Inky Links

Ink Swatches

Visiting pilot pens https://blog.wonderpens.ca/visiting-pilot-pens-fountain-pen-factory-in-hiratsuka/

Pens in work

Now while I like using fountain pens I also use other pens, particularly in work, I have a weakness for stationery and have for years, I hated using the pens in work so I brought a chunk of the pens I have and I've been using them.  This is a good sample of the pens I use.

The Pilot V-Pen - yes I pretty much hate this pen and all it's clones, it bleeds through paper, it feathers because the paper is even mildy absorbent which makes it terrible for me.  I've given away more of these than I can count.  But part of my job is signing invoices and it's perfect for that.  I'm almost finished this one!  I don't plan to replace them once their done.

A Glitter Gel pen.  This is a two-colour pen from Pentel and it amuses the person I have to fill forms out for.  I can't think of a better reason to use it.  It makes both of us smile.  Apparently, according to an accountant friend, as long as it can be photocopied it's good.  This can.

Then I have a variety of gel and other fine point pens which I use in my planning pages.  I try to swap out the pen I use in the morning for a different colour after lunch.  Theres always more in the morning but I think that's pretty common.  Most of the pens are turquoise and purple, I appear to be predictable with this.

Then I have a frixion pen, for my loan list and the crossword.  I have a couple of empty small coffee tins and all the pens live there.  Theres a variety of promotional pens in there too, I don't use them as much as the others but sometimes an ordinary pen is useful.  I also have two empty erasable pens because one of the erasable tips is nicely fine which is useful with my on loan list.

December's inxperiment

I'm expecting January's inxperiment soon so I thought I would swatch last months. I've been putting it off for too long.

When I swatched the Platinum Citrus black the swatch on the Rhodia paper began to darken almost as soon as I swatched. On the watercolour paper it stayed yellow for quite a while.

I plan to photograph it in a short while to chart the progress.

below is after about 5 minutes

To the right was the following morning.

November Inxperiment

I got my November Inxperiment early this month and when I opened the envelope this is what I saw...  The green Chiku-Rin had leaked everywhere.  I mopped it up and checked the lids, the Chiky-Rin had an o-ring in the lid was not seated right.  I reseated it, wrapped everything in tissues and gave it a few days to dry up properly.

This month's set were:

Mont Blanc - Legend of Zodiac Lucky Yellow - a quite bright yellow
Lamy Christal Ink Ruby - a dark pink red
Lamy Christal Ink Azurite - quite a nice blue purple.
Iroshiziku by Pilot - Chiku Rin - a bight green that got everywhere...
S. T. Dupont - Intense Black - quite a dark black

Tested on Rhodia Pad swabbed with a cotton bud

All items purchased by me

This week's carry

Muji aluminum pen, Pilot decimo, Lamy petrol safari, Kaweco liliput and Twisbi go. Several of these are almost dry.

Late October inxperiment

Finally swatched the October inxperiment. Novembers is due this week...

Cult Pens is evil, TK Maxx ditto

All items below were purchased by me from my own money and no inducements were offered to create this post and I plan to do more of these to shame myself for over-spend.

Cult Pens have at the time of this post (30th of July 2018) a 3 for 2 on entry-level pens.

I have a weakness for Pilot Preppy's and the Monami Oilka looked interesting.  I have a dislike relationship with the Zebra and Pilot V-Pens - I have yet to find a paper that they don't bleed through and feather and basically I don't regard them as good everyday pens.  If you want a pen to sign things regularly where you want to be assured which is the original document they're great, they also start well every time, I still find them blooby bleedy monsters and when I'm done with the few I have I'm getting rid of them.  I've seen a lot of people recommend them as starter pens, I wouldn't.  I plan to do a (more) ranty post about them some day with samples.

Anyhow, I put a few fine and extra fine Preppys and Oilkas into my shopping cart and then I put a couple of the Anniversary Diamine wedges  By that point I was at almost £35 and at £50 Cult Pens offer Free Shipping.  So 3 Diamine Samples: Regency Blue, Espresso and Purple Dreams, one Callifolio: Inca Sol; a platinum adapter for ordinary refils and a clutch pencil sharpener and I was just over the £50. Now I just need three more of the Diamine Wedges and I have the 8 to make the circle.

