#13 last week’s pens: week 22 of 2026
Last week brought a trip to the sunny shores of Barcelona. I was supposed to be working for three days, and one of those days included a long walk throughout the city. This put three main constraints to my weekly inked:
1- Compact: I was going for 5 days in total with only a small backpack as my luggage. I simply did not have space to bring many pens.
2- Resistant: The pens needed to be sturdy, but also not phased by changing temperatures or flight. No burps, no dumping ink into the cap, no justling cartridges.
3- Comfortable: I had to write on uneven surfaces, even while just standing. I brought some ballpoints and pencils for this part that I will get into in a separate post, still the fountain pens needed to be reliable enough to write on a variety of surfaces for long times if necessary.
It is not surprising to me that this meant a TWSBI-heavy lineup. The downside of this was the prevalence of large-capacity fillers, a vac-filler and a piston-filler. Usually, I prefer cartridge-converter pens for a weekly rotation, as I know that I cannot completely write out the ink in 2 large-capacity pens. Added to this was the use of ballpoints and pencils that do take precedence in sketching, standing notes and jotting down into a pocket notebook; which resulted in a mildly unsuccessful weekly inked. None of the pens were completely out of ink by the end of the week, but I was so sick of the same colours that I cleaned out everything anyway to start fresh.
Overall, the vibrant blues kept the mood light, though the mistake that led to me being very sick of these pens was inking two pens in a very similar blue shade. Thankfully, that was the brain fart of the week, and nothing else went wrong during the trip itself. Let’s get into it!
Kaweco Sport Mellow Blue -M- Diamine Mediterranean Blue
So, the brain fart happened right here, when I tried to ink the Vac 700R below with Mediterranean Blue, couldn’t fit the section of the pen through the 30ml Diamine bottles and decided that filling a short international cartridge was going to be the solution. Imagine my surprise when I simply could not fit the cartridge to the Vac 700R. Instead, I grabbed a Kaweco Sport, which also had a very dry nib, especially for a medium. This resulted in a bit of a problem though, as there were some hard starts and skipping, which did not lend itself too well to uneven writing. The upside of inking a Kaweco Sport was that it behaved spectacularly in the journey, not a single drop of ink was in the cap.
TWSBI Vac700R Kyanite -F- Rohrer & Klingner Blu Mare
Barcelona brings in my mind the shimmering Mediterranean Sea and the cloudless skies, so a bright blue ink was definitely going to come with me. This pen lends itself well to blue inks due to its nib that looks dipped into the ink itself, and the filling system has never caused me any problems with flights or moving around. As it is with most coated-nibs (in my experience) this nib also runs a touch drier than my other TWSBI nibs, which wasn’t a big bother in this situation, as Blu Mare flows well.
TWSBI Eco Cement Grey -EF- KWZ Iron Gall Gummiberry
This specific pen is my second most reliable pen, as it had already survived plenty of backpack bottoms and being crushed by laptops. It’s in great shape, so this was my backup pen, inked with an extremely reliable iron gall ink that behaves well on most papers I’ve used. Due to the forgiving nib on this pen, it became the pen I pocketed for workshops and walks, and it did its job very well. The only downside was that it needed a good soak to get some staining out after being inked in hot weather for a week. Well, this pen is permanently stained from iron gall inks anyway, so it’s not a big deal.
Thank you for reading! I changed my camera, so it may take a few posts for me to really get the hang of the colours on it. Who is joining the Dutch Pen Show this weekend?
