Category: Fountain Pens & Ink

Categories Blog Fountain Pens & Ink Memes & Asks Personal

Friday 5 for June 24: Consumer reports

Answers to today’s questions @ f.riday5.com

1. When did you last eat or drink something purchased from a truck or other wheeled vehicle?

I don’t actually know if it’s wheeled, I’ve never looked but I don’t think it is… But strawberries from the fruit/vegetable movable kiosk in front of my grocery last summer. Before that, ice cream kiosk some earlier summer might have been a wheeled kiosk or not. So to be clear, I’m not too sure!

2. When did you last purchase something previously owned?

It’s been more than a decade – I don’t usually buy used because I can’t afford to risk being cheated/product being bad condition/broken and not have a quarantee and/or return right. I used to buy DVDs used in late 90s and early 00s a lot though because I watched a lot of movies, but haven’t needed to do that either. These days the DVDs/Blurays I want to buy are usually rare enough to I’m lucky to be able to find at all, never mind used ones.

3. When did a purchase most recently exceed your expectations?

I don’t buy stuff that often so “recent” in this case means the last year. I’ve been exceedingly happy with the two Jinhao X750 fountain pens I bought in March 2021. They work so well!

4. When did you last overpay for something because you needed it right away?

I think I overpaid for The Colbys DVD set I bought a while back. I didn’t “need” it, but Amazon was the only place that had it and the price hadn’t changed for over a year, and I did need to buy something else from Amazon that would’ve been a ridiculous buy alone so I bought the DVD set too.

5. Among recent purchases, what was the best bargain?

A month ago Paperimuru had their entire catalog off by 20% so I bought a bunch of MU print-on-stickers. I’m now set with stickers for the rest of the year!

Categories Blog Fountain Pens & Ink Personal Stationery

J. Herbin Fountain Pen Inks

I’m so in love with several of the J. Herbin inks that I’ve been inking my two JInhao X750 pens with only them the last three or four months 😀 I didn’t expect to love them as much as I do – they’re my favorites along with Pilot Iroshizuku inks.

Image by J. Herbin

I bought six colors in international standard cartridges (they come in cute little tin cans! colors in the regular line shown in above image) instead of bottles just so I could give some of each color to my Mom – who relies on me to give her inks because she goes through ink a lot slower than I do, and doesn’t speak English so can’t order them online herself – and also, just so I would have some cartridges I could just snap in, especially if I’m out and about, instead of having to deal with filling from a bottle. I’ve also found I love using up cartridges – I seem to finish them faster than converters, and feel accomplished every time I do!

I’m totally in love with Violette Pensée and Rouge Caroubier, so much that I used two cartridges of both in row which is unusual for me, I usually want to switch inks when a pen runs out. Also love Corail des Tropiques and Rouge Grenat just may be my favorite dark red. Admittedly, I’ve only used them in the two Jinhao X750s so I don’t know how they behave in other pens, but in these, the these inks flow perfectly 😀 Especially Violette Pensée is delightful – so cheerful yet calm and a pleasure to write with, I always feel happy when I’m writing with it 😀

I’ve been trying to get Rouge Opéra and Orange Indien cartridges along with a few of the other J. Herbin colors while doing my last few online orders, but they seem to be out-of-stock every time 🙁

I don’t like majority of blue inks because they remind me of those cheap pens you can buy anywhere/work gives you which would dry up on after a couple of weeks of use. So blues even by makers such as Pilot Iroshizuku though they write excellently and might even sheen or shade, I still find boring. The association is just too strong. I seem to be favoring reds, pinks and violet inks along along with some teal ones. I have many reds/pinks and a few violets I love, but only three blues I even like: Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-peki, Organics Studio Copper Turquoise and my newest find Robert Oster Fire & Ice – at the moment I’m very much into this last one. I only have a sample of it, but definitely want a full bottle at some point down the line. Fire & Ice is a pleasure to write with and look at 🙂

Categories Blog Fountain Pens & Ink Personal Stationery

Notebooks

So, wickedlittletown over at Dreamwidth had the idea to take photos of favorite notebooks… here’s mine!

My favorite size is A5, I love A4s as well but I don’t need large ones like that very much anymore.

EDIT: added Notebooks 5 because I forgot two important ones!

Notebooks 1

My functional, every day type of notebooks. The top row are all by Nikki Strange; the two A5 ones I use for making quick notes while at doctors, or at the unemployment office etc. The A4 one I use when I need to write a lot – usually assignments given at a rehabilitation program or some such. These do okay with fountain pens (at least the inks I’ve used on them so far) but don’t show sheen/shading, and very wet inks/wet pens might feather on this paper. But I’ve found it acceptable so far.

The bottom row are my most used notebooks. The first one I made myself, inspired by Lotus Blu Book Art‘s watercolor notebooks. I printed an image bought off on Etsy on cotton rag paper, used that as cover and 52gsm Tomoe River paper for the paper. It’s a simple pamphlet stitch, which I learned by following Lotus Blu Book Art‘s video tutorial on how to do it. It takes about 15 minutes so it’s really quick! This one is my inked fountain pens log – whenever I ink a pen, I use that pen to note what pen it is, what nib and which ink. This way I have examples on how the pen/nib/ink combo looks on 52gsm Tomoe River, and can easily reference back if I love or hate some combo.

