(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Bluesky. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)
If there's one thing that fountain pen users and knitters have in common (in addition to all the other things we have in common), it's that we all understand what it means to say "yeah, it's another blue, but it's a different blue." It's a phrase usually uttered while acquiring a new blue thing that is essentially indistinguishable from the blue thing you already have. But can you have too much true-blue ink with a ruby sheen? Maybe. Maybe not.
Kobe Ink University Romanesque Blue really is the truest of blues. Chromatography just says "blue." It's not complex or layered at all, though it is very well saturated.
It has a slow dry time, so could be bothersome for lefties. Even at 25 seconds, it was still smudging fairly significantly. A full dry line took nearly a minute. I'd advise to use it with blotting paper, but then you'd lose the one cool effect this ink has, which is its sheen. It has a ruby red-pink sheen that comes out where the ink pools and dries, and it is strong enough to even show up in writing, not just in ink tests. It's difficult to capture sheen in photographs, but this one varies from a pink to a red to a burgundy-purple depending on the light level and angle. It was a lot of fun to watch this ink dry and come alive.
It is not waterproof at all, but it's so pigmented that any water droplets just seem to become more ink. It layers well, with faint lines showing as a lovely sky blue, then deepening to a full navy.
It behaves well overall and is very pleasant to write with. It's a practical color that's perfect for everyday use, and still has that fun punch of sparkly sheen to keep it from being boring.
Kobe inks come in squat, shallow, blown glass ink pots. They're very sturdy and a good shape for storage, but the shallow shape can make it difficult to access the ink with your pen once the level starts to get low. A 50ml bottle of this color sells for $35 at Vanness Pens, which is a fairly standard price for these nice Japanese inks. If you need another blue--a totally different blue!--then this is a nice one.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at a discount to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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