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?

February 2025 Currently Inked Pens

I have finally written dry all of my Inkvent 2024 fountain pens, which means that after two months I get to write with a whole new set of fountain pens and inks. I normally don’t spend too much time selecting which pen and which inks I’ll use next, but this time I decided to use some criteria for the next pens in my rotation:

They need to include at least 50% vintage pens. I don’t use vintage pens with Inkvent inks, and vintage pens make up most of my pen collection.
All the pens need to be pens that I haven’t used in a long time (at least a year). It was time to mix things up.
The inks needed to be inks that are new to me, or that I haven’t used in years, and all of them need to be inks that I haven’t swabbed before. This was not only to mix things up, but to get me to use and swab more inks in my collection, instead of going again and again to a few select favourites.

Here’s February’s fountain pen lineup:

The pens from left to right: Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse, Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino, Montblanc 32, Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless pen, Waterman 52, Parker 51, Parker Vacumatic Standard double striped jewel.

And here are ink swabs of the inks that I’ll be using:

The Vintage Pens

Parker Vacumatic 1st generation Laminated Burgundy Pearl Double Jewel (striped jewels, striped section) – I adore Parker Vacumatics and this is a “use the good china” pen. The grip section is also laminated (and not plain black), the body is transparent, and the nib is a sharp extra fine gold nib with a bit of character to it. It’s filled with a brand new ink for me, Diamine Writer’s Blood. I never use red inks, but this got raving reviews and seemed dark enough for me to try. I bought the ink in Oxford last year, and the pen years ago from the late Henry Simpole (Henry the Pen Man) in London. I don’t think I inked up this pen since I bought it, as it was too precious, and I still won’t let it leave the house, but I am looking forward to actually using it.

Parker Vacumatic first generation burgundy laminated grip section

Closeup on the striped jewel and the grip section of the Parker Vacumatic

Parker 51 Burgundy aerometric with a silver cap and gold filled arrow clip. I love Parker 51s, they are my absolute favourite fountain pens. I believe this cap is on the rare side, though it’s far from pristine or attractive (it’s blackened in specks, and there are a few scratches and micro scratches on it). The nib is a generous fine, bordering on medium, and like all other 51s that I’ve used, it’s magic. I haven’t used this pen since I bought it, so it’s time to give it a whirl. It’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo, which is a lovely, sheening burgundy ink, one of the more popular inks in the Iroshizuku lineup. In hindsight coupling this ink with this pen wasn’t the best choice, as the 51 has generous nibs and Iroshizuku inks are on the wet side. It just means that I’ll have to steer clear of cheap paper with this combination.

Waterman Ideal 52 Red Ripple fountain pen with a super flex extra fine nib – my word but this pen has the most glorious nib. The pen itself is elegant and pristine, and because of its age it doesn’t have the ebonite stink to it. The nib is why I bought this pen, and it effortlessly moves between extra fine and broad or double broad lines, with the feed easily keeping up with tines. Like all Waterman nibs that I’ve tried, there is some feedback, so if you like butter on hot pan nibs this one isn’t for you. This is the kind of nib that you can only get in a vintage pen, and it puts modern flex pens to shame. It’s only minus is that this is a lever filler, and I hate cleaning out lever fillers, which is why I rarely use them. This pen is filled with Diamine Autumn Oak, which I haven’t used yet (in bottle form at least – I have cartridges of it). I wanted a brighter ink in this lineup, so Autumn Oak was a perfect choice.

Waterman 52 cap and nib closeup. You know the nib is going to be fabulously flexy once you see that heart shaped breather hole and the slight bend down in the nib.

Writing sample on Midori MD Paper. Notes written with a Platinum Preppy.

Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless L205/62? Not sure – Swan did a poor job labeling their pens, and I didn’t write down notes when I bought it. This is a lovely pen that I bought from Henry Simpole years ago because of the phenomenal Swan nib. It’s an oblique flexible nib with Swan’s gimmicky “Leverless” filling system (which is a lever system in disguise, but such were the ’30s – you needed a gimmick to sell pen). I haven’t used it at all since I bought it because I don’t remember the experience of cleaning it out very fondly – imagine all the bother of cleaning out a Lamy 2000, but with a piston that has just one twist of travel. I used Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao with this fountain pen, and it’s a gorgeous ink with a good amount of sheen with this nib. I love this shade of royal blue, and I haven’t used this ink in a while. Take a look at the Swan above – it’s almost 100 years old and works perfectly.

Closeup on the nib and cap of the Swan Leverless pen

Montblanc 32 (1967) OM 585 nib – heavens, you can get a gold nibbed, piston filling original Montblanc with an Oblique Medium nib for less than a steel nibbed Pelian M2xx costs? Yes, you can. I love the design of this pen (you can read about it more here) and the nib is great… provided you write in the exact angle it expects. The Swan’s nib is generous in terms of the writing angles it accepts, and the Monblanc 32 is demanding: you will use the nib at the precise angle it is designed for, or it will not work at all! I only wish that the Montblanc Around the World in 80 Days ink was so exact. From the description and the illustration on the box I was expecting a brownish gold ink, maybe with a hint of green. In reality I got a dark, cold grey ink, with a hint of blue to it. No brown, no gold, nothing at all to do with the elephant illustration on the box. I had to double check just to make sure that I hadn’t landed on a bad bottle by chance.

Writing sample on original Tomoe River Paper

Modern Fountain Pens

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse H-EF nib – I haven’t used this pen in over a year, and I wanted a pen with a very fine nib, so that I can use it for note taking. It’s inked up with Sailor Black, a new ink for me and one that’s supposed to be water resistant. I’m using this combination for my certification study notes, and I may also try it out with some watercolours in a sketch, just to see if I can use Sailor Black ink as part of my sketching kit.
Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino fine nib – I bought this pen in early 2012, before they did a run of seasonal limited editions of this pen design. I haven’t used in years, and the same goes for the ink in it: Lamy Petrol. This is a limited edition ink, one that Lamy issued with the Lamy Safari Petrol, and it’s a wonderful blue-black with red sheen.
Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight fine nib – this pen has “only” been a year out of rotation, and it’s one of my favourite Leonardos. The colour of the resin is gorgeous, and it works very well with the Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink that it’s filled with. Tsuki-you is a bluish-teal with red sheen and a wet flow, and it suits the Leonardo’s fine nib.

Modern pens writing sample on Midori MD paper.

August’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

August is going to be a month of pens and inks that I haven’t used in a good long while. While I still have a small amount of ink in four of my July pens (the Kanelea, the TWSBI ECO-T Saffron, the Big I Design Fountain EDC and the Schon Design Faceted Pocket 6), they will all be written dry by the end of next week at the latest. It was time for a new lineup, and this is this month’s assortment:

The TWSBI ECO-T is one of my favourite TWSBI designs, and so I have a few of them. The TWSBI ECO-T Mint Blue hasn’t been in use for about two years, so I decided to pull it out and use the Sailor Studio 162 with it, just for colour matching reasons. The 162 is an ink that I’ve used a few months ago but I really like it, so I felt like giving it another month in rotation.

The Lamy Safari Pink Cliff is a recent purchase that I made in Paris last April. I’ve only now inked it up as I wasn’t sure what ink to use with it — until all the discussion about the new (and not as great) Lamy Dark Lilac ink made me want to use the original Lamy Dark Lilac ink. I purchased a bottle of Dark Lilac and the Dark Lilac Safari back when they first came out, but I haven’t used the ink very much. It’s wet and very saturated and so it works best with only a handful of paper options that I have. Still, it’s a very attractive ink.

Visconti Homo Sapiens — this is the original Homo Sapiens, the one that created quite a splash when it came out. At the time it was my most expensive fountain pens, and it’s still one of my most precious pens. I bought it at Mora Stylos in Paris and had it customized with the special initial badges on the finial. I got Pilot Iroshizuku Shin Kai as a gift with my purchase, and though I love this ink I haven’t used it in a while simply because I misplaced it behind another rarely used ink.

