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Tag: Sailor

Ink Battle: Sailor and Sailor

Posted in Ink

No matter how much I try to sample or test an ink before buying it, sometimes that isn’t possible. Because of this, I have some inks that are incredibly similar in color. That’s where “ink battles” come in.

You can assume I have no problems with any ink that appears in an ink battle. I may decide, when using the inks side-by-side, that one performs better, but the point of the battle is to choose a favorite color. I use a pair of similar inks in pens with the same nib, then test them out to see which I like better.

Or, I may find out that, when used with the same nib, they’re sufficiently different to keep them both. Depending on how these “battles” turn out, I may tag some of the posts as ink dupes as well. You can find all of the ink battles posts on the tag page.

Ink Faves by Color

Posted in Ink

After taking the ink rainbow challenge, I started thinking about what my favorite ink(s) in each color are. I had to expand the color categories, and, even then, I have a couple of honorable mentions. Quick note: I worked through this post without reviewing my ink rainbow post, only comparing the two when I was done. There’s a bit of overlap.

In case you didn’t read the ink rainbow post and are wondering why I’m doing two such similar posts, the main difference is the selection criteria. For the ink rainbow post, I listed the first ink that came to mind. For this post, I’m sharing my favorite inks.

I’ve done my best to photoshop the individual ink swatches to look true-to-life, but that’s easier said than done, especially with any color that has red in it.

Now, enough chatting, on to the inks.

Pens For Sale

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Non-Fountain Pens

As I mentioned in my Time for a Change post, I did my best to do a brutal declutter of my pens. With Jim’s help, I pushed past some of the, “it’s pretty, I need it.” Overall, it may not be a massive declutter of pens, but it’s a significantly larger one than I’ve done before. Of course, that means I now need to sell them. The below pens are for sale and have videos on my Instagram stories.

You can reach out to me on Instagram if you’re interested in purchasing a pen. If you don’t have Instagram, leave me a comment and make sure to add your email address in the specified field so I can reach out to you. Don’t worry, the email address won’t show up in the posted comment.

Please note, prices are in USD and do not include shipping.

My “Lucky Catches”

Posted in Fountain Pens

How many times have you missed out on a limited edition? Or discovered a product you want only to learn that it was introduced — and discontinued — years ago? I’m guessing you can think of at least a few instances of each.

Now, how often has a product you considered a lost cause made it into your collection? I’d bet this time you have less instances. You likely consider those occasions when you managed to snag something you didn’t think you would to be rather lucky. I certainly do, and I want to share a few lucky catches that are part of my collection.

Pen Porn: Sailor Pro Gear Sakura Nagare

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 images to view them larger. I do my best to provide you with the high-quality pen porn. 😉

The History

The Sailor Professional Gear Sakura Nagare is a rather special pen. I came across the design while looking up photos for my out of reach pens post. The one I saw then was the new, 19111 King of Pen model. It was so pretty, I did a quick Google search to learn more.

Sailor Pro Gear Sakura Nagare

Ink Rainbow

Posted in Ink

I’ve got another tag post today, but it actually originates in the fountain pen world this time! Issue 338 of Ink Journal (6/11/23) featured Ginger Peachy Pens‘ YouTube video, A Rainbow of Ink Faves TAG #InkRainbow23.

An ink rainbow seems especially apropos given that it’s pride month. I’m following Sarah’s rule of going with the first ink to come to mind in each color category, but I’m adjusting the color categories somewhat.

I don’t have enough pink inks to need a magenta-specific category, but I do have enough gray inks to warrant their own category. I also have enough blues and purples to add blue-black and blurple.

Dupe The Expensive Vibes

Posted in Fountain Pens

If you’ve been a fountain pen person for any length of time, you likely know that their prices have a VERY wide range. But, if you aren’t married to a name brand, you can get the feel of more expensive pens for a small fraction of the cost.

Granted, I make no promises on the quality of the various pens and nibs. Some may be great, some may be crap. But, these let you have that expensive look without the dollar outlay. And, if you’re saving enough on the pen, there’s little a good nibmeister can’t fix.

Note: I’m NOT talking about knock-offs today. That will be in a future post.

Year in Review – 2022 Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Non-Fountain Pens

While it was difficult to do last year, ranking my pen purchases was a useful exercise. So, I decided to do it again. I have to say, I’m embarrassed by the long list of pens I purchased this year. I was hoping to buy less pens this year, not more. But I’ll discuss that in another post.

I realize that this is a long block of text. But, if I added a photo of each pen, it would take absolutely forever to get through. So, for pens that I’ve already discussed in a dedicated post, I’ve linked to that post (and the photos contained therein). For the rest, where possible, I linked to an Instagram photo from the pen maker or store they collaborated with. When that wasn’t possible, I linked to a good photo on Instagram (consider following those fine folks) or one of my own Instagram posts.

Pen Porn: Sailor Profit Maki-e Maiko

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 images to view them larger. I do my best to provide you with the high-quality pen porn. 😉

On September 1st, Goulet Pen Co. sent out an email announcing their Sailor “Don’t Miss the Boat” sale. I’m assuming it has something to do with Sailor’s upcoming price increase, but I digress. I wasn’t looking for any Sailor pens, but I decided to take a look and see what was on offer.

To my surprise, I found a pen I wanted. I’ve really been enjoying urushi art pens, and the Maiko caught my eye, especially considering it was approximately half price. The sale price put it at just a bit higher than a standard Pro Gear pen, so I bought another pen that I shouldn’t have. I’m not doing well at all in my quest to buy less pens this year.

