No, I haven’t stopped making things or writing.
I’ve just been lazy AF posting about it here.
Why?
When your head is a bag of (shiny) squirrels, you kinda get distracted and forgetful.
What have I been up to since my last post 11 July 2017?
“Lemme explain … no, is too much. Lemme sum up.”
2017:
I fell deep down the Stationery Rabbit Hole: stickers and rubber stamp subscriptions, haunting online stationery sites for cool gel pens and desk supplies, and falling in love with THIS notebook (THIS one, too) and learning to bullet journal with it. While I wasn’t successful at learning the technique of bullet journaling, I did have fun trying to meld a more illustrative journal with some of the bullet journal tools.
Having bought and enjoyed my first TWSBI ECO in November 2016, I thought to dig out the Sheaffer No Nonsense pens I’d saved since High School for a comparison … and found I’d misplaced them. 2017 sent me looking online for replacements. Given that they are no longer in production but have been made in sufficient quantities that they are reasonably thick on the ground at eBay, I spent the latter half of the year reacquiring one.
Or three …
All right, all right!
Six.
No, wait …
Seven?
Anyway: No Nonsense pens are quite affordable workhorse pens, even when paying “out-of-print” prices, and are amazingly comfortable and reliable writers. Thanks go to RUPERTARZEIAN for the wonderful review of the 1970s/1980s-era NN pens. Do check out the blog post linked above. It’s a better review than I can manage to write myself.
I picked up a Lamy Safari Petrol Limited Edition of 2017 with a fine nib and purchased matching ink for it. It was a very popular edition pen and ink release but I lucked out, despite nearly missing it. At the time, Goldspot Pens had a few left. Made of ABS plastic and given a matte finish, it felt good in hand and was durable enough to throw into my bag and go everywhere. It came with matching ink and I got a couple of boxes of it in cartridges.
I’d peered into the Fountain Pen Rabbit Hole. Its depths beckoned but I was comfortable where I was, thanks.
A TWSBI, a No Nonsense, and a Safari, all working beautifully. What more could a gal want …?
2018:
… A lot more, apparently.
This was the year I finally fell all the way down the Fountain Pen Rabbit Hole.
Head over heels.
Down, down, down.
Lamy’s Al-Star Vibrant Pink Limited Edition of 2018 gave me that final push, becoming my first significant pen purchase for the calendar year. The matching ink was too much to resist. SO pretty.
The smooth aluminum body was silky smooth, cool, and not at all crushingly heavy despite being a metal-bodied pen. I was won over completely. Ocean Blue and Pacific Blue Lamy AL-Stars with extra fine nibs soon followed.
Lamy Safari also figured into the year, as I realized I’d missed the Safari Limited Edition for 2016, the wildly popular and increasingly elusive Dark Lilac, with matching ink.
Fully gripped by that first feverish flush of a full-blown obsession, I chased that color of pen and its matching ink down, landing at last on a page on eBay, whose seller (a pen store owner, I’m convinced) had the pen and a 50ml bottle of the matching ink for a price that was easily half of what I’d pay for both elsewhere.
Sold!
An Ink Flight subscription soon followed. Once a month, I received 7 vials of lovely fountain pen ink and extra stationery goodies like blank notebooks and even a freebie fountain pen (and decent stock, too, not the promotional-grade stuff) every 6 months or so.
I found a planner/journaling Meet Up community in my area that loved stationery, fountain pens, and journaling as much as I did, so that got me out of the house twice a month.
Oh and I discoverd that the Triangle Pen Show was just down the road and occurs the first weekend in June. Seeing it for the first time as a chance-found Saturday walk-in was an eye opener.
And a wallet-opener, apparently.
What that Vibrant Pink AL-Star kicked off, that pen show clinched: I was happily, deliriously ensnared in a fascinating hobby filled with shiny things.
So. Many. Shiny. Things.
Head over heels.
Down, down, down.
Wheeeeeee…!
2019:
Pretty much like 2018, only more of it.
To be sure, I had spaces here and there that I filled with other things: journaling was still ongoing and I was still wedded to my soft bound Miquel Rius notebooks (see 2017, above). I was still pursuing the idea of filling it with a blend of illustrations and planner organization. I’d settled on a style. It wasn’t perfect bullet journaling (it still isn’t!) and it wasn’t quite like the planners you see online on Instagram and Facebook (which, seriously, who has the freakin’ time for that level of busy?)… but it was mine and in a style I could keep up with.