The pens from top to bottom- TWSBI ECO T Mint Blue, Lamy Safari Pink Cliff, Visconti Homo Sapiens, Parker 51 Flighter, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom, Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2,0 Galattica Universe

Vintage Parker 51 pens are my absolute favourites, to the point where I have a hard time seeing one in the wild and not buying it. This Parker 51 Flighter hasn’t been in use in years, but in the spirit of “use the good china” I’ve inked it up. Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu Syogun used to be my favourite grey ink — and then Diamine came out with a series of excellent grey inks and Sailor came out with the 123. I haven’t used it in years, so I dusted off the bottle and decided to give it another try.

The Sailor Pro Gear Slim Many Cherry Blossom has been in rotation relatively recently, but the ink inside it, the Sailor Shikiori Sakura Mori, is one I haven’t used in years. I don’t have or use many pink inks, but I decided I needed something to brighten up this lineup, and the Sakura Mori ink is relatively readable. It also perfectly matches this pen, which is a nice bonus.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe is also a relatively recently purchased pen that has been in rotation not too long ago. I just love the Momento Zero so much that I decided I wanted to ink one up, and so I chose the Pilot Iroshizuku Syo Ro to ink it up with. I haven’t used this inks in years, and I love teal inks so it was about time.

What have you got inked up for this month? Anything new? Old favourites or long forgotten pens or inks?

July’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

This month features a few new inks, and a lot of old favourites that I haven’t used for a while.

Big Idea Design’s Fountain EDC is far from perfect, and yet I’ve inked it up again. It’s the ultem and the ease of capping an uncapping it – it makes it a great EDC fountain pen even though it still has infuriating flow issues. This, however, is the last time I’m inking it for a while (after filling it three times in a row) as I have lost patience with getting it to work properly when I’m journalling. The Schneider Cognac is a new ink for me, a cartridge packet that I bought in London for a pretty steep discount. The colour is a nice orange brown with a good amount of shading and good flow.

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette is gorgeous and overpriced pen that I haven’t used in a while. Sailor studio 123 ink was also in my previous rotation, but I now have two bottles of this most gorgeous of grey inks, so I feel like I should give it more use.

Omas Bibliotheque Nationale is a pen that I bought about a decade ago at Mora Stylos in Paris. The nib is extraordinary, and I decided that I wanted to use it again. It lays a thick, juicy line of ink that works well with Diamine Earl Grey. Diamine Earl Grey is not only a great grey ink at a fraction of Sailor Studio 123’s cost, it also doesn’t bleed through to the other side of the paper in even the Omas’s generous ink. So I get a dark grey with plenty of shading and character, but I can also journal on the other side of the page.

Rotring Levenger 600 is a wonderful pen that Rotring needs to make more of, and Sailor Jentle Sky High is a discontinued ink that Sailor likely makes under a different name and a higher price now. I like the colour, even though it’s a blue and blue inks tend to be boring, and the Rotring works well in use for my office notes.

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse is one of the last Sailor pens that I bought, and it’s one of my favourites. The H-EF nib is extremely fine, and not for everyone. Sailor Jentle Epinard is a great discontinued dark green ink from Sailor, and they likely make something similar under a different name and higher price (or you can find a parallel Diamine ink for much cheaper). The Sailor Jentle ink’s discontinuation was when I bought this and the other Jentle inks in use here, and I kind of regret my shopping rush. There’s no point in buying discontinued ink, as you’ll likely easily find something else similar to that (something that doesn’t use the Jentle ink’s terrible flat bottle design), or something better.

Schon Design faceted pocket six patina is a great pocket pen, and the Schneider Bermuda Blue is a great teal ink. The shading on this ink is excellent, and if I get a chance to buy another box of cartridges when this one is empty, I will.

