My ADHD brain in blog form.
Posted in Fountain Pens
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for pen envy or impulse purchases resulting from viewing this post.
Per usual, you can click on the pen images to view them larger. I do my best to provide you with high-quality pen porn. 😉
I first saw this pen as a story on Yulia Glas‘ Instagram account. I thought she was planning a bubble pen. Clearly, I was very wrong. I believe I next saw it on Stanford Pen Studio‘s stories, and knew I had to have it.
Posted in Stationery
I’ve got something a little different for you today. Rather than pens, I’m devoting a post to pencils. Mechanical pencils, to be specific. NOTE: I’m not affiliated with JetPens in any way, they simply have a lot of useful information and carry a lot of cool stuff.
Through middle and high school — grades/years 6-12 of my education — I used mechanical pencils as my primary writing implements. Then in college/university, I continued using mechanical pencils fairly often.
My favorite was a 0.5mm Pilot Dr. Grip Ltd in pale blue. I don’t have it anymore — it finally fell apart a few years ago — but it was the same as the one in this review.
Posted in Ink
This ink battle is between Robert Oster Velvet Storm and Lamy Petrol — Lamy’s Safari-matching ink from 2017. The inks weren’t in any pens, but I did use a Sailor Hocoro dip pen with an F nib. The paper is Kokuyo KB loose leaf.
Today’s ink battle is also an ink dupe with two “off-black” inks. Since they’re so dark, I decided to play with them so you can truly see their potential. Inspired by Azizah‘s Inky Messes and Candace‘s Doodling with Fountain Pens classes, I have a truly inky battle.
Between myself and Jim buying inks, we own far too many. This means I have some inks that are incredibly similar in color. And, because of that, I need to figure out which inks to keep and which to dispose of. Sometimes, I have samples of two or more similar inks that I'm trying to decide which to buy, or if I should buy one ink when I already own a bottle of a similar one.
Enter ink battles. I put the similar inks into pens with the same nibs (two Jowo #6 M, two TWSBI F, etc.), or I create ink splats and doodles, to test them out to see which I like better. Or, I may find out that they’re sufficiently different to keep.
You can assume I have no problems with any ink that appears in an ink battle. I may find, when using the inks side-by-side, that there are performance differences, but the point of the battle is to choose a favorite ink, a "winner". These choices are often subjective, and you may disagree with me.
An ink battle — unlike ink dupes — is between inks I like. I enjoy using them enough to have them in my "for use" ink collection — as opposed to my repository of inks for testing dupes. If an ink performed poorly or caused problems, I wouldn’t keep it. And, if that were the case, an ink battle would be unnecessary.
Reminder: You can find all of the ink battle posts on the tag page.
Posted in Fountain Pens
If you’ve been here a while, you already know I have a lot of altered nibs. If you’re fairly new here, then my recent nib overview post likely gave you a clue.
I have 32 altered nibs from 9 different nib customizers/meisters. About 10-15 nibs ago, I realized I need a foolproof way to keep track of them. I settled on a two-part system involving marking the nibs and storing them.
The storage is the simpler part, and likely isn’t unique to me. I store the nibs in a bead storage box. I’ve done this for a while, but recently downsized for portability. I store the rest of my unaltered nibs in the previous, larger container.
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for pen envy or impulse purchases resulting from viewing this post.
Per usual, you can click on the images to view them larger. I do my best to provide you with high-quality pen porn. 😉
To be completely transparent, I’ve been feeling a bit disenchanted with the 100° Anniversario since Aurora released the Duca. I don’t like that a pen as special as this one — developed as the company’s signature 100th anniversary pen — has been “copied-and-pasted” in blue for a regular release. I’m hoping this post will rekindle my love for it.
