Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 19

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

Starting near the end of November, my mom would start making Christmas cookies. She liked to make spritz cookies, carefully squeezing them through her cookie press, creating wreaths, Christmas trees, poinsettias, and candy canes. She’d decorate them with colored sugars, sprinkles, and bits of cherry. She made hundreds of cookies, and I inhaled the buttery treats with abandon. But one cookie I never remember her making was Gingerbread.

Gingerbread is the color for today. It is a tan-brown that evokes the ginger in Gingerbread cookies. Obviously it’s a darker brown than ginger itself. It definitely looks like the cinnamon-y color of Gingerbread men. This is a standard ink with nice shading properties.

On white Rhodia paper, the color is much more yellow-ish. It works well in all three nib sizes, but if you want to enjoy the shading, I recommend a flex nib and/or a broad nib.

Although my mom never made Gingerbread cookies, I’m a big fan of their flavor--the more gingery the better. I’m not as big a fan of this particular color in the Inkvent calendar. I think it’s a bit too light and yellow-leaning for me.

(Cult Pens provided the Diamine Inkvent Calendar to Pen Addict free of charge for review purposes.)

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Posted on December 19, 2019 by Susan Pigott and filed under Diamine, Inkvent, Ink Reviews.

2020 Stationery Resolutions

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

2019 was a busy year for me, and some of my stationery hobbies fell through the cracks. Or tumbled into gaping sinkholes, in some cases. There just wasn't much time to indulge in hobbies. A lot of that business was the good kind, so I can't complain. But my pens can. They feel neglected. 2020 looks to be a far more mellow year, and I'm looking forward to the simple pleasures of calm days. That will mean more time spent with my stationery. To that effect, I've made some resolutions for the new year.

-- I swear I will use that planner. No, really, I mean it this time. I used to journal every day, sometimes quite extensively. I loved it and it brought some mindful peace to my day. Or a purging of vitriol, whatever the day required. Now I'm lucky if I remember to completely fill out the single square of a monthly calendar. I have the Midori weekly planner for 2020, and I want to make good use of it for keeping track of my tasks. And I have a Midori 5-year journal I'd like to use. Even if I sit down just once a week to fill it out reflectively, I know it'll be good for my soul.

-- Yes, pen pals, I promise I'm still alive. Somewhere in this messy office is a stack of the most recent letters I received from my dedicated, tenacious bunch of pen pals. Even they had to give up on me, though. I need to write to them again and make the time to do that more often. I might need to check on their current addresses, though...

-- Clean my office. I don't have a closet of doom. The doom just goes...anywhere. Right now it's teetering a bit and threatening a doomvalanche. Which means it's time to...

-- Offload some of the collection. I'm a pen user, not a collector. I have pens I haven't used in years, so they should probably go to other homes. And make room for whatever new pens I need to try. This offloading needs to include inks, too. I have enough to drown in.

-- Use the pens I love more. This past year I spent all my time publishing and promoting my books, but in 2020, it's going to be all about writing the new books. I have one new novel I'm editing, two novels in draft form, one in planning, and a new series brewing in a proto-idea state. It's time to ink some pens and get these out on paper!

-- And then clean the pens, you monster. I used to be so strict about this. In 2019? I think I only had three pen-cleaning days. Let's not do the math on that one, okay? I'll do better next year. In fact...

-- #WednesdayPensday. Every Wednesday, I'm going to clean and rotate my pen selection, and I'm going to post it on Instagram with that hashtag for accountability. Feel free to join me! Or even poke me, if you see I've skipped one.

Maybe it's silly to have resolutions that center around doing less so that you can do more, but this year of business took a huge toll on my health, and I can't help but think that the quiet meditation of ink and pen and paper has some healing power to it. So that is my ultimate goal for 2020. Well, that and not being buried alive in a stationery doomvalanche. Both are important for one's health.

PS: Please note that none of these resolutions say anything about limiting paper supply. I must leave myself one vice, or I'm doomed to fail.

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Posted on December 19, 2019 by Sarah Read and filed under Resolutions.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 18

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

“The Holly and the Ivy” is one of my favorite Christmas carols. I especially like the version sung by John Rutter’s Cambridge Singers. The carol uses the holly plant to evoke images related to Mary’s birth of Christ.

Holly is the color for Day 18. It is a green sheen ink that leans towards teal. The sheen is a bright magenta, which nicely evokes the red berries of the holly plant.

On white Rhodia paper, the tealishness of the ink comes through more. It has nice shading properties in addition to the sheen. The
ink is quite different from the previous greens in the Inkvent calendar (Mistletoe and Elf). It is much darker, for one, and it has a much bluer tone to it. It’s also the first green ink with sheen.