The TWSBI ECO T isn’t as interesting to me as the ink inside it. I’ve been wanting to try out Diamine Ancient Copper for a long time, and when I was in Oxford I managed to get a bottle. It does not disappoint – great flow, great shading, great rich burnt sienna colour.

I haven’t used the Platinum 3776 in a while, and I almost forgot what a great workhorse of a pen it is. Sailor Jentle Ultramarine, a very bluish purple, long discontinued, is kind of on the boring side.

Here are the pens from top to bottom:

Big Idea Design Fountain EDC

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette

Omas Bibliotheque Nationale LE from 1999

Rotring Levenger 600

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse

Schon Design Faceted Pocket Six Patina

TWSBI ECO T Saffron

Platinum 3776 Demonstrator

What have you got inked up this month?

May 2024 Currently Inked Pens

April was a travel month which meant that I cleaned out all of my fountain pens apart from the Big Idea Design Fountain EDC that I took with me on my travels. So in the beginning of May I inked up five more fountain pens, many of them with new inks that I bought during my trip.

The Big Idea Design Fountain EDC is still a troublesome writer, but I keep reaching for it, so it’s still in the rotation with its second cartridge of Diamine Autumn Oak. Diamine Autumn Oak is a reddish orange with a lot of shading and it’s dark enough to be readable even with a fine nibbed pen.

There are two Franklin Christophs currently in my rotation (I misspelled the brand name in the writing sample, my apologies), and I am using them to compare the Sailor Studio 123 ink to the 224 ink. 224 is slightly more bluish and has less of a pink tint to it, but both are so similar that if you’re looking for 123 and it’s out of stock, you could use 224 and likely not notice the difference. I’ve been using these pens so much that I wrote the Sparkling Rock dry already, and the Thomas Hall Tibaldi edition is well on its way to joining it.

The Momento Zero Mother of Pearl is a gorgeous pen with a gorgeous, springy nib, and a joy to write with. Sailor studio 162, which I purchased on a whim at Choosing Keeping in London, is now one of my favourite inks. It’s a very unique shade of green/teal that makes me want to fill the same pen with it the minute I write it dry.

The Lamy Safari Savannah has Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink in it because I wanted something bright after all the muted greys and greens. The issue is that previously the pen had a shimmer ink in it and I apparently didn’t clean out all the particles, so I now have a shimmer version of Kosumosu. The result is fetching so I don’t mind this accident, but I will have to properly dismantle the pen and give it a thorough cleaning once I write it dry. It’s about halfway full now.

I like Rohrer and Klingner inks so when I saw the limited edition Ebony iron gall ink at Choosing Keeping, I immediately bought it. It’s very well behaved for an iron gall ink, but it’s not really a saturated black. I prefer darker blacks, but I’m getting used to the shading that Ebony provides.

A slightly late addition to the flock is the Leondardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe fountain pen, which arrived just in time for my birthday. It’s a stunning pen, and this photo does not do it justice. I knew I wanted a turquoise ink in it, and I haven’t used Bungo Box’s June Bride Something Blue in a while, so that’s the ink I chose. It was difficult to fill the pen from the flat Sailor shaped bottle, and I didn’t get a full piston-full of ink in it because of the awkward shape of the bottle. Lesson learned for next time.

What pens and inks did you use in May?

Majohn Q1 Bent Nib Fude Fountain Pen Review

First thing’s first: if you are looking for a writing pen, then the Majohn Q1 mini fountain pen is likely not for you. While you can purchase it with an extra-fine, fine or medium nib, it’s weird body shape would likely make it uncomfortable for long writing session, and as it’s an eyedropper filler, it’s designed to have a giant ink capacity, normally suitable for long writing sessions.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for a fountain pen to sketch with, the Majohn Q1 may be a very worthy addition to your kit.

The box. I love the “Feel the temperature of writing!” inscription on it.

