Editing The Pen Addict 461/transcript (section)

== Myke's Ink-Up Routine ==


'''Brad:''' I made it like three, four days. I don't know if that's a record. But, like, I inked up. I cleaned all my pens so I could use my Namiki Yukari Milky Way, which we talked about recently. Mm-hmm. And I love that pen. It needs to be used. It's an important pen to me, personally. I just love it. It's just one of those quintessential me pens.

'''Brad:''' And I'm using it and using it. And all I'm thinking about when I'm using it is, well, I missed this pen, too. And I need this pen to do this thing. And I need this pen to review this thing. And it's just on and on. And so we're up to five inked fountain pens now, Myke. So I went from 10 to 1 to 5 in the span of, like, six days total. So, you know, whatever. Exponential growth. But it's because I have some really awesome pens that I miss. So aside from the Milky Way, which I inked up with Pilot Orozhuzuku Tsukiyo, which is a little bit... I don't know if brighter is the term than Shinkai. Maybe greener, but it's not a blue-black. But it's a really, really good bluish-green that's been the only... It's the perfect ink for the Milky Way. It's the only ink I've ever inked up the Milky Way with. And it just stays that way. Like, that's the one. So I'll clean it out and then redo it. The pen I really wanted to get inked up next is a pen I probably should review. And it's the Kasama Una Ultum. Which we've talked about on the show before. It's that Ultum material, which is that thick amber. Like, we saw Ian Schoen come out with some Ultum barrel pens recently. And this Kasama is just a really big, thick pen with a titanium torched grip section that's extra long. Like, it's a really lengthy grip section that's metal. And a super concave grip section in the grip area. And it's just kind of a fascinating pen to use. And on top of that, I bought it from Mark Backus. And it's got a Blade Turk grind on the M nib. So it's this kind of cool, not really architect, a more easier to write with architect nib. It'll give you a little bit of additional style in the horizontal lines than in the vertical lines. So there's a little bit of differentiation there. A little bit opposite of stub nib. And I ink that up with the Sailor 50 States Delaware. Because I haven't tried any of the Sailor 50 States inks yet. And I've had Delaware sitting here trying to figure out what to do. And it's one of those magenta-y purple ones with a green sheen. Which I really, really like. And, like, I don't need another one of these inks. I think I have, like, two or three of those inks already. But it's kind of a good fit for this Kasama. So between the Milky Way and the Kasama, like, those pens, like, I just love them. They're, like, my pens. They're the pens that I want to use, right? If, you know, for some reason, you know, I have to get rid of all the pens I own. And can pick, like, a handful to keep. Those two definitely make the list, right? Those are coming with me. They're my pens. They fit everything I like about a pen.

'''Brad:''' So then I needed a big, bulky, wide nib wet pen to do some writing with. Because I generally write small. And that's what the Milky Way writes small. The Kasama with that grind on a medium nib, it writes kind of a medium, fine to medium, fine line. I needed a big nib, which I always like. So I broke out my Nakaya Long writer. This is the black hairline one I think I've showed you a picture of. We've talked about it before. Bought it a couple years ago or maybe last year. It has, it had a broad nib when I bought it. And I took it right over again to Mark Bacchus. This is just very convenient at the Raleigh Pen Show when I bought it. And he put a stub nib on it. So this is like, this pen is hard to describe. Because it's way bigger than any pen that I normally use lengthwise. Right? The Kasama is much heavier. But the Nakaya is much longer. And it's kind of like a paintbrush. And I wanted to do some things with my writing to do that. And I also always have to have a pen with Robert Osterfire on Fire inked up. I just do. I know that's my own ink, but I love that ink. I'm not going to lie. For what reason? It's an awesome ink. I'm going to self-high five myself on that one. Okay. That was excellent. Excellent ink.

'''Myke:''' Don't do that too much, Brad.

'''Brad:''' I know. I know. It's perfect. I did break my wrist that one time.

'''Brad:''' Too aggressive high five. But that big, dark pen needed a bright ink coming out of it. So I used that.

'''Myke:''' Yep.

'''Brad:''' So as I go through this, I think a lot of you will be familiar with all the excuses we make to ink up these pens that we like. You don't have to have a really good excuse to go ink up another pen or to get out a marker or a pencil or a gel ink pen. This is what we do. We're pen addicts for a reason because we can't help ourselves because, you know, luckily in my case, I've gotten to experience a lot of things. And when I'm not getting to experience that thing and it's sitting right around the corner from me, well, all it takes is for me to stand up and go grab it like the spoke icon in purple and silver, which I've had sitting on my desk and I was using it to test out if long international ink cartridges, Myke. So you're familiar with the short international ink cartridges that come in, you know, like almost any pen you get, they'll just pop in a little ink cartridge, especially for like the smaller pens like Kaweco's. Well, you can actually get long cartridges from a few companies. And I had a Pelican Edelstein Tanzanite ink cartridge sitting here that I wanted to test how it fit inside the spoke icon because it's a cartridge converter pen. And I was certain it would fit, but I'd never physically tested it. So once I did saw that it fit, I was like, well, let's just think this bad boy up. And this is how you end up with like 50 pens inked because of a stupid test of trying to fit an ink cartridge into a pen barrel to see if it works. And now, well, that blue black would go nice with this purple and silver pen. And right, wouldn't it, Myke? Like, I feel like that's the right thing. And then, Myke, sometimes...

'''Myke:''' I feel like you were trying to explain this to me in a way to like somebody who won't understand. You know what I mean? Like, you know, and sometimes you're trying to explain this stuff to people and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, you don't get it. No, I get it.