Samples are below and images of the pens. I haven't added the ink to the Preppy's as they're backups for the ones I have and possibly give to people pens for them to try reasonable cheap fountain pens  The Monami Oilakas are quite nice, the extra-fine is a little scratchy but they're quite solid and they take standard international cartridges..

 

I also visited TK Maxx during the week not expecting much, occasionally they have some nice bits and pieces and I have picked up some interesting things.  I was actually looking for a water bottle as I've found the Twining's Cold Infuse and with the current weather the idea of drinking hot tea is just not really appealing (except for some medicinal Lemon and Ginger, which I have found quite good for my sinuses) and Tesco have them on special offer.  I did get  the water bottle - a borosilicate one but seeing as it's going to live on my desk the weight isn't going to be an issue.  

Before I got to the kitchenware section the stationery section sang it's siren song.  I came across a Loooq Koyoto Notebook cover and some notebooks. There's plenty of space in the cover for a pen and it will take a standard A5 notebook.as a replacement. The cover pocket has a tab to help pull smaller things out, there's one large interior pocket as well.  It sits nicely open and it would be a nice single notebook cover.

The notebooks are Punch Studio with Write, Compose and  Notes written on them. 

For me TK Maxx is useful for finding  unusual notebooks that are hard to find and then I can, for a relatively inexpensive price, try different paper producers.  It's also a terrible drain on my wallet.

July Appelboom Inxperiment

 The July inxperiment all swatched up, I've been staring at the
postcard and the colours aren't really inspiring me to work with them and it.

Ah well.  I do like the brown., the Petit Prince is interesting, the Iroshizuku is incredibly vibrant.  The Lamy green is very green and the yellow is indeed very yellow.

I'm not sure I'd buy a full bottle of any of it but they're interesting colours.

The swatches are on a light cream notebook I got from Tesco that's perfect for swatches so the colours may be a little off.
I'm getting a bit better with the writing with the glass pen.

All items purchased by me and no inducement was offered by anyone to write this post.

Wyvernfriend's Desk

I now have anew lap desks (more commonly known as a writing slope) and a new desk.  I plan better photographs of this stuff.  I purchased them at the Victor Mee Auctions of the contents of Cafe en Siene, most of the contents were Art Nouveau and I'm a sucker for that era.  I plan to clean them a bit and possibly do minor restorations but otherwise they're actually quite good. There were a few others that I kinda wanted more than the writing slope I got but they would have taken much more work to restore.  The paper on the writing slope is the same piece of paper on the desk writing space.

June inxperiment

I've been staring at these colours for a while wondering what to do with the postcard... I'm thinking of picking up some masking fluid and going a bit crazy with washes.  If I do I'll update this post.

I found one of my glass pens recently and made use of it.

May Appelboom inxperiment

I subscribe to the Inxperiment project by Appelboom, I pay out of my own pocket for it and receive nothing for this post only the joy of playing with ink and inky fingers. None of the linked sites offer me any reimbursement for linkage.  I've tried to link to the manufacturer website for the inks but if not I'm linking to companies I've shopped with.

I got distracted last month by life and Woollinn where I spent a breathtaking amount of money on Yarn. Then I went to Galway to visit my parents, the end of May has my birthday and I always take a few days around it to the Irish June Bank holiday.  It's also the weekend of Bloom and I went there on the first day before going to Galway on the Friday. I was off on the Wednesday and my husband wan't and the weather was lovely so I set up one of the outdoors tables and got playing with the ink from Appelboom's Inxperiment. 

The usual postcard came in with the rest, not a lot of space for painting this time.  This shot has what I used for the play.  The ink comes in a plastic bag each time, well sealed.





So the colours are (in the same order as tested)  Mont Blanc Swan Illusion - an interesting grey/brown); KWZ Honey - a colour that's somewhere between brown. orange and yellow, intense; Kyo-Iro Cherry Blossom of Keage - a pink that dries with an interesting texture; Diamine Beau Blue  - a bright summer sky colour; and last, but not least, Aurora Black - a deep, intense black.

