I feel like I am still feeling the lingering effects of the eclipse. The magic of doing something with hundreds of thousands of other people, witnessing a cosmic wonder, and just playing hooky from work or school to do so has really fueled my last week. I hope you are still feeling the cosmic wonder this week too.
(photo shown above was from the 2017 eclipse but the spirit of the eclipse lives on!)
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A few weeks ago I was browsing through JetPens and came across a notebook I hadn’t tried. I’m always up for testing new paper so I ordered a Sakae TP Iroful Notebook ($9.75).
This slim volume is composed of 96 pages of 75 gsm white paper with a 5mm dot grid in Indigo (it also comes in plain and graph if you’re interested). The cover is cardstock, and the binding is held together with thread and glue. The name Iroful is a playful combination of “colorful” and “iro,” the Japanese word for color, and the paper promises to be wonderful with all different kinds of inks!
I have to say – I’m suitably impressed. The paper said it would work well with alcohol inks, and I tried both a Sharpie and a silver paint pen and neither bled through or feathered. That never happens!
Fountain pen inks performed well (no surprise) and even swatching ink with a q-tip directly on the paper didn’t bleed through. The paper is a bit wrinkled, so I wouldn’t say it’s perfect for multi-media (painting) use, but it still holds up. It does feel like maybe the ink sits on top of the paper, rather than absorbing in. And according to my colleague Tina, it also handles sheen quite nicely!
Overall I’d say this is a fun, affordable paper to add to your collection – whether in notebook or loose leaf form!
DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us free of charge for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
The concept and tag, You Can Only Keep One (#youcanonlykeepone), was sent to me by Rachel from Rachel’s Reflections. The idea is to go through your collection of pens and choose just one example from each brand.
My list is going to be a completely theoretical game because their are many pens brands that I must have more than one. I mean, in the case of the Nagasawa Sailor Spring Green, I actually own TWO of the exact same pen. My list will not be quite as expansive as Rachel’s as I will only include the brands where I have more than one pen. There are some brands that it might surprise you to know I only have one pen in my collection: TWSBI, Benu, and a several indie makers. They were not excluded from this list for any reason other than I think its not really fair to say, you can only keep one pen when I only have one.
To keep in the spirit of tags, if you are reading this and have a blog, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube channel, I tag you! Please put a link in the comments with your list of pens so we can see your favorite pens!
The Littles:
From left to right:
Opus 88 Fantasia: I have several version of this pen but the blue/green version has become my favorite of the bunch. For a smaller pen, it holds a ton of ink.
Franklin-Christoph Pocket 66: While to many this particular resin is not all that special, this is the last pen that Jim Rouse tuned for me before he passed so it has sentimental value as well as being a beautiful example of this iconic design. Nib freakin’ rocks too.
Esterbrook Pocket Purse Pen: I have many classic Esterbrooks and I considered choosing the original green marbled dollar pen which was my original Esterbrook as my “only one” but when I think of an Esterbrook and close my eyes, this is the one I see. Pink with white finials, so classic.
Kaweco Sport in White Iridescent: While I know a lot of people love this material, my pen is as much about the nib as the exterior finish. Matthew Chen ground an extra special nib for me making the nib considerably more expensive than the pen itself but that makes it all the better!
SCHONDSN “Ferrera Roche” with Franklin-Christoph custom nib: This pen is all the things! It was a rare, limited finish and I put an excellent nib that Audrey at Franklin-Christoph ground for me. AND… from the rumors I heard, only about 6 of these hand beveled designs exist and I know where 4 of them are– Jesi has one, Jacklyn has one, me and our good friend of the blog Joe Crace has one so it’s also a friend pen.
Close-up of the Schon Ferrera Roche and the Kaweco White Iridescent. These two are almost always inked up and ready to go!
The Big Ones:
From left to right:
Pelikan M600 “The Ghost”: I always think that the white striped M600, affectionately know as “the ghost” or is the quintessential M600. Maybe its because its my only M600 but when I think of an M600, this is what I see in my head.
Y Studio Resin Fountain Pen: I love the snap cap, light material and hexagonal shape. Then I plussed it up with a Franklin-Christoph Fine SIG nib and its one of my favorite everyday carry pens.
