Finding happiness in old ink loves
Three pen and ink pairings carry over from last week. My daily driver, the Platinum 3776, still centers the lineup. The Visconti offers a pop of bright blue for accent notes. And the Safari remains a favorite go-to for extended writing sessions.
I chose this week’s three additions pen-first. The criteria were: specialty nibs that have sat in my pen tray for a while.
A B SIG and Z Architect are certainly specialty grinds. Both are also huge line widths. Easily suited to accent writing, even with darker ink colors.
My final choice of specialty nib is Pilot’s soft fine (or, SF). Fine enough to work as a legible marking pen. And softy enough to lend a fun (forgiving) bounce to long writing sessions and quickly scrawled notes.
All three new inks are long-time favorites. Old loves. Classics within the mnmlscholar collection. Heck, Aonibi is my all-time favorite blue ink. Joy is the point, after all.
I paired inks with pens so as to balance a broad line width with a narrow line width within blues and earth tones. A B SIG to counter-balance an EF. A SF for offset a B.
And Sakuranezumi found a home in the Sailor Pro Gear Slate because seeing the dark purple ink in a denim blue pen makes me smile. Again: happy happy.
Grey/Black
Platinum 3776 Star Wars Kylo Ren (F). Diamine Earl Grey. Three qualities make this pen a fantastic daily driver for me. The narrow EF line is perfect for marking checkboxes during task management. The Platinum cap ensures the pen writes right away when uncapped. And Earl Grey is able to shade enough to remain fun, even in an EF nib. This is also my structure combo: lines, borders, and dividers in lesson plan outlines and meeting notes.
Blue/Teal
Franklin-Christoph 45 Diamondcast Blue (B SIG, by Franklin-Christoph). Kyo-no-oto Aonibi. Aonibi is a dry ink with excellent shading. The B SIG is quite wet. Combined, this pair is a contained writer that lays down a quick-drying line. Suited to accent notes in lesson plans, reading notes, and journaling — mostly due to line thickness.
Visconti Homo Sapiens Blizzard (EF). Monteverde Caribbean Blue. This combo has aged into good performance. At present, the pair is dry and toothy — and shades moderately. Not wet enough for sheen to make an appearance. The round nib lends forgiving writing, which is excellent for quickly jotted meeting notes, scratch notes, and long-form journaling.
Earth Tones
Lamy Safari Blue Macaron (B). Colorverse Brane, shimmer. Brane’s shading has grown more prominent as it settled in the Lamy’s feed last week. The subtle amount of shimmer lends easy reading to notes laying feet away on my lectern while teaching. More, the B nib is just fun. Fun is enough of a reason to include this combo in longer writing tasks like journaling, letter writing, manuscript drafting, and outline notes.
Pilot Custom Heritage 912 (SF). Diamine Ancient Copper. The SF nib is smooth and bouncy. What a fun combo. This is my marking pen and ink. The 912’s stately black and rhodium colorway fits in during in-person meetings. And Ancient Copper is striking enough to work as an accent during these meetings. Marking, meeting notes, lesson plans, journaling.
Wild Cards
Sailor Pro Gear (Z Architect, by Custom Nib Studio). Kyo-no-oto Sakuranezumi. The Z feed is generous, resulting in wet and dark lines. Sakuranezumi is dry enough to ensure the broad lines dry in a reasonable time period. The EF side of the architect grind dries immediately. Taken together, I’m experimenting with this pair as my pocket carry. Although, perhaps in a shirt pocket rather than a pant pocket. For safety. Pocket notes, lesson plans, journaling.