Speaking of keeping up …
While the array of fountain pen inks is HUGE, the corresponding range of good fountain pen-friendly paper is relatively SMALL. Yes, Tomoe River Paper is all that and a bag of chips, but Clairefontaine comes in a wide variety of notebooks. Rhodia is another brand that makes convenient, portable, and durable pads and notebooks that go well with fountain pens. After reading the hype about such paper, I discovered that two-thirds of it was true. The remaining third was really down to personal preferences and not actually a matter of fountain pen compatibility issues.
I’d also noticed my pen acquisitions taking a more discerning turn. The initial fascination of fountain pens had finally worn off, the discovery stage had run its course, drawing down from a fiery passion to a more measured appreciation.
After buying quite a few models, I found that I had developed a preference for a few specific brands and price tiers. They tended to have extra fine nibs that weren’t scratchy, have a good ink capacity (piston-fillers mostly, but a few cartridge or converter-fillers), and they even tend to fall into a certain girthiness.
In short, I’d found my Goldilocks Zone.
I consider myself very lucky to have found it only 2.5 years after falling into this. In that relatively short time, I discovered what I like and don’t like about a nib and about pen construction. I realized (YMMV!) that once you’ve settled the combined matters of nib grind, pen construction and ergonomics, what your dollar is actually buying is purely an aesthetic extra.
At that point, it’s all about design appearance and luxury materials. Will a Pelikan write better than a Mont Blanc or a Visconti? Will a celluloid body write better than a turned aluminum one? Is acrylic better than resin? Is hand-painted urushi enamel better than raden inlay? Would spending 100 dollars more on a pen versus 100 dollars less change anything? What if it was 500? Or a 1,000?
If the nib is the same in either pen, it doesn’t change much. Perhaps it doesn’t even change a thing.
To be honest, I need to actually hold in my hand and write with a Pelikan, a Mont Blanc, and a Visconti Homo Sapiens to be absolutely sure their relatively expensive price tags confer a commensurately improved nib and writing performance over my 50-dollar Platinum Procyon or even my 5-dollar Platinum Preppy.
But I seriously doubt I would be temperamentally suited to buy one of those higher-end pens. To do so, those pen nibs had better glide like a greased pig on ice, have amazing ink capacity to reduce refills, and wash my car, too.
Oh, and pick up around the house so I’ll have more time sit down, make stuff, and write.
To date, I haven’t seen a Pelikan or a Mont Blanc or a Visconti advertised with those features. I’m happy with what I’ve got and I can wait until they do. And if I want to, I can just try one of these expensive pens at the Triangle Pen show.
But when the Show returned in 2019, I didn’t actually do that.
Instead, I looked into and bought a few vintage fountain pens. They cost a little more than my usual pens but not too much. The ink capacity of the lever-action sac reservoirs and the vintage (and I’m talking old school from-the-fifties-and-earlier) nibs brought home a completely different and pleasant level of nib and writing performance … which explained why pen shows still carry an astounding array of vintage pens.
So that was something I was surprised and pleased to learn.
2020:
This is a year that has sorely tested my resolve. I wanted to be more judicious in my pen acquisitions going into 2020 and, for the most part, I think I’ve managed it desite the virtual avalanche of small production runs of special or limited edition pens (I’m looking at YOU, Retro 51!). So I can honestly say I’ve managed to reduce my acquisitions to something even I would consider more manageable.
I think I can also honestly say that, although just about 100% of my acquisitions happen online and I am online for most of the day due to stay-at-home shutdowns, COVID-19 hadn’t anything to do with my relative self-restraint.
Even so, I have made some purchases this year.
Rose Gold trim paired with a conservative color like black, matte black, or white emerged as a theme in 2019 and carried over into 2020. I bought a few, mostly on sale and usually paired with free bottles of ink.
No regrets.
They actually coordinate well in their pen case, despite the different brands and their dissimilar purchase dates across 18 months.
My Goldilocks Zone is developing into a distinctive aesthetic in addition to nailing down a baseline range. My obsessive hobby continues to evolve, proving it has legs after 4 years. This bodes well for it taking a place alongside my other abiding hobbies.
While this means my wallet still needs to sleep with one eye open, I’d call this year a definite improvement.
2020 has nearly half of it to go before closing. I don’t know what else well happen with this obsessive hobby of mine, but I look forward to finding out.
And maybe I’ll remember to post about it when I do. 😉
Merely A Whim 