It’s day 2 of Inktober, and it’s water buffalo time. These are big, impressive and pensive beasts that you don’t want to mess with. They were chewing their cud in the sun, keeping an eye on us as we admired them from a distance when we saw them at Animal Kingdom, Disney World.
Water buffalo sketch, Animal Kingdom
I sketched them using a Lamy Safari fine nib and Platinum Carbon ink. Carbon ink lays down a shiny black line that takes forever to dry and so is my least favourite waterproof black fountain pen ink to sketch with (De Atramentis Document Ink is first place, with R&K Sketch Ink Lotte and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black in the middle of the pack). Since I was afraid of smudging the ink, it’s kind of a barebones sketch.
There was a delightful cast member standing nearby, ready to answer questions, and he was a massive Star Wars fan. He clocked my brother and I’s Star Wars Celebration shirts and we started talking Star Wars while standing in front of these guys and gals’ paddock. Of course he got a cast compliment from us (talking to him made our day), and we got to hear about past Star Wars events at the parks from behind the scenes.
The funny thing is that if we would have rushed past their paddock on the way to see the tigers (like everybody else did), we wouldn’t have had this moment and memory, and the tigers everyone was rushing to see decided to hide in the shade anyway.
It’s October and that means Inktober time. This year I’ve decided to participate in the challenge but to do it a bit differently than I did in previous years:
It’s still 30 ink sketches in 30 days. I’m using fountain pens for the entire challenge.
I’ve limited myself to the Traveller’s Notebook airlines edition insert. I’ll post a review of it later this month, but the idea was to deliberately use a notebook that I thought was too precious to use before.
I’m not following the official prompts (as usual). I never liked them, and this year’s prompts are no different.
I’m not posting these to social media. At all. I’ll be posting them here and here only.
Now without further ado, here’s Inktober day 1’s sketch:
Pink giraffes laying down to chew their cud, Animal Kingdom Lodge, Florida.
The giraffes aren’t originally pink, of course, but I sketched them with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink and a Franklin Christoph 03 Iterum Sedona Spa fountain pen with a Nagahara fine cursive italic. It’s a beautiful combo, and fine cursive italics are great for getting interesting line variations while sketching with pen and ink.
Traveller’s Notebook and fountain pen.
Giraffes rarely sit down in the wild, as that’s way to risky for them (it takes to much time to get up and run, should they need to). In captivity they will sit down if they feel safe and comfortable, and it’s quite a sight. We saw these two during a night time safari at Animal Kingdom Lodge in Walt Disney World, Florida. Giraffes are suffering from poaching, from habitat fragmentation and from habitat lost, and many giraffe sub-species have only a few hundred individuals left. If you want to help them, the giraffe conservation fund focuses on these elegant and fascinating creatures: https://giraffeconservation.org
I’ve recently switched out most of my fountain pens and inks for a new batch, so here’s a quick overview of them (from top to bottom):
Currently inked writing sample
Montblanc Victor Hugo medium nib filled with Montblanc Victor Hugo ink. I bought this at Mora Stylos just before they closed, mainly because the design is based on the Notre Dame de Paris, which I adore. It’s a weird design and quite a hefty pen, but I enjoyed the nib, despite it being a medium. The ink, also limited edition (but knowing Montblanc is likely a relabeled existing ink) is a nice, warm brown with a good amount of shading. As I post this I’ve written this pen dry.
Kaweco Sport Frosted Blueberry fine nib filled with a Graf von Faber-Castell turquoise cartridge. This is the only fountain pen that I took with me on my recent trip to the US, and I used it on the plane (not during takeoff and landing).
Lamy Safari Terracotta fine nib filled with Platinum Carbon ink. I wanted a waterproof ink for my sketches, and I haven’t used Platinum Carbon for ages. The Safari Terracotta is the perfect coloured pen for this season.
Schon Design Pocket Six 3D Teal x Matte Black pen with a fine nib filled with a Diamine Woodland Green cartridge. This pen is already been written dry by the time I’ll post this.
Schon Design Pocket Six Faceted Patina fine nib filled with a Diamine Jet Black cartridge. Schon Design pens made me enjoy pocket fountain pens, and Diamine Jet Black is proving to be a solid, dark black ink (not greyish or brownish).
