos years ago. I don’t usually like the bling of gold plated pens, but I was drawn by the fantastic, very wet, flexible swan gold nib, and by the engraving on the pen body.

Normally engravings lower the value of a vintage fountain pen, but this one added value for me – I find it endlessly intriguing. This was clearly a Christmas gift, in 1929, and it was likely a lady’s pen, given its size and general level of decoration. I can stare at this pen and spin dozens of stories from that engraving, and this is one of the main reasons I prefer vintage pens. This one is “use grade” – the engraving, the dings on the body, the brassing on the clip, and the multitude of microscratches on it make it so – but I don’t care. It’s a treasure of a pen with a fantastic nib that I got at a very good price and gives me much joy. What else does one need?

I chose a Waterman ink for it because they’re the best inks for vintage fountain pens – very gentle, very easy to clean out of a pen, non-staining, and on the dry side (though not as dry as Pelikan 4001 inks) which works well with this very generous nib.

Swan 2 nib with heart shaped breather hole

Leonardo Mother of Pearl fine elastic nib with Kyoto TAG Kyo No Oto 03 Kokeiro ink – I wanted a Leonardo pen in rotation (I love them) and I wanted to try this new ink, and compare it to the Rohrer and Klingner Alt-Goldrün ink that I still had going at the time from March’s rotation. The inks are practically identical, with Alt-Goldrün being perhaps a shade lighter than the 03.

Leonardo Momento Mother of Pearl fountain pen

The Leondardo’s elastic or “flex” nib has cutouts in the nib shoulders to provide it a bit of give. It’s a nice nib that offers some line variation, but is nowhere near what you can get in vintage flex or super-flex nibs (particularly Swan and Waterman).

Closeup of the elastic nib with the cutouts in nib shoulders

Lamy 2000 fine nib with Diamine 150 anniversary Silver Fox ink – this is one of two Lamy 2000s that I have, and I really like this pens as workhorses. Silver Fox was part of the original collection of 150 anniversary inks that Diamine issued and it’s a nice mid grey that is very readable.

Franklin Christoph Model 46 Polar Ice extra fine nib with Bungunox June Bride Something Blue – I filled this pen about a week after the others since I wanted a teal ink that wasn’t in as wet a nib as the Swan. I got this ink as a gift from the Pen Addict Membership back in 2016.

Franklin Christoph Model 45L Turqish Crush extra fine nib with Diamine 150 anniversary Blue Velvet – another original 150 anniversary ink (Diamine later issued a second and perhaps also a third line of inks in this series, I don’t remember). This one is a nice royal blue, and another ink that I had used in years.

From left to right: Lamy 2000, Franklin Christoph Model 46 Polar Ice, Franklin Christoph Model 45L Turqish Crush

Oldwin Art Deco red and black striped ebonite, 18k medium nib with Diamine Writer’s Blood – as I’m writing this I have written this pen dry, mostly because it has a very wet and hungry nib and a standard sized converter. I bought this Oldwin from Mr Mora at Mora Stylos in Paris, and it’s a huge and surprisingly light pen.

The nib is also a very large nib (size 8 and not size 6), and the pen is surprisingly not smelly for an ebonite pen. The feel of the material is fantastic – ebonite is such a warm material – and I like it enough to consider refilling it instead of cleaning it out. Diamine Writer’s Blood has been in rotation recently, but it’s a new ink to me and I’m still trying to figure it out. Having it in this pen made me appreciate it more, as it really showed off its unique colour properties and shading plus sheen.

Manufactus Cappuccino Brown medium nib with Diamine Bilberry cartridge – this was a gift that I received from a dear friend who was just back from Italy and bought this (and a wonderful leather bound personalized journal) in the Manufactus store in Rome. The photo doesn’t do justice to the richness of the resin on this pen.

The Manufactus has some heft to it, due to the metal body and trim, and while it states that it’s a medium nib, it runs closer to a fine nib in terms of line width. Diamine Bilberry is an interesting ink that I had in cartridge form, and I wanted a more unique ink than the standard black cartridge that came with this pen. Bilberry is saturated enough to pass as black at a cursory glance, but it’s a gorgeous rich purple with gold sheen that works well in this pen.

Apart from these pens I still have about a quarter fill of ink in my TWSBI ECO T Saffron fine nib with Rohrer and Klingner Helianthus going from March’s ink rotation.

Which of these pens interest you the most?

