If you have been even a tiny bit engaged on social media, you would most likely have heard of the latest hype about a black and blue dress that looked like white and gold to some others. If you haven’t, you can read about it here. In case you wanted to know, I saw it first as light blue and brown, but as i looked multiple times, it got more and more undoubtedly black and blue. Maybe you don’t care, but… I went to browse around at Fook Hing to look for black-and-blue and white-and-gold fountain pens. I wondered how these pens would look in these colours. I realised it wasn’t too easy to find a pen that is really black and blue in colour. Most of those on display were blue marbled with white, or all-blue. But I finally found one, and a “matching” white-and-gold pen as well: On the top we have the Pelikan M800 which Prem has reviewed right here, followed by the Aurora Optima. Both pens have gold trims. For the Pelikan M800, this is a classic pen of the Pelikan brand, the smaller sized version of the flagship M1000. For the Aurora, the Optima has been […]
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Time flies and on February 28, 2015, the Singapore Fountain Pen Lovers (SFPL) Facebook group was due for yet another pen meet, for the month of February. This time, it was held at the Tea Party Cafe which has been volunteered by one of our members, and what a nice cafe it was! We had a turnout of about 50+ and although the turnout number is around the same for the last 2 months, I am still pretty amazed, as our pen meets used to only have 20 odd at the maximum. This pen meet was sponsored by Wahl-Eversharp, an American company well known for the Doric and the Skyline pens, and Fook Hing Trading Co. Wahl-Eversharp has lately been revived after sitting in a quiet corner for almost 50 years, so, while I have not really tried their pens before (except for a little golden Wahl ringtop vintage pen that I like), I hope they are making a bunch of nice fountain pens! The prizes sponsored by Wahl-Eversharp were: 1st Prize: SKYLINE Classic Collection – Black Resin with Gold Plated Cap/Trim Fountain Pen 14kt Semi-Flex Fine Stub Nib – Customised by Pendleton Brown 2nd Prize: SKYLINE Classic Collection – Navy Blue Resin with Gold […]
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Howdy! I am late to blog about this, but I guess it’s better late than never! In early January this year, I found out that Straits Pen was holding a Fukubukuro sale. Fukubukuro is 福袋 in Kanji, which means “Lucky Bag”. This is a Japanese custom of the New Year where retailers will pack “goodie bags” of items unknown to purchasers, and sell these bags at a substantial discount. It is a win-win situation for both merchants and customers, as the merchants can clear off their stock from the previous year (it is deemed unlucky to carry forward stock over the New Year in Japan), and customers can get items at a discount, with the surprise element of not knowing what you will get (maybe a gem?). So this was what Sunny from Straits Pen organized for the fountain pen community, and I knew I had to join in when I saw the list of potential items he had stuffed into the Fukubukuro bags (as quoted from the Straits Pen website): 5 of the Bags will contain a TWSBI pen. 4 of the Bags will contain a newly launched product. 3 of the Bags will contain a choice of 4001 […]
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Happy Lunar New Year! This year is the Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram however you like it. As the Chinese calendar follows the lunar calendar, it falls on a different date every year on the western calendar. The Chinese community will be celebrating our New Year, also known as Spring Festival. Yesterday we all had our reunion dinners with our families, and mine went to a seafood restaurant at the East Coast Park for a really yummy dinner! The Chinese New Year celebrations typically lasts for 15 days from the first day of the New Year. You may think it’s a crazy-long 2 weeks of celebrations, but in Singapore, we only have the first 2 days off work, and “normal lives” resume on the 3rd day. This year we are lucky enough to have the 3rd day falling on a Saturday, which means we have 4 days of rest from work. Today, I am off to visit relatives in my new dress as per tradition, and I’m guessing they are going to play mahjong after lunch, too! This unfortunately means I will need to leave my fountain pens behind and I don’t have a chance to use them today. So early in […]
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Today’s #pendelight is the Omas FPC Limited Edition fountain pen, a pen with significant meaning, and a beautiful sight to behold. I spotted it while browsing pens – a silver sliver of visual delight in the display cabinet. The Omas FPC was launched in the year 2008, the same year that the worldwide total of personal computers has reached one billion. You can read about the news here on Reuters. This pen was launched to celebrate this milestone. Crafted in treated aluminium, the pen body is silver-coloured and has a smooth feel. It is a limited edition pen and there were 1008 pieces of fountain pens made, with 1000 rollerball pens, making up a total of 2008 pieces – the same number as the milestone year for personal computers. On the body, there are guilloché engravings. Guilloché is a technique where precise and intricated patterns are engraved onto a material. These patterns tend to be repetitive. According to Omas, the two front sides give a detail of the design of the first hard disk made in 1956; the clip affixed to these sides represents a stylized form of an abacus used in 1200 AD. The third side shows a detail […]