'''Brad:''' I'm trying to make myself feel better at the same time and know that I'm racing towards 10 pens inked again and going to have to clean everything. I'm going to have to break out the scorched earth method again in like a matter of weeks at the rate I'm going because I had to ink up, Myke, the Twisby 580 AL Prussian Blue with a 1.1 millimeter steel stub nib to review the Pannonia Vatacor Vatacucor Cotton Candy ink, which it turned out to be an awesome ink, one of my new favorite inks. I love the color. Love the color. And that pen in that review is exactly what needs to happen. Yeah, it's kind of perfect. That's the pen for that review. It's like this muted blue with like a muted pink in a demonstrator and it just works. Like, that's the move.

'''Myke:''' As you can imagine, there was a conversation about this ink at home this morning.

'''Brad:''' I cannot wait. Like, that was on my list to ask. How did this conversation go? Because when I was reading, so Pannonia, the founder, it's in my article. I forget his name. I apologize right off the top of my head, but you can look it up while I'm rambling. It's Mate.

'''Myke:''' I don't know the right way to say that.

'''Brad:''' So he mentioned growing up, the only thing he ever saw for cotton candy color was white, which makes complete sense, right? It's made from white sugar. You know, all the stuff we see that's blue and pink is just all, you know, food coloring and dyes. And so he's like, I never saw pink cotton candy till I watched the Cartoon Network when I was a kid. And I was like, oh, cotton candy can be pink. So how did this conversation go at your household? Because the maker of the Pannonia ink is Romanian.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. It's a Romanian brand. So this is why I brought it up. I was like, oh, Brad's reviewed this Romanian ink. And I sent Odina a link to it because my wife, Odina, was also born in Romania. And we were just chatting about it. The Cartoon Network thing is particularly interesting to me because I feel like I hear from it also from Odina lots of stories about Cartoon Network and growing up. It seems like maybe more than in some parts of the world, it seemed to be quite formative for her. I would assume it's because it was the main kind of bridge to American culture. Because, you know, like communism fell in the early 90s in Romania. So they, you know, they had the revolution and it was a big deal as the rest of the world was able to start kind of coming in to what was then a previous like communist country. So I found it interesting. We were looking at it. The ink itself looks kind of cool. I just like to see it. I feel like I don't feel like there's a lot of Romanian companies in this hobby. So it was nice.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it was really cool. And I'm very impressed with the ink. So I'm going to get some more to try, you know. So that, you know, normally a lot of times I'll do these and I'll keep them for a week or so, a week or two. Like if I've done an ink review and if it like really sticks, then it'll just kind of sit in the rotation for a while. And I think that's what's happened with this one. It's a really, really enjoyable ink and ink color and a good match in the pen.

'''Myke:''' Have you tried any other inks from this brand?

'''Brad:''' I haven't. But that's at the top of my list. Like as in I'll probably be ordering some this week. So looks like good colors. And he does something interesting where you can buy the ink or you can buy the ink and he'll add shimmer. Like it's a like it's an ass shimmers now like an add on, which I find hilarious.

'''Myke:''' I assume this is if you buy directly from them, right?

'''Brad:''' Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not the not like the wholesale to retail. But I think if you just buy directly, you can do that as far as I read. So that led me down the path. So those are my five pens inked. My excuses for inking them.

'''Brad:''' I'm very happy with the situation. And probably by next week, I'll have five more pens inked on top of these. And then a month from now, we will yell or I will yell about how I have too many pens inked up and we will rinse and repeat throughout the year and throughout the rest of our time here on the pen addict because this is what we do. Last little bit. Another reason why I can't ever just have one pen inked up is because for paper testing, it's important to have different fountain pen nibs and inks to test. So my fine pilot nib in the Namiki is only going to tell me so much about the different papers I'm using right now, which I'm testing in the Midori MD cotton pad and the Morimond Gliffy, which is the hardbound notebook companion to the Morimond Croquise that I was fawning over, you know, weeks ago. So Morimond sent me some of the Gliffys to test out. There's more testing to do. I need to do some side by side comparisons between the new Gliffy that's in these hardbound covers. It's really good for fountain pens. Like it's really good. It just feels different than the Croquise that I was just absolutely head over here. heels for, right? Like, which is fine. Like they can be different. I just want to be able to try to determine this.

'''Myke:''' Your expectation from what Morimond said to you is that it's the same paper in a different form, like in an actual notebook format, right?

'''Brad:''' I don't know that that was my crystal clear expectation. I was hoping that that was the case, but they call this product Gliffy and they call the other product Croquise. And is that because of the way they're bound or because of the paper inside? I think theoretically Morimond is saying 60 GSM cream paper is the same for both of these. And I'm trying to determine if that's actually the case to me right off the top of my head. It feels slightly different. Like the Gliffy page feels softer. And the thing that I loved about the Croquise paper, it was, is a very firm, kind of like a crispy feeling paper, which, um, you know, that's an official, official term. It's on their marketing mic. Um, right next to the sunset picture and death. Um, it's crispy. It's crispy. So yeah, I, I got to figure that out. So I have these all sitting side by side and I need like, like need air quote, need all these different fountain pens and inks and nib types to test it out properly, just to see the results that I'm getting. So, you know, that's, uh, that's how a pen addict escalates from one pen to five in the matter of days. And there's no ends in sight. Like I shouldn't fight these things, right? These are just not things we should ever fight. Like we do a podcast that has like, you know, we're on episode 461, Myke. I shouldn't worry how many pens I have inked up.