Currently Inked Pens March 2025

Of February’s pen lineup only two pens remain inked, the Parker 51 with Waterman Purple, and the Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight with Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo. As they’re both running low on ink, it’s time for a new pen lineup, with a slightly different theme than last month’s one:

All the pens are modern (last time I had more vintage pens than modern ones in rotation) and ones that I haven’t inked in years.
All the inks are ones that I haven’t used in years or ever, apart from one that was in the last rotation but I still haven’t figured out so it got another go.
The ink colours are much brighter than those that I used in February.

Here’s March’s rotation:

Writing sample on Midori MD Cotton paper

Here’s a bit more about every pen and ink combo:

Franklin Christoph 03 modified prototype- Red/White/Black motion with a 1.1 HPSteel cursive calligraphy nib. This is a new pen that I bought last year as my chemo anniversary pen (I buy myself a present every year to mark the occasion). I love the unusual resin colour and pattern, and I like FC’s HPSteel 1.1 nibs. They are just wide enough to really show off the ink without becoming a nightmare to use because it takes ages for the ink to dry.
As nice as the pen is (and it is), the ink is the star in this one in terms of interest: it’s the ORIGINAL J.Herbin 1670 Rouge Hematite, which means that it has NO GLITTER and NO SHEEN. It’s just a deep, bright red with some nice shading and good outlining, but it isn’t full of gold glitter and sheen to the point where you can’t see the base colour. Yes, this is also the bottle that had the problematic crumbly wax cover on the cap, but I really think that I prefer this version to the one they issued later (I have both). I don’t normally use red inks, but this one was perfect for this pen.

Original Rouge Hematite compared to Cosmic Glow on original Tomoe River paper. Note the lack of sheen or shimmer.

TWSBI ECO Saffron fine nib filled with Rohrer & Klingner Helianthus ink. I use yellow inks even less often that I use red inks, but this ink is fairly readable for a yellow ink. It is, however, not going anywhere near a vintage pen as it has a tendency to crust over (as many yellow inks do). I wanted something bright, cheerful and different, and this ink checked all three. The TWSBI ECO is a phenomenal pen for those starting out with bottled fountain pen ink, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Aurora Ipsilon medium nib with Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldrün ink. This is my one and only Aurora pen, which I bought years ago in Florence, Italy. Aurora nibs are nice enough, but the pens are priced well above what I believe that they are worth, so I have steered clear of them over the years. The Ipsilon is small pen, but you can’t post it, which is annoying for such a small pen. R&K Alt-Goldrün is a fantastic ink colour – a non standard green with plenty of shading and character – and the only reason I haven’t used it more is because it was tucked away behind two rows of other ink bottles. If you are just starting out with green inks, give Alt-Goldrün a try.

The Ipsilon nib looks ridiculously small but it’s just the design of the section that makes it appear that way. Comparison photo to a TWSBI ECO nib.

Leonardo Momento Zero Blue Hawaii Fine nib with Diamine Steel Blue ink. I have used this pen fairly recently compared to some of the others in this rotation, but the ink has been one that I actually forgot that I have. I love teal and turquoise inks, and Diamine Steel is a beautiful member of this group. There’s a hint of shading with it, and it just pops off the page so nicely. If you want a different take on “boring blue” inks, I highly recommend it.

Montblanc Writer’s Edition Victor Hugo medium nib with Montblanc Around the World in 80 Days ink. I bought this pen in Mora Stylos in Paris before they closed mainly because I adore the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral and it’s featured on this pen. Hugo has the honour of being the saviour of this extraordinary cathedral, and though I shy away from Montblanc limited editions (talk about overpriced) I thought this one was worth purchasing. The ink was last in rotation, in a vintage Montblanc, last month. I just can’t get over how unrelated it is to the green-gold elephant on the box, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I was expecting it to be more like Alt-Goldrün than like the bluish-grey (Payne’s Grey really) that it is.

The Montblanc Writer’s Edition Victor Hugo

Finally, speaking of a pen and ink combo that have gotten “lost” in my collection: the Stipula Model T marbled grey pen was also an Italian purchase, and it has a very peculiar fine “flexy” titanium nib. I would characterize the nib as springy, and as my other titanium nib Stipula does, it squeaks sometimes as you write with it. The ink is one that I bought in 2013 in Fahrney’s pen store in Washington DC. Since then I haven’t opened it and used it, mainly because Fahrney’s Tempest Blue is a blue ink, and I don’t use blue inks often. It shades nicely, but other than that it looks close enough to my benchmark blue, Waterman Florida Blue (now renamed to Waterman Serenity Blue), for me not to bother using it often. Waterman Serenity Blue is a best-in-class blue in my opinion because it’s so well behaved, gentle and easy to clean out of pens that you can safely use it in any pen that you have, particularly vintage ones.

Writing at Large

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