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InCoWriMo stands for International Correspondence Writing Month. The idea is to write a letter, a postcard or note to someone every day during the month of February. Why February you may ask, it is the month with the fewest number of days so it is easier to stay commited. I took part for the very first time last year. I was new in the realm of using fountain pens. However, in the increasingly digital world that we live in, I found I had very few opportunities to break out my beloved fountain pens to jot down a note or write myself a to-do list. I found myself inventing excuses to use my pens. Luckily it was during this time I had stumbled upon InCoWriMo. I went browsing in the FPgeeks forum looking for 28 people to write to. There was no rule saying that I had to only write to people I know so I made it a point to pick people from as many different countries as possible. I made a list of their addresses and began drafting my letters. I admit I had cheated a little, I didn’t write a letter everyday. I had written 3 letters a day in […]
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Time flies and it was time for yet another pen meet, this time the first one of the year Twenty Fifteen! We the Singapore Fountain Pens Lovers Facebook group administrators got together to organize this pen meet, and I grabbed the chance to do some filming on site. The pen meet was located at a very beautiful condominium, so it seemed to make everyone really happy! I’ll show you the pictures from now, and do watch out for the video at the end of the post! The room was meant for 15-20 people, but 30+ people turned up! Some of them had to stand around, which I feel bad about. The admins wanted to split half the group to a nearby shopping mall to look for space to hang around to talk pens, but everyone seemed to prefer cosy and noisy. Soumya was sharing about the pens he had brought over, and I badly wanted to include his part into the SFPL Pen Meet video, but the video got really long. So I will be posting up a separate video with Soumya’s part another day! Hope you don’t mind this, Soumya! This is something I’ve been wanting to do: to have […]
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This is a Cross Townsend Garnet fountain pen. Cross is a fountain pen brand by the A.T. Cross Company, and originates from the US, where it is probably one of the first companies making fine writing instruments in the country. Although it also makes other products, it is most well-known for its writing instruments. Did you know that Cross has acquired Sheaffer last year from Bic? Now, I wonder what’s going to change between the two brands… Fortunately I have managed to celebrate Sheaffer’s Centennial when it was still Sheaffer (even though under Bic). Now let’s see what synergy the two fountain pen brands can come up with in the years to come! The Cross Townsend range of pens has a variety of design and colours, but Garnet seems to be one of the discontinued colours as one cannot find it on the Cross website anymore. So I feel I am pretty lucky to be able to have a look at one before it is even going to be snatched up by another customer! This pen is delightful to me mainly because of the colour. I tend to be attracted to red-blue-purple-orange colours easily, and this garnet colour of the Cross Townsend […]
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Hello everyone! My name is Prem, and thanks to Maybelline’s generous proposal of collaboration, I will henceforth be contributing to this blog, along with Thomas. I decided to make my first post an introductory one of sorts. I first got into fountain pens last year, when I was looking for a new medium to sketch with. I mostly used pencils, and had only dabbled with ballpoints and gel pens, neither of which I liked using. Enter the fountain pen. Not only were these pens beautiful, I could fill them with any colour of ink I liked! I was instantly smitten. Following a well-beaten path, I purchased a Lamy Al-Star and a Noodler’s Konrad for my first pens. I instantly disliked the grip and writing feel of the Lamy. This is not to say they are bad pens – in fact, their durability and nib-swappability make them quite popular beginner pens – but it just did not feel right in my hand. Since then, I have taken the time to learn more about fountain pens, and to try as much as I can before I buy. Now I ensure that the pens I purchase are ones that I definitely will use, […]
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If you’re a fan of the Lamy Al-Star range of fountain pens, you may be pleased to know that the 2015 colour will be a nice, vibrant Copper Orange! Lamy releases a new colour every year for their Safari range of pens, including the Al-Star, which has an aluminium body instead of the Safari’s plastic. I got my first Al-Star in black-purple which is really more of a magenta-type colour, and this was one of my first “serious” fountain pens when I started my fountain pen hobby. Here a link to my review and comparison between the Lamy Al-Star and Lamy Vista, its transparent counterpart. I thought I made an excellent choice picking the black-purple colour. (And hey, the last I’ve checked, this is also the colour being featured on the Lamy Al-Star webpage!) The Lamy Al-Star was a later release after the highly popular Safari pens. It comes so far in pretty limited colour choices, even tending more towards the cool colours (maybe because it’s aluminium and usually cooling to the touch?), so if you have been waiting for a warm and vibrant Al-Star colour, you can look forward to this Copper Orange release! Thank you Fontoplumo, for highlighting […]
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