Every new pen I buy seems to get better. This week sees the National Stationery Day in the U.K. (24 April, hey it’s today!), and oh how envious I am! I’m not from the U.K. so it is a pity that I can’t join in the fun! But I guess I can still do it my own way by having a new review, this time of two pens! If you’re reading this from the U.K. please show this day some support. Check out this website. This review is not going to be very in-depth, considering that I’m writing about TWO pens which were only recently acquired – four days ago. Why the hurry, you may ask? That’s because after getting these two pens, I was so impressed by them that I had to post about them already! Without having to be “accustomed” to them, I already knew they were the perfect ones for me. I’ve been searching around for a sleek-looking and well-behaved white fountain pen, and almost wanted to get the white Pilot Prera, but in the end this pen caught my attention and I just had to help myself. Now for the story of how I came […]
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In January this year, I hopped onto a mass order wagon together with my pals from SFPL, and bought a Noodler’s Ahab Flex Nib Piston Fill Fountain Pen from Goulet Pens. Phew, what a mouthful. Let’s keep things short and sweet and call it the “Ahab”. This post, however, is not going to be short and sweet. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Speaking of mouthfuls and sweetness, This pen looks very much like candy to me. I mean, it’s green with white swirls. Or white with green swirls, whatever you will. Doesn’t it remind you of candy such as the one in the picture? Not only does it look like candy, it smells too. Not really of candy, as it isn’t a very delicious smell, but it’s somewhat sweet-smelling. In the beginning, the smell was absolutely disgusting (sorry it wasn’t intended to be this way), but when it grows on you, it’s actually alright. Just remember to give this pen a good wash, inside-out, when you have just received it. I used dishwash liquid to soak the pen at Day One and tried rubbing the surfaces with my fingers to remove the top layer of volatile substances causing the […]
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I’m travelling to Spain and France for two weeks in early May, flying off on 28 April, so during that two weeks it is highly likely that I will have close to zero access to internet. So to make up for that lost time, I’m trying to work more on my blog these days and posting more stuff for readers like you! Today, I finally have another pen review on board: that of MUJI’S! Anyone around here likes Muji products? Let’s talk about the shape of this pen first. The first thing that comes to my mind is something that doesn’t sound very pleasant, but I just had to say it: If this pen were a woman, she would have the worst figure of all women on Earth. Wait a minute, I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just, you know, I’ve always had pens which have at least SOME variation in diameter at some location of the pen (excluding the nib and feed section), but this pen is so incredibly CYLINDRICAL, that even when the cap is posted like in the above picture, the whole pen stays cylindrical (well, except for the clip of course). How, […]
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Blink your eyes not, because lo and behold, my very first wax seal! Getting a wax seal has been in my mind for a long, long time. How long? I guess I started loving it from the day I saw a wax seal in use on TV. That must have been donkey years ago! The thought has probably been rolling around in the deep mud amidst all other murky and dark stuff at the back of my mind, until recently, when these so-called “archaic” thingums started resurfacing along with my “super-calligraphilistic-inky-alidocious” desires. Why “archaic”, you might ask? Much as I don’t wish to admit it, calligraphy, beautiful lettering and handwriting are a thing that is going to be the past. DON’T EVER LET THAT HAPPEN. To what extent has this become? Here is an example: a friend has helped me to buy a fountain pen online last year (my Lamy Vista). When the parcel arrived, the father asked about its contents. She told him it was a fountain pen for me. He said, “Wow, who is your friend? Who uses fountain pens in this time and age?” Already it has been implied that I and my hobbies are archaic. Today […]
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On 2 April I received an Osmiroid Calligraphy Set from a colleague. It happened like this: she took the tattered and dusty box of the 6-nib set from her bag and placed it on the table in front of me. I looked at her questioningly. She said, “Well since you like fountain pens and calligraphy, and since I managed to get a chance to go back to my old hometown in Ipoh and flip through my old belongings, I found this.” She then proceeded to hand the box to me. I hesitated. She did not specify yet whether it just to let me admire it, or whether she planned to give it to me. I thought it was meant to be a late April Fool’s joke or something because I would never expect someone to give a gem like this to me. After all, April Fool’s this year fell on a Sunday, a day that colleagues don’t usually meet (at least not in my company), so it was a ruined chance to play a potential joke on someone, which should be recuperated the following day. It didn’t help that the box handed to me was torn, tattered, with all 6 nibs […]
