fountain pen geekery ahead
Nov. 28th, 2010 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny(Or, displacement activity to distract from the corner I have written myself into.)
My birthday/X-mas present to myself is a Pelikan Technixx fountain pen (in chrome), since Fountain Pen Hospital has them for $40. I'm trying, in a not very serious way, to collect one pen from each of the great fountain pen manufacturers. I have Sheaffer, Waterman, Cross, and now Pelikan. Plus the two Lamys* and the Griffith Stadium pen (interestingly, Ballpark Pens no longer seems to be making fountain pens, so I'm glad I grabbed that one when I did, because--historic awesomeness aside--it's a really nice pen) and the handful of vintage pens (mostly nibless)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maryrobinette gave me.
I do actually use all my pens (except the vintage ones, which are my dragon hoard), each with a different color so I can keep track of different projects/locations. It's a way to make the physical act of writing more fun that works very well for me.
The Squeteague and the Sepia are both experiments. (Squeteague is such a Lovecraftian word I couldn't resist it, and it looks like an interesting color.) We'll see what happens.
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*One of the Lamys is my purse pen, so that I have a fountain pen to use outside the house which I will not be devastated if/when I lose. The other Lamy is my John M. Ford Memorial Pen, and it does not leave my desk.
Incidentally--the things you find when you Google--you can get cufflinks made from the copper window encasements removed in the 2005 remodeling of the Flatiron Building. Tor peeps, did you know about this?
My birthday/X-mas present to myself is a Pelikan Technixx fountain pen (in chrome), since Fountain Pen Hospital has them for $40. I'm trying, in a not very serious way, to collect one pen from each of the great fountain pen manufacturers. I have Sheaffer, Waterman, Cross, and now Pelikan. Plus the two Lamys* and the Griffith Stadium pen (interestingly, Ballpark Pens no longer seems to be making fountain pens, so I'm glad I grabbed that one when I did, because--historic awesomeness aside--it's a really nice pen) and the handful of vintage pens (mostly nibless)
maryrobinette gave me.I do actually use all my pens (except the vintage ones, which are my dragon hoard), each with a different color so I can keep track of different projects/locations. It's a way to make the physical act of writing more fun that works very well for me.
- The Lamy Safari demonstrator that lives in my purse gets violet ink cartridges. Lamy's violet isn't wildly exciting, but it's a nice workhorse color for my purposes.
- The Waterman Phileas uses black; it's my administrivia pen and also the pen I write down my dreams with. I've been experimenting with blacks lately, and have just ordered Noodler's Old Manhattan (described as "blackest black") from FPH.
- The Griffith Park pen uses Pelikan cartridges; it gets Pelikan's "brilliant green," which I actually quite like.
- I use Noodler's Couleur Royale in my Sheaffer Legacy II. I love the deep blue-shading-toward-purple and am unlikely to stray.
- The Cross ATX gets a ink I mixed myself (yes, such are the depths to which I have descended), about 45% Noodler's Nightshade, 45% Ottoman Rose, and 10% Couleur Royale. Nightshade I found too rusty-brown-black rather than red-violet; Ottoman Rose was like writing with raspberry sauce; combining the two and adding some Couleur Royale to pull it toward blue makes a really rather awesome burgundy color. Since burgundy was the color I started out using, way back in the day, with my Sheaffer (before Sheaffer discontinued their burgundy, the rat-bastards), I am possibly just the slightest bit unbecomingly smug about this.
- No matter how hard I try, I cannot like blue-black ink (which is what Mike used in the John M. Ford Memorial Pen). I have just purchased a converter for it and a bottle of Noodler's Old Dutch Sepia.
- The Pelikan Technixx is going to get Noodler's Squeteague Turquoise.
The Squeteague and the Sepia are both experiments. (Squeteague is such a Lovecraftian word I couldn't resist it, and it looks like an interesting color.) We'll see what happens.
---
*One of the Lamys is my purse pen, so that I have a fountain pen to use outside the house which I will not be devastated if/when I lose. The other Lamy is my John M. Ford Memorial Pen, and it does not leave my desk.
Incidentally--the things you find when you Google--you can get cufflinks made from the copper window encasements removed in the 2005 remodeling of the Flatiron Building. Tor peeps, did you know about this?