Lamy AL-Star, Urushi by Jonathan Brooks: This was definitely a no brainer for me. When someone makes you an Urushi Lamy, it is your one true Lamy FOREVER. This pen also features one of Matthew Chen’s custom nib grinds because it needed a nib as special as the pen.
Lady Sheaffer Skripsert XVI Moiré with stub nib: Picking one of the MANY Skripserts I own was probably the hardest decision in this whole tag but once again, the nib was a big deciding factor. I chose the jewel-encrusted gold moiré with the stub nib. This peekaboo of the orange grip section is also one of my favorite design elements in the Skripsert line.
Pilot Custom 912 FA nib with Spencerian Nib Grind: Once again, its all about the nib here. Gena Salorino of Custom Nib Studio took the stock soft nib and turned it into a super flexy Spencerian for me. So while this is not the most exciting pen from the outside, it’s the insides that count!
Sailor Pro Gear Slim Starburst Galaxy: This pen made my 21 Pen Questions last year in the “pry from my cold dead hands” category so I’m happy to see that I am consistent. Black and glittery with an EF nib? Yes, please and thank you!
and oops! I forgot to include the last pen:
Diplomat Esteem MadC: This simple design was made something really special with the addition of the illustrative 4-color wrap design created by artist MadC. With a bonus snap cap for ease of use, its a pen a reach for a lot more often than I expected I would.
From left to right: Skripsert stub nib, Y Studio Resin with a Franklin-Christoph custom nib, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Stardust Galaxy with EF nib and the Pilot Custom 912 FA Nib with Spencerian grind.
The Oddballs:
My last category is my “oddballs” — these are not necessarily pens other would even consider or include and the last one isn’t even a fountain pen!
From left to right:
Platinum Carbon Desk Pen: This is one of my last old school EF Platinum Carbon Desk Pens which means it is slowly working its way into the “pry from my cold dead hands” territory. Over the years I have purchased and given away dozens of this cheap but mighty pen but now that Platinum has changed the nib and construction, they are just not the same. So, it you have one of these old school PCDPs, chopped down or not, hold on to it. I’ll probably pay a lot of money for them someday.
Red Dragon Pen Co. Pilot Parallel: Techincally, this breaks the #youcanonlykeepone since the nib, grip and cap are original Pilot materials, however, since the pen was created by an indie maker Brian Chu and I have several of these, I feel like its an acceptable rulebreaker. This particular Parallel features (again!) a custom nib modification by Tom Oddo. It’s a Naifu modification making the flat Parallel nib becomes more pointed in shape. This whole combo is my favorite pen to throw tons of ink onto the page.
Retro 51 Tornado Twinkle: With the dozens of retro 51 Tornado pens in my collection, I couldn’t skip this in the #youcanonlykeepone tag. While I did manage to lose my original Twinkle, Laura kindly gifted her Twinkle to me which only makes it more special to me.
Final note:
( I somehow managed to forget to to include my conclusion. Reader FF caught the mistake. Thanks!)
Picking one of each pen brand was not easy and I did break a couple rules along the way but I do thin this was an interesting experiment when thinking about whether I actually need a dozen Kaweco Sports or a half dozen Metropolitans if my favorite pen from the brand is the one I always reach for and the others sit empty.
For some absurd reason I got it in my head that I’d like to pare down my ink collection to 100 bottles or fewer. This random number, 100, seems like more ink that I could ever use in my lifetime or need, right?
Thinking about the ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) color spectrum — that’s seven colors and if I add brown, black and grey to this, then that’s 10 color groups. If I select 10 bottles in each group (and really, who needs 10 blacks and 10 greys?!!?) then surely 100 bottles is enough to have a wide variety of shades and hues while, theoretically, making my collection a bit more manageable.
I thought, at first, that that wouldn’t be too difficult as I’ve already done a bit of culling over the last few months.
No. I have some serious work to do. Step One, for me in this process, was to get a sense of just how many bottles of ink I currently own.
I have an entire Ikea Alex filled with bottles of ink. Many of these inks I don’t use or even remember that I have. Some are inks I reach for over and over (I’m looking at you, Birthday Cake!).
To start, I just counted how many bottles are in each drawer and made a list of the totals per drawer. I didn’t count all the mini bottles from the Diamine Inkvent calendars (those don’t count, right?). I also didn’t count the little refill/sample sized bottles from Ferris Wheel Press because they are basically samples and that’s a whole separate category of inks I’m not even ready to talk about yet.