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For those of you who had gone through your adolescent years in Singapore, you are highly likely to have come across one of these markers before: Don’t they look lovely in the myriad of colours? I first started using these during my secondary school days (2001-2004) and they were incredibly popular in a convent school where the girls loved to decorate their notes, write postcards to each other, or simply using them for notation or highlighting purposes. The reason was because these pens are double-ended, which meant that I can use one end (0.5mm thickness) for normal writing, and the other end (1.2mm thickness) for colouring, marking, highlighting or decorating. The line thickness varies among pens, and also depends on the amount of usage you put on the pen. For the 0.5mm side, they are pretty consistent. However I observed that for pens that are more frequently used, if you have a heavy touch like me, the thickness of the 1.2mm side tends to increase over time, less for some pens and more for others. Looking at the sample writing, you can probably guess which ones are my favourites that have been used more frequently, judging from the […]
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Today’s review is about pens that are non-fountain. This is my first non-fountain pen review so far. The reason I wanted to do this is because I love these pens so much that I just had to share it with everyone! Arguably, since this blog’s name is “On Fountain Pens” and it is misleading if I do a non-fountain pen review, I have changed the blog description (which appears below the huge title) to better suit what this blog is intended to be. Anyway, no idea should be fixed, things change, times change! Sitting capped at 14.5cm, and posted at 16cm, this perfectly-sized pen comes in eight colours other than the regular blue and black. I have used the light blue one before (you can see the drop in ink level compared to the others), and yesterday I just got the purple, green, orange and pink. There is also the red which I don’t usually use, so I didn’t get it. Not only are the colours varied, the Pilot Super Gel also comes in two three different sizes: 0.5mm, and 0.7mm and 1.0mm nibs (*I have just found out online that they sell 1.0mm size too. Sounds delicious. I never […]
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Lost in my admiration of my fountain pens, I had totally forgotten to look at the fountain pen’s companions: accessories to enhance a fountain pen experience. I’m talking about this gift that I had received from a good friend: I am not a chilli-person, nor am I a colour-red-person, so I really don’t know why I was given this choice of the colour. Perhaps it’s a subtle hint for me to SPICE up my life. Or perhaps it’s to stand out from the rest of my sombre belongings and scream, “Hello everyone! Look at me and the jewels in my tummy!” I’m not complaining, though, I have grown to love this little pouch and its colour – and the little rabbit at the end of the string! Opening the synthetic leather-like pouch, two pockets are revealed, which can hold about 3 pens each (ignore the notepad at the side). My biggest pens are my Lamy Al-Star and Lamy Vista, and the smallest is my Parker Urban. I have experienced curling of the edges of the thin pouch if I try to place too many fat pens together, so I try not to push or even reach this limit. […]
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Happy Seventh Day of the Lunar New Year! Today is what we call 人日 (rén rì) or Man’s Birthday: everybody’s birthday! Long due is the review of one of my favourite pens: the Platinum Plaisir. I will do a mini comparison with the Platinum Preppy because I believe almost everyone knows about the Preppy already, if you are a fountain pen-phile. For the sake of those who had never heard or thought about fountain pens before, I will write a small paragraph on the Preppy. So far I have only come into contact with two Platinum pens, namely the Plaisir and the Preppy (which will be thus referred to in the rest of the blog). The Preppy: a really cheap and good starter’s pen, it is made of see-through plastic which is pretty appealing if you like demonstrator pens (basically, see-through pens). It’s lightweight and has a steel nib section coated with the colour of the pen itself. So if you have a pink Preppy, it comes with a pink-coated nib section. A special thing about this pen is the capping mechanism: there is somewhat like a double-seal mechanism, one at the normal place where the cap clicks onto […]
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This review will be about my first two and only Lamy fountain pens. One was bought at Fook Hing Trading Co. on impulse because of the beautiful colour (Lamy AL-star black purple) and the other was bought online just so that I can have a Lamy Safari which is a demonstrator pen, at the same time (Lamy Vista Demonstrator fountain pen). The reason I am doing a comparison review for these pens is because they seem to be very similar in grade and quality, and both have very similar designs to the Lamy Safari range of pens. I don’t have a Safari myself (yet) but I will be thinking of getting one soon. Or perhaps a Lamy Joy instead. Comparing the shapes and designs, they don’t differ by a lot — the same kind of metal clip on both pens catches my attention first. They also have the same window at the side of the pen body to show you how much ink is left. Both pens feel almost the same in size, but the Vista is in fact slightly smaller that the AL-star. The metal clip of the Vista protrudes slightly more at the top of the cap. […]
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