I asked my spouse to suggest a name for my color palette this week. They said, “clouds or something stormy.” I can see where the palette evokes clouds and storms. We’re going with ‘seafoam storm.’ For the first time in a while, I have only one earth tone inked. Cool blues and purples take the day.

Kaweco makes a small converter for their pocket pens. It’s a hard plastic cylinder. A plunger on the end creates suction and a seal for the tiny ink chamber. It works well enough. Until it doesn’t.

There is a decided lack of symmetry in my color selections. The first half of the week will be reading heavy. Accent colors that stand out from my usual muted palette make reading notes more easily referenced. So: bright blue, purple and orange are all in the pen tray.

The urge to customize one of my pens hits me every now and again. Customizing a nib takes many forms: smoothing on fine-mesh, tuning and aligning mis-aligned tines, and even reshaping the tipping at the end of the nib (or: grinding a nib).