 So I played with the colours and decided not to paint the background; the only colours I used were what was in the pack so the green is a mix of the blue and the honey, painting the honey over the blue made a slightly different green than vice versa. The black stayed very black even when I pushed water through the paintbrush.  I would recommend that shade if you wanted a solid black ink.

I also sampled up my ink journal.

I've been using last months KWZ Cappuccino in a pen all month, I may have to buy a full bottle for use another time.  I'm currently trying to use up the ink in pens because I want to use and test all the pens.

Flashback to the 90s

In case of any queries, I bought these many years ago, both the filofax and the StyleFax, possibly in O'Gormans newsagent in Galway (that's now Easons) I used my own moneys.

I should probably rotate this but I wanted to get a post up.  I'm working on a post about the latest Appelboom post, which should go up later today.

I found this in a filofax from back in the early 90s.  Back when they made books to go in your filofax!

Hamburg visit

So I went on holidays to Hamburg, Germany and went to only 4 shops. I failed to go to Papier und Feder because it was closed because of a flood.  However I did go to Manufactum, Karstadt (site in german), Thalia and DM and did the most damage to my pocket in Karstadt.  I could have spent much, much more. Everything in the photos was bought on the trip, so now I have a lot of stuff in the holder below like my dip pens and q tips for ink sampling.  I  had fun.  Forgot to get the one ink I really wanted to get, which is the Herbin Amethyst d'Oural or to check for it...
Karstadt almost broke my heart, I wish there was a department store with a stationery space like this, everything from cheap to expensive; tonnes of ink in cartridges and bottles, I almost had too much choice. If Easons had quarter as good a stationery department I would be in hogs heaven.
Normally I wouldn't buy this much but it will probably be a long time before I get to visit somewhere like that again.

Minor hack

So I have a few filofaxes and I like the notebooks mostly for the paper.  They come with a cardboard protector.  I have binned a few of these until recently when I was looking for a second pen holder for my flex.  I bought a Leuchturm 1917 Copper pen loop and put it onto the card and trimmed the paper just a little with a paper trimmer (Lidl's finest) and if you look at the photo left you can see a standard A5 cardboard page from a A5 notebook underneath et voila, a pen holder.  I could laminate it, I suppose but right now it's working.

Then I watched a YouTube video with Land of Jane N Rocco talking about pretty planners and I saw she had a hack for bigger pens, use a binder clip and space it to allow the pen clip go in.  The pen in the picture is too wide for the loop but the binder clip does a perfect job.  I'm not sure I'd leave it on the cardboard because I'm sure it would age it faster but it's a clever hack.  I'm sure it's known elsewhere but I've never seen it before.  Smart idea.

Two shopping trips to Pen Corner

All products purchased by me with no promise of review or anything to any parties involved 

I had two trips to The Pen Corner in the last two weeks, the first week I bought the Faber Castell pen, which came with a free package of cartridges, and I also got some of the Lamy Bright Pink ink, which isn't me, at all, in a big way, I'm very not a pink person.  I'm a maroon or deep pink person but not a bright pink person, I wanted to try the ink to see if there was a green undertone, I like colourchanging things.  I put it in my Lamy AL-Star that's a deep pink, I will use up the cartridge, I've already given the second awr ro a friend.  If my pink-fond workmate was a fountain pen user I'd give the last four cartridges to her, I'll find a home for them some day.  The Rhodia is for testing pens.I also picked up a couple of international standard converters.

I only really intended to buy some Caroube de Chypre but I discovered a problem with buying this ink... there's nothing on the package to say what it is, just these two logos on the bottle and a general shade of grey and brown on the packaging, and they were sealed with plastic wrapping.  The staff member didn't seem to be very sure himself, so I bought both, although it does turn out that I have the Stormy Grey already.  Ah well, I do like it.  Must add the latest amethyst to my wish list)  Behind it is the sample pages I use, they're a printed template laser printed onto relatively cheap watercolour paper.  They work quite well and I like them.  However where I bought them hasn't had the A5 for a while.

