Diamine Soft Mint

This is a review that I wrote up a couple of months ago. I posted the video to YouTube, and I guess I forgot to actually write a review for the site. Well, here it is!

Diamine's Soft Mint is a pretty cool ink. It's both bright and soft. It's readable and well-behaved on the page. I didn't see any shading with it, but I was using a fine nib on the Diplomat to test it out. There would probably be some shading with a broader nib. I would have tried that, but I actually used up my whole sample, so I can't.

You've seen the results of the water test in the pictures above, but here's the video nonetheless. 

A Pen Wrap for my Birthday

Hey folks,
It's been a really busy couple of weeks. I gave an invited presentation, helped a new roommate move in, did a bunch of science in the field with Mrs. Inkdependence, and I've had to catch up on tons of grading. I just haven't had any time to do my regular blogging. I'm hoping that things are calmed down for a while.

My birthday was this month, and my Dad made me a neat 3-pen  wrap from scratch. He's always looking for new leather-working projects, and I showed him some of these online a while back. He decided to try his hand at making one, and it turned out really well.

All of the stitching was done by hand. He's not a fountain pen user, but he sized it well for all of my pens. It's just tall enough for my longest pen (the TWSBI 700), and the sleeves could probably hold a couple of pens each if your pens are the size of the little Diplomat Traveler on the left of the bottom picture. I really like it, and it's going to keep my pens safe and classy when I travel with them.

What do y'all think?

Wahl-Eversharp's Wahlberry

Wahlberry is an ink that is made for the "new" Wahl-Eversharp company, and Syd was giving them out with the new Eversharps at the DC Pen Show. It's a blue ink that really reminds me of blueberries. The picture at the left is a little bit brighter than the ink looks in person. It's slightly more purple to my eye.

Syd says that this ink is specifically designed to work with the new Skyliner nibs.

I had only used this ink in one pen when I started this review, and it was only okay. It was a little hard to start, and I was getting some skipping. Once the ink was flowing, though, it worked really well. As I started writing, I decided that the one pen wasn't a large enough sample. I put it in my wife's Lamy Safari to try it out there, and I'm glad that I did.

 The nib of the Skyliner is a semi-flex nib, and it's actually a fairly fine line if you don't push on it. I think the fine nib on the Lamy is actually putting down a thicker line than the Skyliner.

It works pretty well in both pens, but the ink seems to behave a little better in the Lamy. Of course, that nib has seen more use than the Eversharp, so it's more broken-in. 

I got this little ink journal at the Raleigh show, and I've tried out a few inks in it since then. 

I think the paper in this journal is a little too weak for fountain pen inks. It tends to bleed and spread even with really well-behaved inks, and you can see the spots and ghosting through the back of the page above. 

So, is this ink waterproof? Check out the video below, and the spoiler image below that. 

Spoiler:

Nah, not water-resistant at all. Still, an interesting ink if you can get ahold of it.

September's Goulet Ink Drop

I don't know if anyone else does this, but I always check my birthday month in a calendar before I decide to buy a calendar. If it's one of those desk calendars with jokes or comics, then the comic for my birthday had better be funny. My month is September, and don't buy calendars anymore, so I'm looking to the Ink Drop this month. It's a pretty solid collection this month.  Even better, I've only got one of these in my collection.

Merlot and Navy are more interesting than I thought they would be. Navy is brighter than I was expecting, and I'm never really sure what to expect with wine-colored inks. 

Zhivago is the only one in this collection that I already have. I think my sample of that ink might have run out, though, so I'm happy to see it again. Sepia isn't one of my favorite flavors of ink, but this one has a couple of things going for it. 1. I've never tried any Omas inks and 2. it looks more like Kaweco's sepia than Visconti's. That's a plus for me. 

Last up, Ebony Purple is probably going to be the least interesting of the lot. I like the PR Ebony Blue that I've tried, but PR inks are so saturated that I'm going to have to put it in some kind of a stub nib to get any color variation out of it. It could happen, but I don't know that it will. 

The text here was written with my new Sailor Jentle ink. I'm really liking this Sky High ink. It's good stuff, and it makes my Esterbrook feel very smooth.