Kaweco Sport AL Carbon Red fine nib filled with a Diamine Monaco Red cartridge. The perfect pen and ink match. I don’t normally use red inks, but Monaco Red skews towards the raspberry side of things, and is very pleasant.
Lamy 2000 fine nib filled with Diamine Safari. Before I filled a flock of Pelikans, this was supposed to be my workhorse pen. Diamine Safari is great for sneaking unusually coloured inks into serious office settings without drawing attention to yourself.
Pelikan 140 KEF nib filled with De Atramentis green grey document ink. Another sketching combo, perfect for watercolours when I want my line work to melt into the background. KEF stands for Kugelspitze Extra Fine – or Ball-tip extra fine. It’s a very forgiving and rather firm gold extra fine nib. I inked this up on the Friday of the Pelikan hubs even though I didn’t go to a hub. The 140 is a piston filler from the 1950s with a gold nib that was dirt cheap and is an utter workhorse. It’s user grade due to the brassing, but brassing adds character.
Pelikan 140 OM nib filled with Robert Oster Fire and Ice – Pelikan stopped making OM nibs in 2014 because they’re scratchy and unpleasant to write with if you don’t hold them at the right angle. But at the right angle this nib is phenomenal, and it works great with inks that shade and sheen – and Robert Oster Fire and Ice is definitely one of those. You can see a visible sheen at the edges of each letter, and it makes them all glow. I inked this to celebrate the Pelikan hubs.
Pelikan M600 brown tortoise shell fine nib inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-Budo. This is a vintage M600 from the 1980s, with West Germany printed on the band. It’s a lovely workhorse, like all Pelikan Souveräns, and the Yama Bodu ink manages to shade even with the Pelikan fine nib. Also inked for the Pelikan hubs.
Pelikan M605 Stresemann medium nib filled with Diamine Silver Fox. I haven’t had a grey ink in rotation for a while, and Silver Fox is an interesting and dark grey with plenty of shading, particularly with a juicy Pelikan medium nib. Also inked for the Pelikan hubs.
Long time no update, so I decided that it’s about time to write one up.
Reading
I’ve been in a terrible reading rut, and I blame the book that I’m currently reading: “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk, a 912 (!) page historical epic about Jacob Frank and his followers. I’m halfway through, and I’ve decided to put it aside for now and train my brain to enjoy reading again with some lighter and more fun material.
The book itself is masterfully written and researched, with the narrative made out of a carefully pieced together mosaic of characters, voices and narrative styles. I just cannot handle the subject matter right now. As my rights are being taken away by religious, power hungry fanatics, I don’t want to spend my free time reading about religious, power hungry fanatics. It has reached a point where I balk at the idea of reading again, and that’s just not healthy. I hate giving up on books like that, especially good books, but if I want to actually read again and not just beat myself up for not reading, I’m going to have to start reading something else.
Health
I went through a CPET (Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing) last week and it was pretty intense. My lungs aren’t working well in high intensity since my chemo, and so a lung specialist sent me to get this test, to see whether my heart or my lungs are the issue.
It started with a spirometry test (which is a simple test done to check your lung capacity and performance), and then went on to the CPET itself. I was hooked up to an EKG and pre-test measurements were taken. Then I was fitted with a special mask and filter that recorded my air intake and CO2 levels. Finally I was put on a special stationary bike, attached to a blood pressure monitor and a blood oxygen level monitor, and told to pedal without stopping until I felt chest pain or was about to faint, or until I was told to stop. As the technician calmly told me, they have a lot of people fainting during this test, which is why they do it on a bike and not a treadmill. I said it was intense, right?
Anyway, I pedalled for my life, with the bike’s resistance being constantly raised, and me gradually getting out of breath. The point was to see why, so I didn’t stop until the technician stopped me, at which point a little over 10 minutes of constant intense exercise had gone by and I was drenched in sweat and panting. H
ere’s hoping that I get some useful insights from the results. In the meanwhile I’m still running 5 times a week, just not as fast as I would like.
Pens and Ink
I wrote most of my pens dry and filled in a new batch, this time consisting of mostly vintage pens. There are also two expensive pens in this rotation, a few old ink favourites and some completely new to me inks, and a weird selection of colours.
