3 short posts in a trench coat: weekly carry-around #3

(24/04/2023 – 30/04/2023)

Of course I’m jumping at the first chance to break my simplicity rule. Don’t worry though, it’s for a good purpose, I wanted to have a surprise post for King’s Day and then today happened and then I wanted to talk about my currently inked pens because I’m surprised about quite a few of them.

Buckle up guys, gals and non-binary pals (courtesy of the most wholesome food Youtuber), we have a lot to discuss.

Part 1: Orange

Yesterday was King’s Day, the birthday of the king of Netherlands, so everywhere was drenched in the brightest orange possible. It was loud and busy on the streets. It seemed like a fun time, though it got tiring quick if bad music and smelly drunk people aren’t your thing. It is not mine. Fortunately, I had an orange pen inked up this week, so I could go back home and journal a bit.

I am absolutely obsessed with peaches. No, really, I will eat kilos of them every day if I’m let. Dinner is peaches, lunch is peaches, breakfast is peaches. There are days I eat nothing but fruit in summer. And most of that fruit is, you guessed it, peaches. I will start seeing it in my dreams during the spring. It’s a little annoying, as the only peaches I can find are the horribly syrupy canned ones at the moment. So, I channelled this obsession also into Diamine Peach Haze. If it has peaches in the name, I will get it.

It's a well-behaved, standard ink. The colour is a little unexpected though. It’s a bright, saturated orange with a hint of coral that separates it from similar inks like Diamine Pumpkin. There is almost no shading to be seen and no sheen in writing. It did have a reddish sheen on the huge swatch on the Midori paper, but that’s the first time I’m seeing it as well. It’s inked in my Lamy 2000, and it’s a happy combination.

Part 2: Fire

I didn’t expect to write a follow-up post to pens I’d run into a burning building post, but here we are.

Shortly after waking up, putting my lovely little Bialetti Moka pot on the stove to boil and sitting with my book to wait for my coffee, the fire alarm sounded. It was quickly followed by announcements for evacuation. Of course, I took an extra moment to pack up some pens. My currently inked pens, a Galen Leather Writer’s Bank Bag and my computer had to leave the house with me. I cannot let my years of work during college go to waste simply because someone wasn’t careful while frying their eggs. In the end, these were the pens I took with me:

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Winter Sky

Sailor Pro Gear Wisteria

Pilot Custom Heritage 92

Studyo Agackakan pen

Giants’ Pens pen

Scribe Pen’s custom Omas L’Aqua di Bologna

Aurora 88 with a rolled gold cap

I have to say that I had no trouble shovelling two more pens into my bag: an old Montblanc 146 with a nib ground to a beautiful fine and my other Aurora 88 Big. In my defence, it was either them getting burned or a few scratches. I’d take my chances with scratches over fires any day.

In the end, as far as I’ve understood, there wasn’t a real fire but an equipment malfunction. At least now I know the difference between a fire alarm and the flood alarm. The only thing I lost during this whole ordeal was my beautiful cup of coffee, who got cold until we came back (of course I turned the stove off before leaving). I was a little upset, since I had ground the coffees by hand the night before… At least, we got to have a breakfast in Starbucks (only place open at 8:30 in the morning) and a mediocre coffee.

Part 3: Routine

Well, welcome back to your somewhat regularly scheduled weekly update.

I’ve decided to start a new series in the blog to track which pens (and pencils!) I’ve been using this week. A manageable 6-pen rotation in a Galen Leather pen case to be carried around or set on my desk. Pencils, because I use them to scribble on margins. I’d like to mention the books I’m reading and the video game I played the most. The only way for me to track stuff is write it down, and well, that’s what I am doing. All of these are mostly in my bag at all times anyway, hence the carry-around.

Only one limit: I have to describe everything in 2 sentences.

Pens

Leonardo Momento Zero -F- Diamine Saddle Brown: This combination worked well for “boring” tasks such as note taking or writing drafts. The ink required a bit of getting used to, as it is an interesting shade of brown.

Franklin Cristoph x Galen Model 02 -F- Octopus Fluids Moss Green: The nib and ink get along very well, smooth and wet enough to show the tiniest bit of sheen around the letters in writing. I wasn’t too sure about the shape of the pen, but it is growing on me.

Sailor Pro Gear Realo -HF- KWZ Gummiberry: Only ink that can fill in the void left by Yama-budo is the Gummiberry. I especially like this combination of pen and ink, since the ink doesn’t smoothen out the feedback of the Sailor nib and leaves a wonderfully tactile feeling without being too dry to be comfortable.

Lamy 2000 -F- Diamine Peach Haze: A pen that fits perfectly in my hand and a cheerful orange. Using these just makes me happy.

Studyo Agackakan x Galen -MI- Troublemaker Milky Ocean: Once these get along together, they look beautiful, but sometimes the ink is too dry for the pen and it becomes a pale, sky blue line instead of the rich, multichromatic ink. At least both the pen and the ink are beautiful in their own right, separately.

Pilot 823 -M- Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo: Why change a thing if it works perfectly? Maybe I should, since I want to use this pen a bit more regularly.

Pencil

Uni Kuru Toga 0.5: Apparently this is the only pencil that is worth saving, since it was the only pencil in my bag. Jokes aside, it’s a good pencil to scribble in the margins of books, though the barrel isn’t the most comfortable.

Reading

Mistborn: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson (fiction): I like Brandon Sanderson’s books, they take you along for a gripping ride. Somehow, TOR publishing has been missing out on the typos and the writing mistakes, the edition I have has its fair share of them.

(non-fiction): No non-fiction reading this week, bring all the sweet, sweet escapism to me.

Videogames

No videogames this week as well, most of it was spent reading and working.

Disclaimer: Please do not waste time for evacuation during a fire. I did it only because I was well aware of the risk and how much time I would spend actually leaving the building. Your life is a lot more valuable than any pen.

Thank you for reading.