I’ve been gazing at the pens and stationery on this site – jetpens.com – for way too long this morning. The pens! The pencils! Pencil cases! Brush pens! Oh my goodness! (I could have been reading or writing or doing something productive, but no…) The pen in this picture, for example. Look at all the other colours! It’s a Pilot pen! I love Pilot pens! Such fine nibs! So smooooooth! Take a deep breath and calm down, Con…
1. Cost. You know how the exchange rate is not so good at the moment? Something like 66 Australian cents for every US dollar? Given the current exchange rate it would cost about AU$60, and that’s not taking postage into account. I’m looking at the bright side, it means I’m not spending money willy-nilly. (It’s not that expensive for a fountain pen, but still.)
2. I have 6,000,000 fountain pens already. Okay, I exaggerate, but I do have way more pens than there are days in the week. (I don’t actually know how many fountain pens I have, I don’t like to quantify pure pleasure. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)
3. Want is not the same as need. If I were to adhere to a strict need-only rule for pens, I would just use a 50 cent ballpoint pen. (Ugh! Let’s not dwell on this point, a world in which I only had disposable biros to scribble with would be a world without colour.)
4. There’s no REASON to buy another pen. (See reason 2, above.)
5. Fountain pens make me go silly. I.must.be.strong.
6. Lime green wouldn’t go with my wardrobe.
Time to have a cold shower and calm down.
Thanks to Michael Leddy for pointing the jetpens site out.
8 Comments
I’ve been using disposable fountain pens, recently. My biggest issue is that they release too much ink, resulting in pretty thick lines, and writing that goes through to the other side of the page.
How do I stop this, o wise one?
GASP – Disposable fountain pens?? Like eating McDonald’s food when you could go to Jackson’s 😉
Well, grasshopper, i mean, mpfl 🙂 you have two things to consider here: nib size and paper quality. In many cases an M (Medium) nib means that too much ink is released, leading to “bleed”. F (Fine) nibs may work better. I realise that many people dislike using F nibs, though – too fine.
Paper quality is also important. Cheap and nasty 30c each exercise books for example would not be good to write on if you’re using a fountain pen…
I would also have suggested trying a different ink (Quink vs Sheaffer’s vs Noodlers vs Visconti) but you have no choice when you’re using a disposable.
I should also add that paper quality is a perennial problem for fountain pen users. Many seemingly high quality papers don’t necessarily cope with fountain pen ink. Another example of how quality slips when you let standards slide/start using ballpoints 😉
/facetious tone off.
mmmmm – I like pens too. Not quite to the same.. uh.. extent perhaps.
I have similar problems when it comes to stamps (not the postal kind).
Penny: are you talking big rubber stamps for use with an ink pad? If so, where do you purchase them? I’m thinking about stamping my books so that I can lend them out to people without worrying so much about whether I will get them back.
Some of my supervisor’s books are stamped with a cool ridged/textured stamp. I’m not sure how that’s done though.
Con: regarding point 3 and the disposable ball points – you could argue that using a good pen is more ecologically friendly than using 50 million disposables – so you could justifiably have a nice fountain pen. or maybe even two – one for work and one at home. and one in your handbag. but all quite justifiably and not in any way excessive!
While we’re on the subject of fountain pens, I’d quite like to have a nice fountain pen, but the trouble is that I’d want one I could get calligraphy nibs for, so I could try to take up calligraphy again (I did it in primary school, but lost my pen somewhere along the way). And the trouble with /that/ is that I’d need left-handed calligraphy nibs. Do you have any advice/recommendations?
Akkadis, I have used that argument about the environment before – problem is, I have one pen for work, one for home, one for bag, one for study, one for signing invoices, one for bedside table, one for… 😀
In terms of calligraphy nibs, I’d suggest looking online to see what sort of pen you might be interested in. For example Fountain Pen Hospital has a nice range. You can sometimes pick up Parker or Sheaffer kits around – the Curtin bookshop used to have them! The kits are good value because you can try different nib widths. T.Sharpe in the city might also have something – or be happy to order them in for you…
Hi, I googled “fountain pen” wrap and found your website. It’s cool to see a fellow librarian who loves fountain pens. Cheers, Ruby