Writing samples
The Henry Simpole Jasmin Pen is one of the most expensive fountain pens I own, and one that doesn’t leave the house because I can never ever replace it. It’s a Conway Stewart button filler with a bouncy 18K gold nib, with silver overlay created by Henry for it. The late Henry’s birthday was on the 4th of July, and so to commemorate him and his work I inked this pen up. I chose the Kyo-iro ink because it’s an interesting dusky purple that I haven’t had enough time with. Like the Jasmine Pen (bought in Portobello Road market), I bought the ink in London (at Choosing Keeping).
The Lamy AL Star isn’t interesting, but the ink in it is new to me. The Graf von Faber-Castell Yozakura is a pale and shading pink that I normally would never have purchased, because it’s so light it’s almost unreadable. It was deeply discounted during the closeout of a local pen shop, and I came in late and had very little to buy to show my support. I probably should have inked a much wider nibbed pen with this, but I have a big bottle of it, so there’s always another time.
In the Mahjon Q1’s case the pen and nib are interesting, the nib is not. This is one of two pens (the other being the Sailor Fude in the end) which I inked solely for sketching purposes. It’s a weirdly shaped pocket eyedropper fountain pen that I bought with a fude (bent) nib. I’ll probably review it at some time in the future.
The Montblanc Victor Hugo was a pen that I bought at the end of last year, during my last visit to Mora Stylos. This was an impulse buy, something that would never have happened if not for the display that Montblanc used to sell this pen. I love the Notre Dame de Paris, I’ve visited her and sketched her many times, and my heart broke when she burnt down. She’s a survivor, and seeing this pen displayed in a diorama of the Notre Dame in all her white glory, I just had to buy it. The ink was a gift that Mr. Mora gave me with the pen.
Parker 51 pens. The cocoa and the teal were all purchases made in the local flea market, and the cocoa is part of a set (with a pencil) and the earliest of the bunch (from 1948, a first generation Aerometric). The teal was in pretty bad shape, and took me a while to flush out. The demonstrator Parker 51 is from Mora Stylos, has a gorgeous stub italic nib, and is likely one of the Argentinian, aftermarket demonstrators. The Parker 51 is my favourite pen, and I have a hard time not buying all of them.
The Pelikan M205 Petrol was a Black Friday purchase, and I haven’t inked it until now. The nib is great, the pen is great, and Iroshizuku Ama-Iro turquoise ink is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Such an optimistic, summery colour.
The Platinums include two Preppy’s that I’m trying out, after being disappointed with their durability in the past. The Plaisir is the pen that’s been inked the longest of the bunch.
The Sailor fude is filled with a new ink to me, the Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black. The ink was purchased in the same closeout sale as the pink Yozakura, and I’m planning on testing it out as a non-waterproof sketching ink.
I wrote the Conklin Lever filler on top dry just as I was planning this post, so it’s here for reference only. I purchased it at Mora Stylos, it’s from 1919 and it’s in user grade condition (cap discolouration, significant brassing, the imprint isn’t in perfect condition). The lever filling mechanism is infuriating to use, both for filling and for cleaning the pen, but there nib is magnificent. It’s a true flex nib, going from medium to triple broad with no effort or railroading, and it’s a joy to use. The fact that I enjoyed it so much, coupled with its tiny ink capacity, meant that it took me about a week to write it dry. I used Waterman Serenity Blue in it, and that ink once again proved its worth in troublesome vintage pens. It’s a great shade of blue that is very pen safe and super easy to clean out of pens (think the opposite to Bay State Blue). A must have for anyone dabbling in vintage pens IMHO.
The pens, from left to right, matching the order of the writing samples with an added guest on top
Other Stuff
I’m working on an adventure for a 30+ tabletop roleplaying convention at the end of the month. I may publish something here about how I write adventures for conventions.
In the meanwhile my D&D 5E game, set in a university like setting and a university town next to it, is progressing nicely. It’s the most complex campaign that I have ever written, but it’s wonderful to see the players rush around in this world, having the time of their lives exploring, interacting and trying to break stuff. D&D is a pure joy and a wonderful escape from the pretty dark reality we live in these days.
Speaking of both dark reality and things that cheer me up:
It’s week 27 of the pro-democracy protests, and we’re still showing up in numbers (that are growing again). It’s great seeing whole families show up, including the dogs, to say no to stripping the judicial branch of its oversight powers.
