Another Hobby or a Corollary to My Writing Passion

 So, what's new in my life?

As indicated by the titles of this post, I have another Writing Related Hobby/Passion and it is:  Fountain Pens.

Fountain Pens, Inks, and watching Vlogs and Podcasts about Fountain Pens... this subject has started filling a lot of my time (which is already pretty full with all the other hobbies filling my retirement days).

The next several paragraphs may well be way too much detail. I tend to provide the ol' TMI. So, warning served.

How it began:

This past summer, due to slow recovery from having had a broken patella in March 2021 & spending over a month in bed wearing an immobilizing leg brace but later slowly getting mobility back through Physical Therapy; reinjuring the same leg in January 2022 after nearly full muscle recovery; and then injuring that leg again in April 2023... ...in June of 2024 (this year) the same leg just collapsed under me as I stepped down out of the door to enjoy a lovely summer day doing some computer work at our outside table. Result: a broken bone in the center of the foot on that leg & a broken toe on the other foot and 2 months with no weight-bearing activity while being in an Air Cast. So. More atrophying leg muscles.

While bedridden again, I began watching the Goulet Pen Company Pencasts on YouTube about - you guessed it - Fountain Pens. Gouletpens.com Watching & listening to Brian Goulet talk about the many, many, MANY Fountain Pen manufacturing companies, some established in the 19th century, some only just established in this the 21st century; and some of the thousands and THOUSANDS of fountain pens; the histories and methods of making all these fountain pens; and actually seeing the variety of styles of fountain pens with the amazing craftsmanship involved in making them... I got hooked.

Having taken many classes in Art over the years of my youth, I was introduced t0 (what I now know as) Dip Pens and Calligraphy Pens. And I fell in love. I found out that my father had a few dip pens and a bottle of some awesome brown or sepia ink. So, being intrigued, I used one of his pens and created a huge wall hanging of one of my other favorite things, a poem. The poem was "How Do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With that lovely brown ink. Of course!

Skip forward to 2019 when one of my co-workers at the Exeter Community Library began a Letter Writing Society. A once-a-month gathering of people who celebrated the art of letter writing and sending out "Happy Mail" as it is now called, since letter writing seems to be dying due to texting and other tech-related communication. Besides making it possible to get connected with a Pen Pal from the Exeter Library in Devon, England (WOW!), she would periodically engage special guests to come in and discuss ways to make letter writing even more fun including embellishing the envelopes with artwork. 

One type of artwork for embellishing was to use a variety of colored inkpads and rubber stamps to dress up an envelope. Another was to use a dip pen and create vines and/or flowers, etc. with colorful inks, and even learn calligraphic styles to write the address. 

So, in 2020, I bought my first glass dip pen. 

A beautiful, swirling, pale green and clear glass dip pen with the name of "Peace".

I retired from my job in Libraryland at the end of December 2021. But I didn't retire from my lifelong love of writing. I had joined an Online club of letter-writers and was sending out letters and cards (handwritten in most cases) to other like-minded people around the world. I embellished the envelopes in many ways, including drawing vines and flowers and using fancy pseudo-calligraphy for the addresses with my dip pen.

But Brian Goulet and his buddy Drew Brown on those weekly Pencasts made me want something more than one Dip Pen named Peace.

The next step... 

And so, while laid up after breaking bones in my feet, while bingeing on Goulet Pencasts, I did it. I bought THREE Fountain Pens. I also bought TWO whole bottles of ink. And I bought 6 sample sized tubes of a variety of red hued ink.

The pens weren't that expensive. The beautiful black metal with gold & silver sparkles pen from Jinhao called Shimmering Sands, was only $9.95 and the crimson red resin demonstrator Platinum Prefounte (pronounced "pree - fawn - tay") was only $11. The most expensive one was the awesome purple metal Pilot Metropolitan RetroPop which was still inexpensive at about $25 considering many fountain pens cost between $100 and $500 and, of course, the really, really expensive (what are called) "Grail Pens" which can be $500 to $5,000.

My Quest continues because I asked for my next level fountain as my big Christmas gift for this year. Of course, Goulet Pens ran a big Black Friday sales event. And satisfyingly, there was more than one special, just-under-$100, pen that I really liked. In fact, I had to choose between three pens. Awesomely, my husband said pick any one of those three pens. 

I chose the Monteverde Regatta Sport with an Omni Flex nib. 

It is a beautiful white and blue pen with silver fittings, a magnetic closing mechanism, and even though it isn't a true "demonstrator" pen, you can see into the barrel in a couple places because the blue areas aren't solid. There are a few clear spots so the pen can "demonstrate" the level of ink inside. What is really, REALLY cool is that because of the randomness of the patches in the blues sections, each pen is unique. 

My next task -

Finding the perfect blue ink to fill my lovely Monteverde Regatta Sport will be a process. I have begun but, in a very limited way. When I ordered the pen, I also ordered two samples of dark blue ink, though I don't think I want to go "dark". I'm thinking a royal or turquoise or somewhere in between. Maybe a Cerulean blue?  So lots of research is on my to do list. 

You may be wondering why so much planning and sampling. Once a color is selected, one tends to buy a whole bottle of it. Generally, a bottle will hold either 30 ml or 50 ml of ink depending on the maker of the ink. For instance, my purple Wearingeul Great Gatsby is in a 30 ml bottle and my brown Diamine Cocoa Shimmer is in a 50 ml bottle. When I fill my pens they hold a tiny amount of ink in comparison, the Pilot Metropolitan has a small converter that can only hold up to .85 ml and the Jinhao X750 has a different style converter that can hold up to 1.05 ml. These bottles of ink whether 30 or 50 ml contain a whole lot of ink and will last a long time, for many refills of my pens. And one thing that is so nice about fountain pens is that you can change the color of your inks as much as you like. Of course, you need to clean out the ink residue so it doesn't make a weird color out of the new ink you are filling your pen with.