Permutations of good pen and ink pairings, and really bad eggs
My favorite part of working in analog – or living within a hobby like stationery – is greeting new experiences. Each new ink you buy offers a novel color option, and a new writing experience with every pen you put it in. Every new pen offers a unique writing experience with each of the inks in your collection.
Add your paper choices to pen and ink combinations. And nib sizes. Permutations of new experiences – and wonderful discoveries.
I pulled a newfound favorite ink of mine, Monteverde’s Caribbean Blue, and one of my first favorite pens, a Faber-Castell Loom, on Thursday night. The Loom even had a M nib – which is a rare presence in my collection. I was excited to see how old-me’s preferences in pens and now-me’s preferences in inks paired up.
{gasp of potential}
Once opened, Caribbean Blue sent up a sulfurous odor. Bad eggs was a new and unexpected experience. A bit of digging in the Fountain Pen Network’s archives suggests the probable culprit is a manufacturing contaminant from when the ink was made. A quick smell-check of my other Monteverde inks uncovered one additional bottle in sulfurous repair: Gratitude.
Boo.
Multiple reports also suggest that Monteverde has been standing by their ink and replacing in good faith bottles that have gone bad. I had no doubts. I’ve reached out to Monteverde. I still have my receipts from my early 2020 purchase of both bottles.
While I will miss this bottle of ink, I’m grateful for the affair. I have an interesting story. I now have first-hand knowledge I can use to check the rest of my inks. And really bad eggs.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. This week’s currently inked family worked well as a group. No single pairing stood out.
Lamy Safari Terra (EF) — Empty. A fantastic combination. Wrote smoothly on poor pocket notebook paper. Showed off shading and sheen on coated paper. Secure snap-cap for pocket security. Pocket carry. Scratch notes, meeting notes, manuscript marking, two grocery lists.
Platinum 3776 (B) — Empty. Smooth, broad lines. Vaikhari sheened and shaded. Journaling was exciting. Too broad for lesson plans, but suited headings in meeting notes well. Journaling, meeting notes, lesson plan (singular).
Mythic Aeschylus (EF) — Dumped. A fantastic EF nib in a lovingly detailed pen. Sargasso Sea did not spark joy. Remained in my pen case three of seven days this week. Will be paired with another blue for the coming week. Lesson plans, reading notes (accent), meeting notes, task highlighting in weekly.
Faber-Castell Loom (M) — Feed. Supershow Teal is a wet ink. Loom’s M laid down a B line – with haloing and subtle sheen. My journaling pen since I inked this combo. Journaling, meeting notes, reading notes (accent).
TWSBI Vac700R (F-CSI) — Feed. Evolved into a primary meeting notetaker. Stub is forgiving, even when writing quickly. That’s not a given with stub nibs. Meeting notes, lesson plans, journaling.
Pelikan m805 (F Architect) — 1/3. Withstands the burdens of highlighting with grace and dignity. Healthy shading. Disciplined F and EF lines. Excellent for managing a task lists and for scratch notes. Agate is a bit light for easy reading. Daily driver. Task management, scratch notes, reading notes, meeting notes.
Visconti Homo Sapiens (F) — ??. Rockstar pairing. Whitman shades to extremes of dark and light. The color works well as an accent for notetaking. The generous Visconti feed made for smooth writing, even when writing quickly. Meeting notes, reading notes, lecture notes, lesson plans, journaling.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Hobonichi A5 Plain Notebook. 14 new pages this week, spanning pages 74 to 88. The first page, an odd right-side start, is filled with lesson planning notes.
The next two new pages house the mainstay two-page weekly spread for tracking my running task list. Then six pages of lesson plan outlines. Two pages of meeting notes. Three more pages of lecture notes from my school’s symposium of outside speakers on racial justice and inclusive community-building.
Two colors make notes easily searchable
The week’s pages end with notes from an open house event on page 88.
Journal. Unbranded A5 Cosmo Air Light Notebook. Nine new pages of writing bring me back down into a usual amount of journaling compared to last week.
Four entries this week. Nearly half of my journaling was with the newly inked Loom.
The most recent page was added just last night. My father-in-law and I exchanged pens. Flex nibs sit outside of my personal experience. He brought a handful of lovely flex nibs.
I call this artwork, “Attempted flex writing in brown ink”
He also brought his new Narwhal Schuylkill. I’ve been interested in trying Narwhal’s in-house nibs. His M nib writes quite well. The pen’s width was comparable to my Pelikan m805. I’m far more positive on the prospect of adding a Narwhal to my collection, but with a F nib.
Written dry. I wrote two pens dry this week. The Lamy Safari ran dry Tuesday afternoon. I was making a note in my pocket notebook. Schwarz Rose wrote reliably, without clogs, even with a Lamy EF nib. Well done, Robert Oster. SR is a fun shimmer ink that refuses to clog. I dig a shimmer ink without overhead.
The Platinum 3776 dried out during a journaling session Thursday evening. The B nib brought out the green in Vaikhari. While the B lines made notetaking challenging, faster writing during meetings and journaling offered B-friendly spaces for writing.
Another two pens are down to their feeds: the TWSBI Vac and Faber-Castell Loom. These pens are opposites in meaningful ways. The Vac holds 2.3 ml of ink. The Loom: a standard 0.8 ml. The Vac has a large #6 nib. The Loom sports a #5 nib. The Vac is flashy and prefers center stage. The Loom is understated, bordering on minimalist with it’s lovely dimpling. I’m a sucker for dimples.
Newly inked. The FC Loom came in out off the pen tray Tuesday night. I chose a M nib simply for the variety. I haven’t had a M inked in months.
Take that, routine
The Loom is an old favorite of mine – and was one of the first fountain pens in my collection. I quickly accumulated more than one Loom. They were the first line of fountain pens I’ve owned more than one of at the same time.
The clip works great on paper and fabric. And the cap seats securely while snapped on. Combined: the Loom makes a decent pocket carry.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. No new orders this week.
Outgoing / trades or sales. No sales or trades this week. I do still have an All-Black Lamy Safari loaned out to a good friend who lives across town.
And there is a bottle of Diamine Sargasso Sea on offer to my local pen group.
A bit too indigo for my palette
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. Progress on Rhythm of War stalled. And for good reason: I’m nearly finished with Cervini’s legal history.
My partner and I made headway into Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear. We’re now two chapters – 55 pages – into the novel. We’re at the inn on the second morning, outside of Kvothe’s biographic tale-spinning. Rothfuss does an excellent job of building Kvothe into a flawed narrator you want to believe.
Nonfiction. Cervini’s history of Frank Kameny’s advocacy efforts is a fun read for me. I made a lot of progress this week: another 100 pages.
That graphite life, at 192
I read academic books in two waves. Wave one is a skim. My skimming focuses on charting the author’s argument. I’m on page 192 of my first wave. Wave two, a deep read for supporting evidence, is at least another week away – if I keep my current pace.
Music. YouTube suggested Lous and the Yakuza’s Tiny Desk concert mid-week. Wow. I dig a band that can be mellow and energetic at the same time. Like if spiced chai started a band.
Boop.