Now for some testing   The Lamy Al-Star with what's pretending to be a medium nib, it's quite a fine medium and the aforementioned Bright Pink Ink.  Also the Faber-Castel Loom (I think) with grey ink.  The quotes are from The Wisdom of the Pagan Philosophers because it was on a shelf near where I sit.I like this grey. I also like this pen but unfortunately it doesn't post comfortably for me and that's how caps go missing in my house.

The next thing I need to do is add it all to my Everyday Carry log that I found via Figboot on Youtube

Current Carry and in use

 All products in this are bought with my own money and no money or goods have been received or promised for this post.


 This is what I'm currently carrying almost every day.  The Blue Filofax Pennybridge underneath is my Wallet.  They both have a fold out full year spread (not liking the 2018 one, it's on a single side and is a bit unwieldy but it keeps my working days straight for the year and major events.  I love the fact that the pen case can take the smallest filofax notebook, which means that this is what I regard as an essential carry.  There's always a fine fountain pen and a medium, I also often have a ballpoint or mechanical pencil in here. The pocket filofax has a diary where I keep what my worked hours, major notes to self and what I have on loan from the library list.
The Filofax Flex's contents are below. Two A5 notebooks fit in, one for my thoughts diary and the other for writing.  The Bloggers Journal is probably going to start being left at home soon but in it I record what I'm thinking of doing for this blog, I'll probably create a page in my creative writing notebook and use it and then transfer it in later in the day.  In work I have an A5 notebook that I use as a Bullet Journal and as it has only been in use a month will see more changes before I settle the style.

These are the two notebooks the left hand one is from TK Maxx it came as a three pack and have quite nice paper that is pretty fountain pen friendly.  The Paper-oh on the right is from Easons and only really accepts Japanese Fine nibs



These two are my current use notebooks, the blue on the top has TV series I'm following and the Paperchase is my pen and ink log and I'm sure it will feature a few times, these are both A5..

Inxperiment

Materials: Ink from Appelboom's Inxperiment which I have signed up to with my own cash, Water brush from The Range, Business Card from Vistaprint many years ago, background notepad from Tesco. No company has asked me for any endorsement, though Appelboom have a competition associated with painting their postcard.


It came in an envelope nicely packaged with five vials of ink and a postcard
















I tested each colour on the back of some old business cards of mine (that need updating, one of the email addresses is defunct)







And the finished product, I only used the colours provided for this and had a lot of fun doing it.








I used this water brush from the Range (who have a branch in Liffey Valley in Dublin) I was curious to try them, I liked how it gave me some shading and colour depth.

Pen Cleaning

Materials: all materials were purchased by me with no expectation of reward. Sources include Pure Pens (brown Noodler's Creeper and syringe); a pharmacy somewhere for the bulb; La Estilográfica Moderna in Zaragoza for the black pen with the turquoise highlights (an IXC Barcelona pen) and if I recall correctly the Pen Corner on Dame Street for the Silver pen (I've had it for years).  In this post I receive no financial return for any of the links.
 
 see also: Goulet Pen's Fountain Pen 101 Pen Cleaning and Levenger's Pen Cleaning guide

Most places suggest using filtered water, I have a filtered water tap, you could also reduce the material in the water by using cold previously boiled water (perfect excuse to make a cup of tea and a nice sit down for a while before doing this).  Hot or very warm water is not recommended as that might warp the materials, so room temperature is best.

Now I probably don't do this as often as I should with some cheaper pens but it's a good habit to get into when you change inks because some brands of ink could react with others. I've never had this but knowing my luck it would happen with some of my favourites!  Also if you leave pens inked up they can dry up (and the ink can evaporate anyway which is a waste); many sites suggest only inking up enough for a few days or weeks. Not that that stops a lot of people and it shouldn't stop you, just be aware that if it gets really bad you will have to resort to special pen flushes aka solvents. Don't use random solvents as it might destroy your pen.  Another reason to wash pens is because small fibres from paper which can cause pens to work sub-optimally.

Pens ready to go with water in two of the containers, a piece of kitchen paper in the third, the fourth is just to hold the blunt syringe and bulb syringe.  I use this configuration when I'm cleaning several pens, which is my usual pattern, I'm lazy and tend to do pens in a bunch rather than do them singly.