The green one is a hard cover Rhodia Goalbook, which is for various record keeping and tracking – books read, new books I’ll want to read in the future, online orders I’ve made and am waiting to arrive, ink bottles I have, ink samples I have, vacuuming dates… all sorts of stuff that I can’t rely on my memory for. It’s an okay paper for fountain pens, but doesn’t show sheen/shading as well as Tomoe River or Oxford paper (below).

The last one is my most used notebook – my illness log. I log and track my symptoms here every day. It’s a hard cover Oxford Black n’ Red, it’s thin but surprisingly heavy notebook. It came in a pack of three, and I’ve almost filled the first of them up and I’m very glad I have two more waiting to go. It takes fountain pens beautifully, shows sheen and shading well; it’s my favorite paper right after 52gsm Tomoe River. It is rather boring (just white, lined pages) and because the content which I write is always neutral or bad it started to make me feel bad, which led me to pretty it up with stickers (MU print on stickers) and washi tape. So now it’s looks very nice, with pretty ink, stickers and washi tape. And now I’m happy keeping this particular log.

More behind the cut!

Continue reading Notebooks

Categories Blog Fountain Pens & Ink

Pottering Around With Fountain Pen Ink

Jinhao X750 Rose Gold, one of my favorite fountain pens. Image by unknown.

One of the first ink samples I ever got was KWZ’s Brown Pink, which all the reviews I’ve seen say is either wet or medium wet. My experience with it is that it’s dry – every pen I’ve ever tried it on, hard starts with it 😥 Even in my trusty Jinhao X750 with an M nib which even my dry inks have loved, and that has worked awesomely with all the other inks I’ve tried it with. But when I put Brown Pink in it, only hard starts and never gets going well.

I’ve read a lot of advice to add some White Lightning by Vanness to improve ink flow. I’d love to try White Lightning, but Vanness is a US shop and while they also have two inks I’m salivating after, shipping from US is crazy expensive and will also require VAT to be paid once the package arrives to Finland, making an already expensive purchase even more so. It’s just not cost effective in any way. So Vanness and White Lightning are right out!

Many also say that you can do the same with Dawn dish soap – well, we don’t have Dawn but from looks of it, it like our Fairy and others like it.  I decided to try the only colorless (because I’m not sure if Dish is colorless or yellow like Fairy) liquid dish soap my grocery store does have. I figured even if the experiment fails, nothing would be lost but a about one  milliliter of troublesome ink that I’d likely throw out anyway because it just. won’t. work. And if the pen doesn’t like it, well, it’s just a cheap Jinhao X750 so it’s not a huge loss either. I paid like 3,5USD for it and can always buy more if necessary. And dish soap is what can be used to clean out fountain pens too, so it shouldn’t do anything to it.

So the other day I injected some Brown Pink into an empty vial (which I had nicely handy from other already used up ink samples) with a blunt syringe, took a tooth pick and stirred it in the dish soap a couple of times, and then stirred the ink with it well. Then I injected the ink back into the Jinhao converter again with a syringe and low and behold, it started writing after a few seconds! The Jinhao X750 + Brown Pink ink combo work great now, even after a couple of days sitting in the pen, no more hard starts 🙂 I was very close to throwing the ink out so now I’m glad I won’t have to! It’s not a favorite ink as far as color goes and I’m not sure whether the dish soap changes it or anything, but I won’t mind using it all up over time. I might also try the Brown Pink + dish soap procedure with some other pens of mine, just to see if it works for them too.

Categories Blog Fountain Pens & Ink Personal

Random Thoughts

Picture from Pixabay. Because I miss winter and wolves are beautiful.

  • Heatwave: please bugger off. I promise you I won’t mind! 😯 
  • I tend to think black ink is boring, but my Lamy AL-Star Turmaline, with an M nib, and Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi are a lovely combination! I my favorite black so far out of all the ones I’ve tried. Lovely to write with and looks great. :mrgreen:  I love all but one of Iroshizuku inks I’ve tried so far: Kosumosu, Momiji, Yama-budo, Murasaki-shikibu, Kon-peki and Take-sumi. Tsuki-yo I didn’t like the color but it wrote just as well as the others. I’ve got the 15ml bottles of Yama-budo, Momiji and Kon-peki, and I’m salivating to get also Kosumosu and Murasaki-shikibu. I also got samples of Ku-jaku and Syo-ro, but haven’t tried them yet. All the Iroshizuku inks I’ve tried behave beautifully, so well that I want to try all of them – even colors I’m usually not crazy about. I’d love to get the bigger bottles, but they’re expensive as far as I’m concerned and anyway, too big for me – they’d propably last me a life time just them. So I’m very happy that penstore.fi sells the little bottles :mrgreen: 
  • Chocolate mud cake (the Finnish/Swedish version which is sticky and runny in the middle), fresh whipped cream and fresh strawberries… delish 😀 
  • A few weeks ago I had eight library books home I hadn’t read. I feel like I haven’t been reading that much lately, but now I somehow have only two books I haven’t started yet, and only four all in all, two of which are actually new that I just got them this week. Have I been stealth reading or what because I really don’t feel like I’ve read four books in the last couple of weeks but I checked the summaries and rembered all of them, so clearly I have?!