Welcome to my end of the year wrap up. I got into fountain pens this year around June after lurking on Mastodon for a while under the #edc hashtag. In that time I've started to figure out some likes, (maybe some dislikes) got into inks and various ink properties and started journaling again after a very long time away.
Lost two of my furbabies this year and that's been very hard, to say the least and journaling with ink colors that remind me of them has been very helpful. Gained a furbaby also, he's the sweetest and loves a good cuddle! So with all of that out of the way ... so far here is my journey since June.
As with a lot of beginner fountain pen enthusiasts, I started with a Platinum Preppy and picked up two inks, Diamine Mediterranean blue and TWSBI Sky Blue. Shortly thereafter, I picked up a TWSBI Eco and Ferris Wheel Press Knitted Nettle. Quicker still, I pickup a Pilot Grance and some Iroshizuku samples including Kon-Peki, Ama-Iro and Asa-Gao. This was all before September. Since I've acquired four more pens. I found that I like medium sized nibs, so branching out to a broad and extra fine was nice.
My ink collection is really where things have balloned! 42 inks ... yikes (the wife reads this, sorry honey, I need more storage)! So far, favorite properties in ink has been shading and sheen. Shimmer gives me some trouble as a new user but I've got four shimmer inks to play with.
I go into cataloging my inks and tend to lean heavily into blues, love a good blue. I’ve enjoyed keeping an ink log and have also enjoyed using Color-O-Dex cards to catalog ink properties. Chromotography has been really neat too, watching how the water seperates the ink colors to see what the base color is made up of.
The Wet Pen Rainier Blue thus far has been my favorite blue and of course Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki. Oranges, Browns, and Greens round out most of my color palette. I really fell for browns this Fall. My favorite brown this year has been Pennonia Gesztenvebarna (Chestnut Brown). Also in the Fall I really gravitated toward Taccia Koi-ame. This color is also closest to my sweet fur baby who we lost at the end of November, another color that reminds me of him is Colorverse's Delicious Sleep, because of the cute cat on the label and because I hope he is having a delicious sleep and is reunited brother. Another ink that helped through the lost of our younger kitty was Wearingeul's - I am a cat. The beautiful base gray color reminded me of his fur and the gold shimmer reminded me of his beautiful eyes. It really felt right and I had that color inked up for a while. In fact, it's playing a new role as our new kitty happens to also be grey, with the biggest, brightest yellow eyes I've ever seen.
It's been extremely helpful to get back into journaling again and the one thing that really helped was being able to customize my ink color. I can put inks in a pen that match my mood, the season, the pen (or contrast), and it has made journaling really fun. Also, I've always loved stickers. When I was a teenager, I stickered the walls of my bedroom, mom wasn't happy when I moved out and she had to scrape them all off the wall and repaint. She thought she was going to have to re-do the dry-wall. Well now, stickers can go into my journal and I've gotten in to decorating with washi tape and ephemera collected from events and such. It's been a nice way to capture memories. Maruman Mnemosyne and Iroful have become quick paper favorites. My wife got me a washi tape sampler with tons of washi in it for my birthday. I’ve finally gotten it all cataloged. The pic below isn’t even half.
Going into the second half of my fountain pen journey and next year I want to be a little more deliberate in pen choices, not that I haven't loved the choices I’ve made. I’ve come to realize I like a bigger nib. On the Ink front I'd like to continue to explore browns, greens, dusty and weird colors and of course blues. I love blue! Other than that I don't have an inky plans, whatever captures my eye.
Going to a pen show would be awesome, if not a little overwhelming at first. I don't know which one and the one's that are closest to me are happening very soon. Not sure I'm ready to travel yet after a lot of travel at the end of 2024. There might be a pen club in my area that I need to find out more information. It would be really cool to connect with more people in person.
Thanks for coming along this journey with me so far. The fountain pen community has been very warm and welcoming and I enjoy interacting with everyone via Mastodon and Twitch and I lurk on Reddit.