I really meant to take more pictures, but I couldn't stop looking at things long enough to do that. Here are a few shots that I got with my phone. More (better) pictures tomorrow.
I took this panoramic. It came out interesting, but not really "well." Check out the two guys who were moving in the shot.
Getting a couple of these tomorrow. Maybe three?
Richard is a fixture, and I managed to catch his face. A rare find!
I think I'll be buying from this table tomorrow. Lots of cool stuff, and made locally.
Ryan, here, makes some really nice kit-pens. He tells me he's putting together a big workshop, and I'm interested to see what he turns out next.
These pens might look like Parker Vacumatics, but they're really made up of Vac parts repurposed into ballpoint click-pens. Pretty slick.
Hooray for pen shows! I'll be posting some pictures from that show today via the Blogger app on my phone (if all goes well), so there's something for you to look forward to.
I don't have a specific list of things that I'm looking for at this show, so I'm going to be a lot of browsing instead of directed searching.
If you're a reader, and you see me walking around the show, say hi!
-Mike
I was excited about this ink when it came in the mail. I'd been thinking about getting a sample of it since its inception, but I just hadn't pulled the trigger. Well, I got it, and it's a mixed bag.
On the one hand, it's a color that you're not going to find anywhere else (that I know of). It dries a rich golden yellow. On the other hand, it's a weird color. When it goes on the page it is a weird ear-wax yellow color. It dries nice, but it looks gross until it's dried. In fact, I used it a couple of times and I was going to ditch it almost immediately. But when I looked back at the page, I quite liked what I saw.
On the other, other hand, it doesn't really behave very well. It spreads and it bleeds. As you can see in the video (below) the big swatch almost bled through Rhodia.
On the final hand, it does a neat trick when you wash it with water. It turns purple. The gold comes right off of the page, and it leaves behind a purple ink. Interesting trick, Nathan. Very neat.
**One final thing: The pen I used it in was the Lamy Vista, and it seems like I have a little bit of shiny purple staining on the front of the section just back of the nib. I bet it'll clean off with some amonia (or some JB's Perfect Pen Cleaner), but be wary of putting it in demonstrators that are piston-filled. It might stain your plastic. **
Took this under fluorescent lights, and my camera was flummoxed.
Here is the water-test video.
And a couple of pictures taken just after the video was filmed. The purple shows up in the crosshatch, but you can't really see it in the color swab. I think there was just too much gold in there, and the ink was too dry. This review has been sitting around for *ahem* several weeks.
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DA's Oriental Red is an interesting red, but it's not one that will make it into my regular rotation, I don't think. The color is actually a little brighter on my monitor than it appears on my page. When you're thinking of this red, think of the look of a faded old red barn. It reminds me a little of the color of R&K's Morinda, but Oriental Red is a bit more boring.
If you're into that sort of color, then this is a well-behaved ink. It doesn't bleed or feather, and it spreads just a little. The flow is a bit dry, so you might want to use it in a pen that has a wet nib in it. The pen that I tried it in (my TWSBI 540) is a little bit on the dry side, and so it was really dry in combination with this ink.
De Atramentis makes no claims that this ink is water-resistant, and that's a good thing. It's not.
The theme this month was "Because we felt like it." They couldn't come up with a cohesive theme, but they wanted to send out this set of inks. It's an interesting set, and I've only got one of them, so that's a win for me.
The one that I have is the last on the page, which is Noodler's 54th Massachusetts. I had just run out of my previous sample of this ink, so the timing was excellent. I really like that ink. It's one that I'll have to get a bottle of very soon, I think. A great blue-black that doesn't feather, spread, or wash away with water? Yeah, not much else to ask for. Well, perhaps "Massachusetts" could be a little easier to spell.
The rest of these inks are pretty cool, too. I'm glad I've got some more R&K inks to try out. I've only had a little experience with those in the past, and I think I liked them. The two DA inks are new-to-me, and the orange will look nice in my TWSBI 540 while the Turquoise will likely end up in my wife's turquoise Lamy Safari. If she wants another green ink, that is. She's currently using Soft Mint in her mint-colored Diplomat Traveler, so she might want some variation. Guess we'll see if she reads the blog and lets me know. :-)
Let's take a look at a green ink that I do like. Unlike Moss Green, this ink is pretty good. It belongs in the darker end of the green family, but it's not going to be confused with a green-black. It's a definite green. A little bit darker and richer than Noodler's Hunter Green. It's actually pretty close to the green Franken-ink that I made a while back, but it doesn't require any mixing or danger.
It's a member of the eel family, and that gives it a little extra lubrication. It's smooth, but it's not too smooth. Some inks tend to skate across the page, and it can make your writing sloppy because the nib doesn't have any real resistance against the page. This eel ink isn't too slippery. It's just right for my persnickety Pilot Vanishing Point. It tends to squeak and stutter with many inks, but it works well with a few of the juicier inks, and this one fits well.
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