Murasaki-shikibu

 Purple is my least favorite color. I got my undergraduate degree at SMU, and our bitter rivals (tcu) use purple as their school color. As a loyal Mustang, I can't stand tcu, horned frogs, and the color purple. I only tested this ink at all because I'm planning to pass it off to my sister who is a Tri-sigma, and purple is their color. I was just gonna do a little scribbling with it for the blog since I got it in an ink drop shipment. This ink from Pilot's Iroshizuku line really surprised me.

Dang it if I don't like this ink.

Murasaki is very smooth-looking lavender that shades well even from the new fine nib on my Lamy Al-Star.

It's well-lubricated and it skates across the page even when I'm not on Rhodia paper. It is well-behaved and it doesn't feather, spread, or bleed except on the very worst paper that I have available. Cheap copy paper and filler papers give this unpronounceable ink no problem at all. As you can see in the picture, it isn't water resistant at all. I went ahead and compared it to DA's Elderberry even though they aren't close at all. It's the only other purple-ish ink that I had available. If you're looking for a smooth purple, and you don't mind paying the premium price that Iroshizuku demands, then this is a really good ink.