Sailor 1911S Maki-e Maiko

My Pen Collection Part 1

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Non-Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

“Less Expensive” Pens

We’re back to posts you requested! I’ve been considering dedicating a post or two to showing off my pen collection for a while. When I saw that quite a few of you were interested in that as well, I started thinking about how best to manage it.

I knew I couldn’t share them all in one post. That’s WAY too much at once. Instead, I’ve decided to break this into three roughly equal parts. This one will focus on my less expensive mainstream pens. I’ll link to part two and part three once they’re posted.

Pen Mini Reviews – BWIPS ’22 Haul

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Non-Fountain Pens

Well, I meant for this to go up on Tuesday, but I just didn’t get to it. You all seemed to enjoy my pen mini reviews of my DC Pen Show Haul, so I’m doing them again with my BWIPS 2022 haul. I hope you enjoy this one, too. FYI, I’m listing the pens in purchase order.

As usual, click on any image to view it larger.

all pens from my haul
A full rotation of pens in one haul.

BWIPS 2022 Show Experience – Part 2

Posted in Pen Shows

Alright, I’m back for part 2. If you didn’t read part 1, you won’t have a problem following along with part 2, but you’ll have missed a large part of my pen show haul. Grab a snack, because this is a long one, too.

As I mentioned before, you’ll notice a dearth of photos of the show itself. My focus on enjoying myself resulted in me not taking a single photo while in the show room. But, you can get your fill of BWIPS imagery on Instagram by looking up #bwips2022 or #baltimorepenshow2022, visiting the BWIPS website, or watching Mike Matteson’s — AKA Inkdependencevideo on YouTube.

Year in Review – 2021 Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Non-Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

Both last year and in 2019 I wrote about my biggest pen wins and regrets. It was fun to look back on my pens, so I decided to do the same thing this year. However, with my 2021 Top Pens post, I basically already did that. So, I decided to do something I’ve seen in the YouTube makeup world — surprise, surprise — and rank all of my pen purchases.

Note: Some of the pens have already been discussed in recent posts. If a description looks familiar, that’s likely why. Also, where possible, I linked to an Instagram photo from the pen maker or store they collaborated with. When that wasn’t possible, I linked to a good photo on Instagram (consider following those fine folks). And, when all else failed, I linked to my own photos on Instagram.

2021 New Pen Releases, The Tag

Posted in Fountain Pens, and Ink

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

This post is based on the “New Makeup Releases | THE TAG” video from Angelica Nyqvist. She’s done this tag for several years, and I thought it would be fun to adapt it to the fountain pen world.

This tag is about evaluating the releases — in this case pens & inks — from the past year.

My 10 Most-Used Inks

Posted in Ink

The other day, I was going through my inks, and I couldn’t help but wonder what inks I use most. So, me being me, I dug into my data, and pulled out my 10 most-used inks. To figure out which they were, I looked for which inks have been used in my last four notebooks (since I started tracking inks). Only 6 inks were used in all 4 notebooks. The remaining 4 were inks that I used for both regular rotation in 3 notebooks and had in always inked pens.

Honestly, I was rather surprised by the results, as these aren’t my favorite inks. At least, not the inks I think of when asked about favorites. Maybe I’ll cover those in another post.

Note: This list is in alphabetical order. I scanned my personal ink swabs from my ink notebook. I’ve done my best to make the inks look true-to-life, but I can’t account for everyone’s screen settings, only mine.

Fails from my Favorites

Posted in Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

I’m not sure where it originated, but the other day I watched a video from Angelica Nyqvist about fails from her favorite makeup brands. Seeing as I had so much fun with adapting the makeup tag to pens, I figured I could do the same thing with this. So, without further ado, here are some fails (for me) from some of my favorite pen brands.

Disclaimer: I’m calling this “fails,” but that refers to failing to satisfy my pen wants & needs. These aren’t bad pens, I just don’t like them. Also, the alliteration is fun.

Sailor Fatigue

Posted in Fountain Pens

It took me quite a while to get into Sailor pens. I didn’t buy my first until October 2019 — 2 ¾ years after buying my first fountain pen. Not gonna lie, I’m still pretty pleased with that initial Sailor purchase — the Tequila Sunrise. It was, is, a worthy first Sailor purchase.

I’ve bought 13 more Sailor pens since then, all in the Pro Gear family, 10 of which I’ve kept. Not a bad ratio, and compared to my total pen purchases, not too terribly many. However, it does encompass the most fountain pens I’ve purchased of the same general model. It ties with TWSBI 580s, at 11, for most fountain pens I own of the same general model.

To be honest, I’d likely own more Sailor Pro Gears if they were less expensive and more easily purchased. But, fairly often, the ones I found interesting were from super small runs through stores that don’t sell online. And we all know what eBay sellers do to prices. But I digress…

My 2020 Top Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

In working on blog posts for the new year, I wanted to revisit last year’s favorite pens, only to realize I hadn’t previously written such a list. So, to have something to revisit next year, I give you my top pens as of the close of 2020.

I tend to sell or trade pens that don’t make me very happy to own. I’m hoping to eventually get to a point where all of my pens are favorites, but I was able to come up with a top 10 and top 20 this year. It was difficult to do, but these are basically the pens you’d have to pry out of my cold, dead hands.