This is one of the fem less expensive fountain pens I for some reason never have bought.

I don’t know why, but I just never did. So I ordered a red one with a EF nib a while back.

When it showed up I really liked the packaging. It came in this cardboard box that just large enough to fit the pen. The first thing I did was to eye dropper it with red ink.

It is a very small pen when you don’t post the cap, and more or less like a regular pen otherwise. Apparently it is common with bad nibs with these pens, I got a good one. And I like it a lot. I suspect I’ll end up with a few of them.

As I’m writing this I just recently started to move more into pens with finer nibs; both gel and fountain. And that might change my pencil preferences moving forward.

Historically the Pearl have been the one I like the most. Partly because it is the best looking of the regular versions. And I liked that I could sharpen a lot while using it. But now that I’ve started to like the scratchy pens and such I might be more into the hardest Blackwing aka the Natural. Or I might even be more into even harder pencils like the Golden Bear.

Weird.

Here is a list of nibs I’ve broken over the years

• Pilot Metal Falcon
  
• Pilot Vanishing point
  
• Pilot Metropolitan
  
• TWSBI Eco

We all break some shit over the years.

Weird that it have been one year already.

In general I’m very happy about how things have gone. The post schedule I landed on have worked very well and is sustainable. It haven’t been a problem do get enough posts done in batches to keep up with the two posts a week.

For the next year I think I want to look more into doing more recurring posts especially surrounding the tools I use. And I would also love to shorten the time between writing and publishing.

Outside of that I might also look more into some kind of link dump thing. But I’m not sure about that one.

This was a really interesting case.

I really loved mine when I used mine during that very last phase before COVID hit.

You can fit two hardcover A5 notebooks in it, plus room for three pens and a room where you can fit your Field Notes etc.

If Nock Co had continued I’d love to see more versions of this case. Like one that fitted more notebooks etc. I really loved having this single thing that fitted two of the three notebooks I used to carry in those days. And it served like this thing that fitted almost all the writing stuff I used most of the time.

Instead of finding my pens, then my Field Notes, then my bullet journal notebook, then my writing notebook. You know the drill.

Iroshizuku have been my main ink brand since I got my first bottle of it. These days I’m mostly exclusive to them.

For the longest time I was a only black person, then I got into colors, bought a bunch of ink and used five years to get rid of it all.

Now. This was the first ink I bought after that.

It is a great dark blue. And I love it a lot. Based on how much ink I have used from this bottle compared to all the others I got at the same time it is the one I like the most. It is a really good blue.

A lot of the focus of expense is focued on boxes of pencils, inks, pens and all of that.

You buy a Lamy 2000 and a bottle of Iroshizuku ink; that’s probably $230 or something. Then, if you want to use all of that ink you probably have to buy 10, 20, 30 or more A5 notebooks. If it is 30 you’ll probably spend 3-4x what you spent on the expensive pen and ink.

So, is it really that important if you spend $5 or $30 on a bottle of ink?

When I was a student I took all my notes on paper, and usually wrote first drafts on paper as well.

My setup then was in the beginning to use Pilot G2’s and Retro51’s on Moleskine. Then I got into Pilot Metropolitans, before eventually getting a Lamy 2000.

My paper choices went from Moleskine to whatever college rule was available before I eventually landed on these thick A4 hardcover notebooks. There was a few different models, ranging from like 200 pages to 500 I think.

There was a lot of feathering going on, but it was a great compromise for me back then to use these. Because they were the only notebook I could get locally that handled fountain pens in any usable way. And not having to pay for international shipping for notebooks saved me a lot of money.

When I had the Lamy 2000, I used to refill it every morning and if I for some weird reason ran out of ink I’d just use the Metropolitan as a backup.

This was my first orange ink. I got this because Myke Hurley talked about it all the time for a very long time on The Pen Addict Podcast.

It was a really great ink, I think this was one of the inks that I mostly used non stop until I ran out.

This is one of many inks I’ve owned that was really awesome, but I probably will not get another bottle of it. Not because of any reason except that there are so many other orange inks I want to try out.