I also have a shelf of Colorverse inks still in their boxes (22 boxes x 2 bottles per box… oof, that’s another 44 bottles!). And several Colorverse sets (I think there’s three sets). Then there’s the random bottles of ink tucked here and there. I’m actually starting to feel shamed by the enormity of this task.
So, the sloppy total is over 350 bottles (oops, I found a bottle on my desk and another in the “to be reviewwed pile”, etc). To get down to 100, I will have to cull out 250 bottles! Maybe this task it too ambitious?
My next step is to choose an approach for the process. I considered collecting all the reds together, regardless of brand and then orange, and so on. However, my drawers are organized by brand rather than color so I might start by pulling all the swatches so I can arrange the swatches by color and start making my selections that way.
Getting this far, just counting all the #$%^! bottles of ink, took me a whole afternoon. This project is going to be a lot more time consuming than I initially thought.
If you were going to cull your ink collection, what criteria would you use? Stay tuned for Phase Two!
I’ve found that bright red inks on the market seem to contain too much of a cool undertone and lean too far towards the blue side of red. Occasionally I can find a red that is bright but ends up look too orange. When I first saw this ink, though, I knew I found a great ink.
Thank you to Dromgoole’s for providing a bottle of this ink for the purposes of review.
Anne of Green Gables – one could be forgiven for imagining this would be a green ink, but no – I personally imagine it was chosen as a bright red to reflect Anne’s red hair in the story.
My favorite feature of the ink is the incredible gold sheen that shows up no matter what paper is used – haloing around every letter.
Anne of Green Gables on Tomoe River (TR7) 52 gsm paper:
Anne of Green Gables on Cosmo Air Light paper:
Anne of Green Gables on Midori MD paper:
Wearingeul Anne of Green Gables has lately become my favorite bright red ink. It can be found at Dromgoole’s for $25 for 30mL.
DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us free of charge for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
My friends and I had a grand time watching the eclipse on Monday. We met in my pal’s backyard and we ooo-ed and ahhh-ed over the eclipse. In the Kansas City area, we were able to see 89.3% of the full eclipse. It was totally worth it to not drive anywhere, and get to see a cool solar event and then go get sandwiches. Did you get to see the eclipse?
Even my pal’s dog Arlo got a chance to check out the eclipse — safely!
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I have always been a fan of Opus 88 pens for their look/style. Unfortunately, they’re also often quite large pens which makes them not as comfortable for me to use. So I was thrilled a few weeks ago to find out about Goldspot’s Opus 88 Mini Fountain Pen in Sakura Cherry Blossoms ($79) and ordered one immediately.
The Sakura Cherry Blossoms is made much the way other Opus 88 models are. It features and acrylic resin body with color printed design. The mini features a #5 Jowo steel nib (available in XF, F, M, B and 1.4mm stub) and silver-colored hardware (ring and clip). It also features Opus’ eyedropper filling system which means you can just fill it with ink and go!
Opus 88’s Mini Fountain Pen fits right into the category of pocket pens, featuring a capped length of 4.75″ (12cm). While it is definitely shorter than many of the Opus 88’s, it also has slightly more girth than some of the other pocket pens I enjoy using. You can see that the Kaweco AL Sport comes in much shorter than the Cherry Blossoms, but the Franklin Christoph P45 is closer in size. I grabbed a Platinum Preppy (not really a pocket pen) just for size comparison.
L to R: Kaweco X Hello Kitty AL Sport, Franklin Christoph Special Vanness P45, Opus 88 Mini Sakura Cherry Blossoms, Platinum Preppy Wa Modern Maki-e
Now let’s talk about the writing! I had a bit a of trouble starting this one. I don’t know if it’s that the nib and feed were a bit tight, or that I chose to fill it with Sailor Jentle Sakura Mori (I mean how could I not?), but it took me a few minutes to get the ink flowing smoothly. After that it was easy to use. I chose the fine nib, and it writes quite nicely. I can’t decide if the Sakura Mori is practical for every day writing (it’s pretty light in a fine nib), but I know I’m going to enjoy this pen for spring and many seasons to come.
DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us free of charge for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
