Are there any good modern lever fill pens? The only brand I can think of that is still making lever fill pens is Conway Stewart. Are there any others?

Four months ago I posted about this quirky pen I popped into my shopping cart on impulse one night while grabbing some supplies on Amazon.

Well, after that original post I didn't use the pen. I put it away in a case and I forgot about it. Recently, I bought a new, large pen case and moved most of my pens into that case. While I was doing so, I realized I had a bunch of pens that had been sitting around, inked, but unused, including this one.

Last night I pulled out ten pens (five Parker 51 clones, Lamy Safari, Hongdian M2 Brass, Hongdian C1, TWSBI Eco and this Wilknd) to clean out.

Of the pens I pulled out: 2 Parker 51 clones, the Lamy, and the Hongdian M2 Brass had dried out / failed to write. But the Wilknd, the one that was in the case the longest (except for the TWSBI and Lamy) worked immediately. After four months that pen was writing up a storm like I had just filled it and started using it.

Just goes to show: name brand isn't everything. Even the cheapest, no-name pen can perform as well as, and possibly better than a brand name pen.

#writerscoffeeclub May 31st what went right this month?

#WritersCoffeeClub May 28. Have you ever regretted cutting a scene?

#WritersCoffeeClub May 27: Do you read outside the genre you write?

#WritersCoffeeClub May 25: Share a late-stage change you made to a work.

#WritersCoffeeClub May 26: In what ways does your work defy expectation?

#WritersCoffeeClub - How well would your current WIP work as a play?

Is anyone interested in doing these daily? Someone posts these on Mastodon, so it wouldn't be difficult to post them here too:

#WritersCoffeeClub – 21st May. What targets do you set for yourself? To what frequency?

#ScribesAndMakers – 21st May. What medium would you choose to depict a visual image of a lake?

This must have been a #mistake. LOL I picked up this 5 pack of Kokuyo Campus B5, 100 sheet #notebooks for $6 per book. Most places list an individual book for $10-$14 USD.

I'm using these books for my daily writing now. Mostly because of the price, compared to an Apica CD Premium #notebook priced at $16 dollars, the Campus seemed like a reasonable option. I've seen that Doodlebud has compared these against his Muji paper, and thought that it was comparable. But since I don't have access to Muji paper here, the Campus is the best option.

These do hold up to #fountainpen usage. While I mostly use a fine nib, I have used a medium and even a broad nib with it, and it's been good. I don't know if it would work well with a 1.1mm nib, but I may try it at some point.

Just refilled my Asvine V200 pens. I go through almost a full fill of #ink in them every 12–13 days. I didn't think I would be filling these #fountainpens as often as I am, but here we are... Guess I just #write that much with them.

Left to right these pens are filled with Diamine Jet Black, Oxford Blue, Aurora Borealis, Writer's Blood and Imperial Purple inks. To their right is the Jinhao x750 filled with Wordsworth & Black Lavender Purple.

It's a three-fer tonight. First is some #ink that I'd been wanting to post for a while now. A few months back I ordered three bottles of Wordsworth & Black in when I got it on special (three bottles for the price of two). While I posted the first two (Royal Blue and Racing Green), the third bottle took weeks to come in. Well, here it is: Lavender Purple. Definitely much stronger on the purple side than the lavender side -- but I still really like it.

And, then there's the pen. The other day when I was placing an order for some other stuff the Jinhao X750 #fountainpen showed up in my recommended list. And, for $8 USD, I couldn't say no. In fact, I added two of them to my cart (the other one is brushed stainless steel). I thought this one looked really cool. I have to say it's a pretty nice pen, cartridge converter, snap-on cap (really strong snap), there is a cap liner for a good seal. The converter came installed by default. Holds about .5-.75ml of ink.

Finally, a little quote for the night. Figured that a little Shel Silverstein was a nice break from the type Lavender quotes. ;)

Quick post...just checking in...

How's everyone doing these days? And interesting progress on your projects?

Personally: I've been plugging away at my journal. I'm over 725 pages now. And, I've started an essay writing notebook. I'm working on my second essay, and I'm up to 22 pages in that book so far (and it's a larger book - a B5 with 6mm rule, might as well be about 1.3x of an A5 notebook page).

Are you reading anything interesting? I have several books on my reader right now, including Enshittification (Cory Doctow), Leavenworth Case (Anna Katherine Green), Exit Strategy (Martha Wells), How To Read A Book (Adler & Van Doren), Beginning Theory (Peter Barry) and the Norton Anthology of English Literature. I'm a glutton for punishment, as well as a very slow reader...

Standard eBooks is running a campaign to raise money, and get a chance at an award of $1000.

A one time #donation in any amount will give them an extra entry into the Fractured Atlas campaign. So far they only have 97 entries, and three days left to get as many entries as possible.

If you love #ebooks, the #publicdomain, consider donating today.

Don’t let them down. #Donate at: https://standardebooks.org/donate

So, I noticed something odd the other day. I was writing in a notebook using my Asvine V126 with Diamine Writer's Blood. When I came home I grabbed by V200 with Writer's Blood to finish what I was writing, but the color / shading of the ink was very different. It was a lot darker and more saturated from the V200 vs the V126.