I’ve been sketching people’s dogs, and it’s a pure delight to try and capture their personality with each sketch. Plus, it’s making people happy, which is a good thing.
I’ve managed to help a few people get back to running, and that’s always a joy. Go get some exercise. Do something you enjoy, and even 10 minutes is enough. As Dr. Jen Gutner says, exercise is like finding money in the street: if you find $10 lying around, you’re not going to leave them there because they aren’t $100. Invest a little in yourself, because you’re worth taking 10 minutes a day for.
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.
Sailor Studio fountain pen inks
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.
This review has been languishing in my drafts for the past two months, as life (and particularly work) has gotten so hectic. As I wrote the Franklin Christoph x Stilo e Stile 03 Sparkling Rock dry today, I thought that it was about time to finish this review and publish it.
The outer box
I don’t write much about packaging since I don’t care much for it, unless it is clearly overdone and something that unnecessarily added to the price. Franklin Christoph’s packaging is one of my favourites as the outer box is simple and elegant enough to be sent as a gift to someone, without being flashy. But what makes it even better is that many of their pens come with a pen pouch. These pouches are fantastic, and the one that I got features a velvety interior that protects the pens from scratches, and a grey, denim-y like external fabric that I really like.
Pen and pouch.
This collaboration between Franklin Christoph and Italian pen store Stilo e Stile is a model 3 pen with a gorgeous black, white and green resin with chatoyance, sparkle and a great deal of depth to it. Photos flatten it out and do it no justice. It’s a breathtaking material.
I purchased an extra-fine nibbed pen, and used it for writing and a bit of sketching using the Sailor Studio 224. The 224 grows a bit darker with time, but still features a lot shading and some gorgeous dual colouring. I was worried that it would be too light to be readable, but that was not the case.
Pen and Ink: Sailor Studio 224 ink sample written with the 03 Sparkling Rock
I have a few Franklin Christoph pens and I love the pens that they make, but this is the first Franklin Christoph pen that I have that has a pen clip. So while the model 03 is as well made and well balanced as the other Franklin Christoph’s I’ve tried, I did notice that the finial above the clip had a tendency to screw itself a bit loose sometimes. It never got to the point where it screwed off and got lost, and I doubt that it will, so it wasn’t really an issue, just something that I noticed. The clip is secured to the cap with a screw, and is robust and springy, and completely unaffected by the state of the finial.
Closeup on the finial and clip. My camera has issues with photographing the pen material.
This is the Sparkling Rock 03 as I used it, uncapped and unposted (you can technically post it, but I don’t see why as it’s long enough and clearly better balanced to be written unposted), and it is perfectly sized to be comfortable for long writing sessions. Unless you grip your pen with your fingers right on top of the nib, the two ridges in the end won’t bother you. I found them useful as they helped me position my hand better.
03 Sparkling Rock
The nib unit is a standard number 6 nib, and screws out easily, for both cleaning and swapping out. The pen itself, like all Franklin Christophes, is a cartridge-converter, and comes with a good quality converter.
Franklin-Christoph nib
This brings me to the reason for this review: in a pen market that features ever increasing limited-editions in ever increasing prices, Franklin Christoph offers a refreshing alternative. You can go to their website, find a variety of pen shapes in a variety of resins, know that you are getting a very good quality pen that will be a breeze to clean and maintain, and in many cases to convert to an eyedropper if you so please. And the prices aren’t eye watering. You can even splurge on an interesting nib grind, allow yourself to experiment a little, knowing that in the worst case you can easily swap out a nib on your own. It’s the ultimate fountain pen for those venturing out of the beginner pen group and wanting to experience something better, without paying gold nib prices or going the vintage route. It’s also very tempting to collect more and more of them, as you try out different shapes, sizes and resins, which explains why there are quite a few members in the 50th pen club (after buying 49 FCs you get the 50th, personalized, and for free).
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.
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.
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.
Door 25
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.
Best Wishes 30ml bottle
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.
Col-o-Ring swab
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.
52 gsm Tomoe River paper sketch
Here it is from another angle:
52gsm Tomoe River paper sketch.
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.
Writing at Large 