My most recent ink purchase was Dominant Industry's Earl Grey Tea, and it's a beautiful orange shade that is well-behaved (albeit not quite as red as I was expecting when I ordered it). Absolutely no complaints - I even love the bottle, however I will probably get through it slowly because I don't often use colours that are bright and eye-catching.
By contrast, one of the inks that is in my permanent rotation and I plan to continue purchasing over and over is Diamine Saddle Brown. It's a more subtle, darker brown that can pass for 'serious' writing but still has a personality that I prefer over many other browns. If the orange of Earl Grey is a cozy Autumn fire, Saddle Brown is the tree branches holding on to their last leaves and the damp earth underfoot on a cold, foggy morning - both enticing in different ways.
Nice - I had misread this as Diamine Earl Grey at first, and was very confused (“I’ve used this before and don’t remember any orange tones!”). But it does look beautiful!
Saddle Brown also looks very nice and versatile. Do you think that you need a medium nib to get the full spectrum of shading? I’ve sometimes been disappointed with browns that are too light with an F nib (bought a sample of Robert Oster Caffe Crema, but it really was too light for my daily use unless in an M, B, or stub).
I do expect that you would need a medium or wider nib in order to get a real sense of shading out of the ink.
To your other concern, though, if anything I've found that Saddle Brown goes much darker when used in an F/EF nib. Certainly not to the point of being black, but dark enough that unless you were actually paying attention to the shade it doesn't immediately grab attention as being non-standard; to some people that defeats the point, but I find that sometimes (e.g. at work) I want to fly under the radar a bit while also knowing that I'm using 'my' colour.
It also looks amazing in notebooks that have a slightly ivory/off-white cast to the pages, where the overall sepia effect is something I really enjoy.
@hsl I have lots of notes from my college & high school years, all scattered through various notebooks that I had to take from home when I left. So it's all a mess that I'm not that fond of. My country is also one where the educational system is pretty digitally backwards, so while on college students with laptops became quite ubiquitous over time (I started using a Lenovo Yoga 8 tablet, then a netbook, then the same tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) - even having a tablet in high school was short of a crime, unofficially.
I do indeed have notes scattered through apps, but I find it way easier exporting these and putting everything together, while I cannot easily do this with notebooks.
At my current job, I received a notebook though, and a 4-colors ballpoint pen. I started taking my training notes there, and I must say I find it easier to retain the info and memorize at least where can I find a specific information - something that I'm not sure I could've achieved with a digital note-taking app, no matter how good its indexing is. Also, if you want to schematize things, nothing beats pen and paper imo. Sure, you can buy an expensive tablet with a pen for the screen (an iPad, or a Galaxy Note). But you can get a pen for, what? Less than a dollar at a corner store? (with 2-3 RON I can buy a set of pens, and they hold me for years - probably way more than the aforementioned devices).
With that said, I am still looking for the perfect note-taking app for my personal use. It should have the following features:
As small as possible, so I can install it on older, not-so-large storage capacity devices of mine.
The ability to save notes in a format that can be opened on PC (either with the same app or other apps).
I already found some that might fit the bill, but I am not sure which one to pick. Guess I'll figure it out.
I purchased a ream of HP Premium32 printer paper in 2020 and found a couple of sites that offer ruled paper templates. I use the templates to print my own writing paper on a black and white laser printer.
It isn’t Clairefontaine, but it is very nice to write on. I highly recommend it.
It’s the same, the difference is the starting “0” size. For the A-series, the area is 1 m^2. For the B-series, the shorter side length is 1 m. The C-series is the geometric mean of the areas of the A- and B-series.
My go to is TR 68gsm. I really love CAL too. I have no idea what I will replace them with yet since they both are discontinued. I enjoy Midori MD, but I wish it came in ivory. For notepads I use as scratch pads, I use Rhodia since it’s relatively cheap and FP friendly.
That being said, I am in the middle of trying out new paper to replace my go to paper. So far I like Maruman Nmemesoine, but the lack of non-spiral bound notebook variety is a big sticking point. Kokuyo Perpernap is up next. I have high hopes.
I’m told the latest iteration of TR is very close to old TR classic 52gsm. I guess that will be my fallback.
Mostly Clairefontaine and sometimes Leuchtturm1917. I recently bought Rhodia dotpads and dotbooks. I also have an Itoya Oasis light notebook and two Apica notebooks, just for trying them.
I am digging the Misty Blue. It’s work friendly, but that slightly lighter blue black has more personality than a darker one that leans closer to black. It’s on my wishlist now!
Okay, I love fountain pens but never really got into them. Do you use a different pen for each ink, or do you swap out the inks in a single pen? Do you have any suggestions for starting pens with refillable reservoirs? I have one however it uses little plastic cartridges.
@MossyFeathers I usually keep 2-10 pens inked with various inks. For me the Lami Safari pens with converters are good, and not too expensive. But you can also look at TWSBI Eco. They don’t take cardridges or converters, but have a built-in reservoar an a screw mechanism for filling with ink.
You can do either - I started with a box of Pilot Varsity disposables just to get a feel for it. Then the Preppy / Kakuno / Sport price range. Discovered Sailors, fell even more in love, collection kept expanding… Might as well use the,
Needless to say, I have a fair number currently inked. I don’t have many reserved for special purposes, save for one cheap blue/black ‘business signature’ pen that I generally always carry because some people think signature color matters.
You make your own path in this hobby, for sure. One of my true favorites is my namesake ink, I’ll use that purple shimmer anywhere :)
20+ inked, one set of duplicate inks in semi-duplicate pen (MTM in a Safari, and an Al Star), the rest are all disparate colors. Primary criteria is that it needs to make me smile in some way, or otherwise improve my life.
I primarily use document inks for addressing envelopes, which can be infrequent. To avoid clogging a pen, I’ve been considering getting a dip pen like the Pilot Iro-Utsushi. It’s still a metal nib, as opposed to a glass pen, and more for everyday writing than a calligraphy nib.
You should look at kakimori dip pens. It is highly regarded in the reviews I’ve seen except perhaps the standard pen nib attachment which in one review was considered scratchy and stored very little ink.
@redbird The Kakimori is fantastic. If you’d prefer a more pen-like experience try the Sailor Hocoro (https://www.afth.co.uk/sailor---hocoro---dip-pens-1333-c.asp) which you can get in a couple different nib sizes & colours, as well as a feed so that it holds more ink per dip.
I feel like “ink per dip” or “ipd” should be a unit of measurement we use for dip pens 🤣
Not wanting to advertise Reddit use too much, but you should look at the posts by u/bosseschreibt. He/she/they take some great pictures of writing samples with a number of Document inks, sometime side by side. One of their posts actually made me want a sample of Koh-I-Noor Document Blue. Anyway, their pictures are a great for seeing samples of various Document Inks from multiple brands.
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