First step: dismantle pens, except the Noodler, it's brand new I'm just rinsing it out as recommended by many sites.  But it's a piston fill, so it's basically twist the piston to open


You can see the cartridges, these are what are referred to as International Standard Cartridges and I don't normally clean them as I have a lot of them.







Pushing the bulb syringe to flush, you really want to push it in as far as possible.  Otherwise you will get overspill of ink.You can add a drop of washing up liquid to the mix, this is often useful for first flushes to ensure any residual oils from the making process are removed, but also flush with plain water a few times after this.

 Pen 1 in to soak, to make sure I've flushed it enough there shouldn't be any sign of ink in the water while flushing the second pen.  Don't forget to flush out the lids,

 If you don't want ink all over your fingers you need to wear gloves to do this, I'm pretty careful with all this and I still regularly get ink everywhere

 Clean cartridge versus dirty one.

Putting everything in to drain, including the lids.  I left them for a few days before taking them out.  There's a lot of pens I have inked at the moment so I'm trying to use more of the variety.

April Splash

Materials: All materials purchased with no sponsorship or expectation of reward. Tesco flowers and Butterflies notepad bought by me; ink and pens all purchased by me from various sources; 
Manuscript pen used in my own journal from Powells of Galway and Notebook purchased in T K Maxx.

I'm not going to pretend this is perfect calligraphy, I'm quite rusty at lettering but this is more about spacing and setting out a page than the lettering itself.  I did calligraphy as part of Art to my Leaving Certificate. I was the only person who did calligraphy to the Leaving Cert that year.  You were given so many lines from a poem on your English course that year, mine was a section of The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats.


This is me playing with the poem "Song" or April.  I'm kinda cheating here as I've already lettered this a few times and already did it for my work blog so I know what the lettering is going to be like somewhat.  I like how it worked out there so I'm repeating it into my general diary.  You can see me play with various letters and spacing.

This is me working more properly with it.

First off, listing all the capitals and seeing where I want to go with them.  The first page was done yesterday but the idea for the A came to me last night and I like it, funnily it only really works when I write left-handed.  I am left-dominant but I learned how to do calligraphy with both hands, I have found that my own handwriting doesn't impinge on the regularity of the lettering when I write with my right.

Then I work out the longest line, somewhat of a tie between line 2, "Laugh thy girlish tears" and the later line "Laugh thy golden tears" depending on how you write your os.  However if you look at it you can see that it would be best if it was written near the edge of the page and the earlier line written afterwards and spaced in a little..I may make the first April a little bigger.  With truly formal calligraphy I'd now centre the longest line on the page and base the margins of the page on this spacing, but this is not formal calligraphy by any manner or means.

Next you need to work out if the poem will fit on the page you have, I'm pretty sure about this one, but what you want to check is that you bias the empty space towards the bottom of the page. You shouldn't have equal spacing above and below because the eye sees the lower space as less.  My art teacher always said 2/3 bottom and 1/3 top.  But a reasonable bias works In this case I have 12 lines of poem plus title and author, which I could put either end of the same line but I plan to leave a line of a gap.  My page is 23 lines long.  If I start line two at about line 5 things should be fairly well spaced. 

The Version from my work  notebook. The Second April, April is a bit messed up as I glossed over the lines and started letting the next line, I just used correction tape to cover it up but the standard fountain pen ink didn't write well on it.  Oops.  I can't remember which of my standard pens I was using, it's a medium width with enough flex to get a bit of variation.

The version in my own notebook, and I forgot things, but it's a good example of what can and will go wrong.  The lettering I'm happy with overall but it would have suited larger spacing, not the double spacing but probably space and a half.  I started writing, with the Manuscript calligraphy pen and the ink that came with it, I used another pen to put the poets name in.  It gives the visual balance I was looking for. I wouldn't have got the whole poem in at that spacing so after the first four lines I reverted to single spacing.  Looking at it if I was to do it again I would have gone for the double spacing for after the title and then possibly for the next line and then revert to single spacing.

Two different versions of the same poem, quite similar lettering, slightly different results.