I compared the nibs under my loupe, but they seem to be mostly the same (ie, tines about the same width, no mis-alignment, etc.)

So, I decided to take things a step further and made the image in this message. Note both the Diamine Aurora Borealis and Writer's Blood seem to have quite different characteristics.

(I should mention: all pens were recently cleaned, and all filled at the same time from the same bottle(s) of ink...)

Anyone have any thoughts on why this would be the case?

Now that it's been a couple of months since the Journaling January event, I have a question.

Is there something else that we want to do before the next FediWriMo in November? There are seven months between now and FediWriMo, so if we wanted to have another event, or possibly two, we could.

Please comment on any style of writing even you would be interested in having. Let's discuss any ideas that you have.

Photo by Leeloo The First:

Time for a tale of two inks, this time feature Wordsworth and Black Racing Green and Royal Blue.

So, let's start with something important: neither of these inks are accurately represented in their packaging. The Royal Blue box hints that there is more purple tones in it than the swab shows. But the shocking one is the Racing Green, it not only looks nothing like the representation on the box, but it isn't even close to a "racing green" (aka Rally Green). The box actually does look like "Racing Green".

And, I didn't include them, but the labels on the bottle are just as bad.

Honestly, Racing Green is so bad, I just flushed it out of my pen, and loaded it with Aurora Borealis instead.

The Royal Blue, despite the misrepresentation, is a pretty nice blue. It's a bit more saturated than the TWSBI Blue, and less purple than the Diamine Majestic Blue. I think it makes for a good alternative to the Oxford Blue which is my standard.

Question: has anyone done extensive testing on any fountain pen inks?

I don't mean the standard Mountain of Ink style, sample card, writing sample, etc. visual comparisons. (I'd like to call this subjective measurement, but chromatographic measurements aren't subjective if done in a controlled manner.)

I am thinking more objective testing: viscosity, density, flow rate @ a given line width, etc.

I was thinking about this type of testing tonight, and it seems to me that there are a lot of factors that would need to be controlled: temperature, air pressure / barometric pressure, nib consistency, friction (aka heat), etc. Given what I was thinking this could be an interesting experiment, if someone wanted to undertake controlling all the variables, and implementing the controls necessary for consistent results.

Trying out a little paper I wasn't familiar with: Maruman Mnemosyne.

The quote: “When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.” -- Mark Twain

• Pen: Asvine V126, Steel Nib
• Ink: Diamine Writer's Blood
• Paper: Maruman Mnemosyne

The paper did really well: no spidering, no bleed through. Of course, Writer's Blood isn't the wettest of inks. I'll try another pen / ink combo to see how well this paper fares.

So, I was ordering stuff from Amazon the other night... I'd come across this #pen a week or so ago, and I couldn't get the ink window out of my mind. It was cheap, so I wasn't expecting much - but I had to satisfy my curiosity.

This pen is from a company called Wilknd. Never heard of them, only other listing is for a fairly generic looking ballpoint pen.

What I received is actually a fairly respectable #fountainpen - especially for $15, compared to junk like Beiluner or Scrivenier.

Brass case, plated gold, fine nib (listing says 0.5mm, but it writes like an EF), interesting design (I don't recall seeing anything like this), a snap cap with a liner, installed syringe-style converter. I filled it with Hongdian Blue ink and tried writing a page -- enjoy my crappy penmanship. Lol.

#fountainpenfirstimpressions #fountainpenfun #penlife

Introduction

So, this is the end of the Journaling January event for 2026.

It's been a long thirty-one days, and I am not even certain how many people actually followed along with the event. I have been happy to see many of the prompt posts getting quite a few likes, so I have to believe there were people that were following along.

Personal Recap

Let me lead the way on this one, and if you were participating, please add comments about your own experience below.

A couple W's:

1. Personally, I was happy that I was able to keep to writing every single day. Even during the FediWriMo event last year, I had a day when I didn't write anything, so sticking to my guns and writing even when I didn't feel like it was a win for me.

2. Another win: writing more than the stated goal. Yes, it got out of hand a few times (eleven pages in one day?). But most of the time I was writing just what I wanted to get down on the page. If it took three pages, fine. If it took seven pages, okay.

3. Finding something meaningful in the prompts to write about. I didn't mention this as much as I could have, but while I didn't always sit down to write based on one of the prompts, I found them working their way into my entries. That was something I hadn't considered... Just letting them come up in the natural flow of my writing.

A couple of L's:

1. I didn't really improve my penmanship. I was hoping that writing this much would help. But the idea of writing cleanly and getting the thoughts down on the page really seem to be at odds with each other.

2. The prompt images. Yeah, okay, they weren't good at first. I had to redo them to make them more readable. Lesson learned.

3. And, I will say this, some of the entries in my journal this month have more "fluff" in them than I would have liked. It seems like there were times when I was trying to get an idea on the page, but I just couldn't get the ideas to coalesce properly.

In Closing

So, that's the end of the event for this year. Did you follow along? Did you use any of the prompts? let us know about your experiences below.