And we’re back!
Sorta.
Still trying to get used to a better writing schedule so I can more frequently update this. Again, what’s the end point? I don’t know. I like inks. INKS!
I’ve picked up a thing for purple inks because it’s one of my favorite colors. Blame it on going to Church during advent, the association with Roman military history, lavender being one of my favorite scents, etc.
And then I thought, it would be cool to have one that can serve as substitute for a black ink and will only look purple on closer inspection.
So I discovered the Diamine Scribble. Diamine Scribble is one of two purple inks (the other being Diamine Monboddo’s Hat) that Fountain Pens UK came up with as a collaboration with Diamine. It’s a rather wet writer but it’s such a bold, black purple.


Once again, the two surprises are the Clairefontaine and the standard notebook paper in how they’ve managed these pen tests. The notebook paper should be the worst with fountain pens and the Clairefontaine better, but the latter has some interesting ghosting issues. I wonder if maybe I’m dolloping too much ink on the initial portion of the test.
That being said, the Clairefontaine is still a fantastic paper to write on, I just have to be more careful about writing on it since it almost feels like you’re writing on silk.

Plus, you can really see the gold undertones and it performs really well on the water drop test, compared to the next one on the list, the standard notebook paper..

You’ll get some of the shading but the ink smears all over with the water droplet test.

The Tomoe River has recently been discontinued and it’s a great paper! Current notebooks run you around $65 since people started hoarding them. I’m going to use them for letter-writing for the most part now and replace it with something more common like the LT1917.
But the breakthrough I’ve come across?

Rhodia. Quick dry time. Boldness and sheen. Does okay on the drop test. Little ghosting. Definitely one of the best papers to write on. My last journal was a Rhodia webnotebook and but for the fact that it was a little bit too wide-ruled for my taste, it was a great notebook.