I purchased the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen after seeing Paul Heaston use it in one of his sketches. “What is THAT?!” I asked, and immediately set out on getting one. This weird looking fountain pen reminded me of the Tombow Egg pen (google it. I’ll wait), which I always wanted and never got because I couldn’t afford one at the time. The Majohn Q1 appears to have almost the exact same design as the Tombow Egg, with a few minor details in the trim and molding of the grip section. I purchased mine on Amazon for $22.

What’s in the box: fountain pen with bent nib installed, eyedropper, and a spare medium nib.

The box the Majohn Q1 arrives in is good looking enough to gift someone. Inside there’s the pen with the Fude/bent nib installed, a spare medium nib (the bent nib is an “aftermarket” installation) and a glass eyedropper that you can use to fill the pen with. The pen itself comes installed with an o-ring so that it can safely be eyedroppered. I filled mine with De Atramentis Black Document ink, which is waterproof when dry.

I filled the pen only to 3/4 and still it holds a tremendous amount of ink, especially for such a small pen.

Now the Majohn Q1 is a very small pen, that holds a very, very large amount of ink. That’s why I was interested in it, as I thought that it would be a perfect fountain pen to add to my urban sketching kit. I currently use a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen for my urban sketching, and it’s a favourite among urban sketchers for the expressive, painterly lines it creates. It is, however, very long and pretty unwieldy: difficult to pack, and sometimes awkward to hold. Here are the Majohn Q1, a Lamy AL Star and a Sailor Fude pen laid next to each other, for size comparison:

As you can see, the Majohn Q1 is pocket pen sized in length, and very, very wide. It can’t be used unposted, as is to be expected with pocket pens, but once it’s posted, it just becomes an extra wide standard length fountain pen:

The point of this pen is the bent/Fude nib, so here it is, in all the different line widths it can create:

And here’s the Sailor Fude for comparison:

The Majohn Q1 offers much more line width control and consistency than the Sailor Fude, but you sacrifice some of the painterly quality and dynamism of the Sailor Fude to achieve that control.

The Majohn, like the Sailor, isn’t perfect in terms of gripping experience. While it’s much easier to grip the Majohn in a variety of different angles to get a variety of different lines, there’s a pretty pronounced step between the pen body and the grip section that can be uncomfortable if that’s where your fingers naturally land on. For me, I grasp the pen either closer to the nib, or not on the section at all but rather on the pen body. I’d recommend trying it out first, but for $22, it might be worth it just to buy the pen and try it out for a while.

Here’s a sketch of a friend’s border collies sketched with the Majohn. As you can see, it’s relatively easy to get both a good level of control with this pen, a lot of line variation, and some of that painterly quality to the line that makes it more interesting and expressive.

Majohn Q1 bent nib, De Atramentis Document Ink Black, Moleskine Pocket Watercolour notebook.

Here’s the complete sketch, just for fun:

If you’re at all interested in fountain pen sketching, and especially if you are an urban sketcher, I recommend giving the Majohn Q1 bent nib fountain pen a try. It’s easier to control and to transport that a Sailor Fude, and holds a much larger ink capacity, which is great for long sketching sessions or when you need to block out a large section with ink. For such a low price you get quite a lot, and the learning curve is much less steep than with a Sailor Fude DE Mannen fountain pen. I don’t do calligraphy, but I assume that it could be worth a try for calligraphy as well, especially if you are looking for a travel friendly solution. And who knows, maybe you’ll get to feel the temperature of writing while using it…

Franklin Christoph x Stilo e Stile 03 Sparkling Rock

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Inktober Day 25: Waterlilies in Ramat Gan

There’s a waterlily pool near where I work, and it would be so easy to paint them with watercolours and so difficult to sketch them in pen and ink, so of course I sketched them in pen and ink. It is inktober after all.

Platinum 3776 UEF, Sailor Epinard, A4 Midori MD Cotton notebook.

Writing at Large

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Franklin Christoph x Stilo e Stile 03 Sparkling Rock

Quick Update and Currently Inked

Inktober Day 25: Waterlilies in Ramat Gan