In Fountain Pen Review

Fountain Pen Review: Kaweco Sport Collector’s Edition Iridescent

Author AnaPosted on 2 Comments
Fountain Pen Review: Kaweco Sport Collector’s Edition Iridescent

One of the best things about working a pen show is getting to see, handle and try new pens. I get to see firsthand, over the course of a weekend, many pens I have not seen in person before. Sometimes they are pens I have wondered “How big is that pen?” or “Is the new finish really pretty?” In the case of the new Kaweco Collector’s Edition Iridescent Fountain Pen ($27) , yes. It really is THAT pretty.

The plastic is translucent with very fine iridescent shimmer particles embedded in the material. Depending on how you hold it to the light, it will look pink, purple, yellow, green or turquoise blue. Because of the faceted cap it often looks like all those colors at once.

I applaud Kaweco for continuing to play with the materials they use on these intro level pens. It really is a delight to look at and knowing its such a reasonable price doesn’t make it overly precious. It’s a little magical unicorn party for your pocket.

But the other rad thing about a pen show is looking up from the table where I’m working and see a nib grinder, THE Nib Grinder, sitting just across the room from me. Because what does a magical unicorn pen need most? A magical nib. So I swapped out the standard F nib on the pen for a BB nib and trotted over to Mark Bacas to have him grind the nib to a cursive italic. He rounded out the corners just a bit for my sometimes awkward left handed grip and behold!

Look at that delicious flat writing surface.

I realize it seems a bit absurd to spend $40 on a nib grind for a $27 pen but look at this writing sample and try to convince me it was not 100% worth it.

Probably the most challenging decision was what ink would look best with the shimmery exterior of the Kaweco Iridescent. I decided to go with a color-shifting greyish ink: Vinta Aegean Armada. I suspect this pen will consistently be filled with one of the magical color-shifting inks. Which one should I try next? Maybe one of the new Sailor inks?

Tools:

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by Vanness Pen Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

In Link Love

Link Love: Stolen Plants Always Grow

Author AnaPosted on 1 Comment
Link Love: Stolen Plants Always Grow

While April weather is a crap shoot — one day warm and sunny, the next day is frost warnings and grey, spitting rain, it seems like plants and gardening have been on my mind. Lots of the flowering shrubs are blooming bring vibrant pinks and yellows to our neighborhood after months of grey and it makes my heart sing. Coincidentally, Austin Kleon posted about “proplifting” this week. While I’ve never stolen a cutting from a garden center, I have received cuttings from friends and, for the first time in my life, I’ve actually been able to propagate new plants from the cuttings. I trimmed back my basil plant and its sprouting in new places just like I hoped so I’m getting more confident about my gardening skills. While I am not super outdoorsy I do love plants and have always been able to keep them alive but now I’m feeling more confident about my skills and looking forward to extending my gardening skills. Do you garden? Do you document your plantings in a journal? Have you ever “proplifted”?

(via Austin Kleon)

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In Fountain Pen Review

GIVEAWAY: Lamy Safari Strawberry and Cream

Author Laura CameronPosted on 118 Comments

If you’re on Team Safari, then today’s giveaway will be right up your alley. Leena from Pen Boutique (another woman-owned pen shop!) generously sent us two gift sets for giveaway: one in Strawberry and one in Cream. That means TWO lucky winners will get a new pen. The sets include the Lamy Safaris pictured, a converter, a package of cartridges and a bottle of ink.

Sadly, Lamy didn’t design an ink of the year (how great would a mouth-watering strawberry ink have been???) so the cartridges and ink are both black. But play along and tell me what ink you’d want to put in your new pen if you won!

TO ENTER: Leave a comment below telling about us which color Safari you prefer (Strawberry or Cream) and what color ink you would put in your new pen!  (Play along and type in something. It makes reading through entries more interesting for me, okay?) One entry per person.

If you have never entered a giveaway or commented on the site before, your comment must be manually approved by our highly-trained staff of monkeys before it will appear on the site. Our monkeys are underpaid and under-caffeinated so don’t stress if your comment does not appear right away. Give the monkeys some time.

FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by 10pm CST on Sunday, April 24, 2022. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Monday. TWO winners will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules, one for each color (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 5 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class is covered. Additional shipping options or insurance will have to be paid by the winner. We are generous but we’re not made of money. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.

DISCLAIMER: The pens included in this post were generously provided by Pen Boutique for the purposes of this giveaway.

In Pencil Review

Eye Candy: Perpetua Pencil Starbucks Reserve Milan Italy Pencil

Author Jaclyn MyersPosted on 2 Comments
Eye Candy: Perpetua Pencil Starbucks Reserve Milan Italy Pencil

Since listening to a certain monumental 500th episode back in February and watching many friends return to in-person pen shows I’ve been reflecting on the state of my stationery collection. I’ve shared a lot online about my favorite and most-used items over the years, but less about my most meaningful items.

So today I’m sharing some photos of one of my most meaningful stationery items. It’s an item that lives in a very prominent place in my home and breaks the mold of most of my stationery collection because it’s not an item I use very often. It is however, and item I see every day, think about very often, and would be one of the first items I would grab out the the door in case of disaster.

When I first fell down the stationery rabbit hole I was working as a pharmacist at a cancer center and became dear friends with a nurse that also worked there. It’s a toss up whether she found my stationery habit more endearing or ridiculous on any given day, but when she got the chance to visit Milan, Italy she completely surprised me when she brought this pencil all the way back to me and into my pharmacy after her trip. I’ve barely let it out of my sight ever since.

The Perpetua pencils are made up of of over 80% graphite and a good article with a little more info can be found here. More info on the beautiful Starbucks Roastery that collaborated on this pencil here. It’s an item that always brightens my day and reminds me of a good friend. What are some meaningful items that you own or items that break the mold in your collection?

In Pencil Review

Pencil Review: Midori MD Color Pencils

Author AnaPosted on 7 Comments
Pencil Review: Midori MD Color Pencils

I love pencils but I love books even more. This will become clear when I tell you I had every intention of posting this review this morning but I was so wrapped up in the book that I’ve been reading that I completely lost track of time this morning and had to toss my book down and race to work without ever finishing this post.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, what book were you reading that was so engrossing that you forgot to write a blog post? It was The Cartographers by Peng Shepard. It’s a lovely story about maps and the people who archive, research and collect them. I won’t give away any of the details but if you like libraries, maps and a little bit of magic, you’ll like this book.

That said, let’s talk about some delicious pencils while you wait for your copy of The Cartographers to arrive.

I’m hard pressed to think of a single Midori MD product that I haven’t liked and this set of Midori MD Color Pencils ($12) is no exception. The set includes two each of an orange, cyan blue and medium grey colored pencil. When I initially acquired these, I thought the grey pencils were graphite pencils but they are not. I am happy about this because, as a lefty, graphite often smudges but most colored pencils do not.

The exterior paint, rounded hex shape and slightly rounded ends make these looks and feel like premium Japanese pencils. They sharpened easily to fairly long points with my Dahle 133 Hand Crank Pencil Sharpener (approx. $19).

First, I tested these on the Leuchtturm1917 120gsm paper notebook. The blue and orange colors showed well and felt creamy and smooth on this lightly textured paper. The grey felt a little light on the ivory paper but not much so as to be unusable. I am just unlikely to reach for the grey on ivory paper for anything other than sketching and adding shadow to other elements. The orange and blue hold their own and felt surprisingly lovely on this relatively smooth paper.

The color erased mostly for a pencil that does not appear to be listed as erasable but not completely. The color did not smudge at all. My efforts to do too much blending of the colors was not particularly successful.

I decided to see how the pencils worked on toothier Col-o-ring OVERSIZE paper. The pencils are a bit harder than other art pencils (Prismacolor Premiers, etc) so there was more white from the paper showing through since the pencils were not soft enough to sort of melt into the paper texture.

