Reasons to Keep Living (Official Thread) • Page 196

That one, my two Kaweco Al Sports, and my Traveler’s Brass are my favorites, the latter being my EDC pen.

 

I respect it but it's probably not for me based off that price point alone

it's beautiful though

 

If you’re ever interested, I’d be happy to recommend way more affordable fountain pens! The problem is that once you have a single fountain pen, you’ll want to order every ink you can find, haha.

 

by all means, please educate me. I always appreciate learning and those willing to teach me something new

 

hmmm...guess I'll never know

 

Hahaha, sorry, I keep telling myself to respond!

Have you ever used a fountain pen before? Besides generally being smoother to write with than a typical ballpoint pen, they’re also just a lot of fun. There are so many things to consider: nib size, nib material, pen shape and weight, the thousands of different inks you’ll immediately want to order, which ink should go in which pen, etc. Even the type of paper can be important - most ink/pen combos work best on premium paper designed with fountain pens in mind, whereas on cheaper, everyday paper you might experience feathering or serious bleed through. The vast majority of pens have easily replaceable nibs, so if, for example, you ordered a fine nib and realized you want to see more of the shading qualities of the your ink (or just want to write larger), nibs are relatively inexpensive and can be swapped with ease.

It’s a pretty deep rabbit hole, and r/fountainpens is a fantastic and helpful community. A lot of people recommend the Pilot Kakuno as a first pen. I think they’re only like $10 on Amazon, if that. I admittedly did not love mine, but that’s mostly because I bought a fine nib and it turns out I typically prefer a medium and sometimes even a broad (especially with Japanese nibs, which tend to run finer than Western brands). At the same time I got a Kakuno, I also gifted one to my then-partner, and she got absolutely hooked. (I talked to her the other day and she now has close to ten pens, including two very fancy ones.)

Inks have various qualities: some run dry, some run wet, both of which can make them more or less suitable for any given pen. Some have glitter, which can look very cool, but they can also clog up your pen so I personally try to avoid those except on occasion. Most, if not all inks have varying amounts of shading, which each part of each stroke might be lighter or darker. It’s far more obvious with broader nibs, but it’s my favorite quality in inks. Some of my favorite ink brands are:

Diamine (Oxblood is one of my current favorites from them, it’s the red in the below photo)

Pilot Iroshizuku (these are a little pricier but are extremely solid, attractive inks. I’m not a huge blue ink person but their Tsuki-Yo is really pretty)

Robert Oster (Their Caffe Crema is the brown ink in the previous photo)

Mountainofink.com is a wonderful site to find ink reviews and see swatches + writing samples.

For actual pen/ink purchasing, JetPens and Goldspot are both good, or a more niche spot like Yoseka. Goulet is the best in terms of price/availability/service, and they also offer an unreal amount of ink samples, but unfortunately they were recently exposed to have some extremely unfortunate connections to the anti-LGBTQ community. (I believe they also, at first, defended Noodler’s, an ink maker who had some, uh, pretty antisemitic and questionable labels/names.)

If you’re interested and you want something or exiting than a Kakuno, I’m a massive fan of Kaweco Sports. They’re pricier, but not too bad. People complain about their quality control (sometimes their nibs have issues, especially their fines), but I love them. That said, I only have the aluminum ones (in the below photo) because I prefer metal to plastic, and those are considerably more, but most seem content with the plastic ones. People like Platinum Preppy as a starter pen as well, but I have no experience with them.

The only other sort of major consideration is that all pens with come with an ink CARTRIDGE, but if you plan on buying your own ink (and you should, because that’s the best part, you’ll need a compatible converter. They’re cheap, and allow you to fill your pen with whatever ink you want. Some people use a syringe and just refill the cartridges, but imo it’s way easier to just use a converter, especially a piston or vacuum converter.

It’s hard to get good photos of a pen and especially the ink, but here are a few:

 

Ugh I love the look of my Halloween pen so much but it’s my least favorite writer. I could probably make it better by fine tuning the nib, but I’m not that hardcore although most people that collect fountain pens do try to fix less than stellar nibs themselves. Will probably just get a different nib for it at some point.

The Traveler’s Brass fountain pen rocks. It’s my EDC pen. The nib is proprietary because of the size of the feed and it’s only available in fine, and it wouldn’t really be a “fun” pen to start with.

Edit: last thing to note is that while I love Kaweco Sports, note that they are small and lightweight, which not everyone enjoys. Honestly, after writing all of this, I’m kind of thinking that maybe the Kakuno would be your best bet. They’re considered the gateway pen for a reason and even plenty of people who have more expensive pens seem to still use theirs.

 

just really want one that won't immediately smudge

left-handed problems

 

Mountainofink.com is good about that. It can be dependent on the paper type, but their reviews state how long the ink takes to dry.

 

cool

I appreciate you

 

HOW DARE YOU ALL NOT USE MY STATIONERY THREAD FOR THIS CONVO

 

blame @wisdomfordebris

 

I had no idea!!!

 

I’m seeing Neil Young tonight and don’t really have the right words to describe how much I need this night. Been such a hard year and he is like ~the~ artist of my childhood. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know his music bc it was always on. Just gonna spend the night letting the music remind me of all the happy memories I have with my nana. She always played harvest moon in the car. Her newest car didn’t have a cd player but she still kept the cd in there anyway lol And it’s Friday which I spent every Friday with her. It was our lunch date day and we’d eat food at her house and she’d tell me stories and bitch about the family lol so feels extra special that I’m seeing him tonight.

 

oh wow. I'm so jealous

have a great time!

 

I'm on a 174 day Duolingo streak and it's a small thing but today I was able to tell a Spanish speaking customer "it's closed today" in Spanish without looking it up and I felt pretty cool

 

I have lost and found myself many times this year already. it can be so daunting to come to terms with letting go of who you thought you were and the world you thought you lived in but no one ever said healing was pretty. it can get very ugly at times and involve many hours alone and considering what the next step is. I'm very grateful that I'm in the spiritual place I've arrived at and hope to continue on my path to becoming this next version of myself. I think I like him quite a bit

 

I’ve been growing cherry tomatoes and they’re so sweet

 

so good

 

Went outside to water my plants and apparently one of my neighbors decided to be nice and weed eat my front yard for me. My weed eater needs to be plugged in and I have no outdoor plugs. So I have to plug it in in my garage and run 2 100-foot extension cords and it always comes unplugged and I cuss profusely every time lol So shout out to whichever neighbor saw that my struggle is real and decided to help a girl out!! I don’t even really talk to my neighbors besides saying hi so that was super nice!

 

I got two new comfy chair delivered. My couch is awful and actually hurts my back to sit on. My wife fell asleep in one chair and I read in the other and almost fell asleep. Life changing. The cats approve too.

 

Going to a show tonight and was able to upgrade from a mid-section seat to GA pit for only $10 each ticket

 

Regal is having an event in September and they are playing a different classic movie every day for the whole month. My regal unlimited subscription is about to be working overtime. I’m gonna be living at the movies. I’m so excited. I have no friends so I’ve been trying to do things by myself more and more and going to the movies alone is now my favorite thing. It seriously is the best thing I’ve done for my mental health. Just having a movie to look forward to seeing and getting out of the house helps so much.

 

Every time I see a bar or restaurant with a “NO I.C.E.” sign out front, it’s a hell yeah. But then it becomes an immediate double hell yeah because my brain always reads it like

 

Watching Roman Anthony play baseball