Brainfarts (with or without the smell)

I posted the earlier text to Fountain Pen Network also, but lo and behold, the text was deleted after only a few days and I received a message from one of the mods or admins. I posted my answer as a new thread: ------------------ Happy Family Obviously my post hurt someone's feelings and that someone forwarded his/her bad feelings to someone else and my post was removed. I was told the group in question was set up because the customers wanted it, this is propably true. Then I was told there is no negativity in the group and no demands to be a fanboy. Of course not there is no negativity, it is a happy place and secondly, the sender missed - propably deliberately - the context of my text. The sender continues that any kind of of negativity towards any particular company is not allowed especially if the criticism has no grounds. First of all, this can be read that no one is allowed to critizise any company, ever. My words were about a darn Facebook group, not a company, for c

Many years ago I used to be a user of a Linux forum of a distribution and everything was good. At some point the developer and the king of the forum disappeared and the other admins started to control the forum. Before everyone knew it things started to change and deteriorate – rapidly. First no one was allowed to speak out of the problems in a negative tone, the onfortunate one who did so, was silenced quite quickly. No one was allowed to speak aloud of the problems in the atmosphere because it would have disrupted the image of the happy family. After a while talking about other distributions was not allowed anymore and that, if something, is very normal behaviour amongst the people who like toying with their computers. Everything and everybody was to be happy. I left the forum for a while. I came back 2-3 years later only to notice that the things were even worse than when I left. That was it for me, I left for good, I can live my life without cults. I’ve found my fountain p

I decided to purchase some more inks because it appears that I haven't yet found what I'm looking for. At the same time I decided to purchase a Rhodia Webbie notebooks in sizes A5 and A6 so I could compare them to my current notebook. First the inks: The inks are Diamine Grey, Saddle Brown, Prussian Blue, Blue/Black and Presidential Blue. After testing they all appear to be very well behaving inks and I'll make a few posts later of the inks I have purchased. Now the paper comparison. My current Sorrento notebook is in the lower left corner and Rhodia cover the rest of the photo. The lining is the same, Sorrento has more visible lines and the creamy paper is slightly darker than the ivory in Rhodia. The Clairefontaine paper of the Rhodia is more slippery than in Sorrento, which is slightly rougher. Next a quick writing test with the Rhodia: The dots of i's were wet and smeared whereas on Sorrento the ink would have dried almost instant

I received the next shipment of inks a few days ago and it consisted of 14 inks. Mainly Diamine inks because their inks come in smaller 30 ml bottles and there was also one Rohrer & Klingner ink and on Waterman ink. These inks were purchased from  Purepens  like the earlier ones and I have been very satisfied with their services. They added a Zebra rollerball pen to my shipment - perhaps it was a free gift for a nice customer or it may have been a hint for me to quit playing with inks and use a normal pen...... Now I have a plethora of ink bottles on my desk to be tested. My journal has creamy paper while my Ink Book has clear white paper and this causes some distortion to the ink tests. I have bought the inks for writing so I make my future ink decisions based on how the ink looks on the creamy paper. The white paper is only for archival and reference purposes. I will make a post of every ink on a white and a creamy paper so everyone interested in the differences can

I received my new fountain pen yesterday and today I had some time to test it. The pen is Cross Bailey with an "M" nib and cost roughly 35 euros from  Pen Heaven  from UK. In addition to the pen I bough also the screw-in converter which is essential in my opinion. I have still one shipment on the way to my address from Pen Heaven and the arriving pen is a bit more expensive with an F-nib but it is another story that you'll hear (read) later. I loaded the pen with Diamine Sherwood Green ink and tested it on my Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. M-size nib appears to be too braod for me but on the other hand notebook has 5mm dots so the text is written too tight. Also the paper of Leuchtturm is not what I think a fountain pen friendly notebook has but I can compare the papers after the next Pen Heaven shipment which includes a fountain pen friendly notebook. This ink dries in 5-10 seconds unles it is a wet spot which dries longer, naturally. I really like the color and

My Lamy came with two sets of ink cartridges: black and blue-black and in addition I ordered naturally the converter and a bottle of black ink, the pen itself contained a blue cartridge. Well, I wouldn't be me if I didn't want to try other inks and colors too, so I made a little order to another British pen store and lo and behold, the postal service delivered me 11 ink bottles. The brand is Diamine and the colors are the following: First thing to do was to make the swab samples. The paper I used was Winsor & Newton sketchbook with 110 g/m2 paper, that is bright white and shows the colors quite well: And of course the next phase was to test the inks. To save time and trouble I didn't want to use the Lamy with the converter so I took my dip pen and started scribbling: Nice colors indeed but Woodland Green and Emerald are not to my taste otherwise the colors are fine for writing and drawing. The Diamine Midnight is not usable with dip pens, it simply

There is always a start, a new start for everything. I've always been an eager writer and have been blogging here and there in Finnish and now some time has passed by without writing anything so I decided to start a new blog - this time in English. I will try to provide new content every week at least once, sometime more often and sometimes less often, sometimes more pictures and sometimes more text. I hope I won't offend anyone with my writings but if I hurt someone's feelings, my condolences. The layout of this blog is for starters at the moment, I'll tune it little by little, try to bear... Ok, the introduction done. For the last weeks I've been digging out information about the fountain pens and fountain pen friendly papers and notebooks. I bought my first fountain pen Lamy Safari some weeks ago and even though as nice a pen it is, the grip sucks - and badly. My hand is bigger than the average German hand so the natural grip for me is when I grip the pen in