Alternately, this means the pencils are a bit firmer, maintain their point longer and can be sharpened to a longer, finer point for detail work.

Overall, if you are looking for some pencils to annotate notes, I really like these. Do I wish they offered more colors? Emphatically, YES. Am I happy with this teeny mini set? Yes.

DISCLAIMER: Some items in this review include affiliate links. The Well-Appointed Desk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. Please see the About page for more details.

In feature, Ink Review

Pilot Iroshizuku New Colors

Author AnaPosted on 1 Comment
Pilot Iroshizuku New Colors

It has been quite a while since Pilot has added new colors to their Iroshizuku line. The addition this year is bittersweet – three inks will be added but another three (Ina-Ho,  Tsuyu-kusa, and Tsukushi) have been retired.

I was able to find a small box of 15mL bottles of the three new inks – Hotaru-Bi, Hana-Ikada, and Sui-Gyoku. They were packaged in a small booklet-box.

 

Hotaru-Bi is such a bright color that it is a bit tough to show in a photo.

When I first swatched this group, I was reminded of a stoplight trio. Not quite the same colors, but reminiscent of a traffic light.

Hotaru-Bi is a very bright but legible yellow-green. Ferris Wheel Press Fizzy Lime is the only color I have that is close – Hotaru-Bi is noticeably darker in writing, however.

Hana-Ikada is quite close to Pilot’s 100th Anniversary ink, Benzaiten. However, Hana-Ikada has subtle multi-color shading- light pink to an orangish coral.

Finally Sui-Gyoku. Comparing this ink to Iroshizuku Syo-Ro, you can see the blue-green difference. Again, some of the multi-color shading comes into play, ranging from turquoise blue to nearly emerald green.

I was a bit sloppy with swatches (during the Atlanta show), but below are the three new colors on Tomoe River paper.

Again, on Cosmo Air Light paper.

I’m happy with the new colors, and I think they look amazing as a trio. I am a bit disappointed that the Iroshizuku line will be losing three great inks, however. This trio won’t replace the three lost inks, although they are a welcome addition.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me. Sometimes items are purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

In Link Love

Link Love: Pen Gossip

Author AnaPosted on 14 Comments
Link Love: Pen Gossip

Several products reviewed this week reminded me thatI heard quite a bit of “insider” news while at the pen show last week.

First, a legal issue has arisen with TWSBI. Just prior to the Atlanta Pen Show, online pen shops received a letter from TWSBI telling them they had until May 1 to remove Narwhal and PenBBS from their catalogs. TWSBI is taking legal action against these companies for using their filling system technology and other components in their pens. I don’t have specifics about the letter but heard about it from several vendors in Atlanta. When you read the review of the PenBBS 456 Cordierite Fountain Pen on The Pen Addict, the similarity of the filling system to TWSBI’s Vac700 is very apparent so I can certainly see the possible issue.

In an effort to get Narwhal and PenBBS to change their designs, TWSBI is pressuring pen shops that sell the competing brands to remove them thereby hitting Narwhal and PenBBS where it will hurt them most — their bottom line. Of course, I question the percentage of overall sales of PenBBS and Narwhal in the US and how much this move will hurt them financially but I certainly understand the action.

Yoseka Stationery has a wonderful video (listed below) that walks through all the products currently available from TWSBI. She talks through all the filling systems and visual differences in the pens if you are not familiar with their whole product line.

Where do you stand on this issue? Do you own any Narwhal or PenBBS pens? Do you think they have crossed the line in their pen designs into copyright infringement territory?

The second issue is with Perpanep paper. I heard a rumor that the creator of the Perpanep line died recently and Kokuyo is not planning to continue the line after the existing stock is depleted. Sadly, I cannot find any news to corroborate this bit of gossip but I really like the paper and was looking forward to seeing where the Perpanep product line was headed. I guess I’ll grab a few more notebooks now, just in case this rumor is true.

Have you heard about either of these issues? If you have links to more information, please include them in the comments. Thanks.

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