I've always loved writing materials. Pens, pencils, papers, notebooks… everything.
Despite this, I avoided fountain pens, despite thinking they were cool, for a couple of reasons. The first was that whenever I'd go near one, I'd get ink all over my hands. Julie eventually showed me how to use them correctly. The second was that I feared that if I got into fountain pens, it would be easy to spend arbitrary amounts of money on them. I still have that fear.
Well, they finally won. All the pens I'd previously looked at were pricy, so instead I started with a cheap Sheaffer calligraphy set. It has four ink cartridges, three nib assemblies, and one body. They were all italic stubs, so even the fine is very broad. Definitely more intended for calligraphy than regular writing. It served its purpose, though, giving me a feeling for the basics, and I started using it as my general pen, though I still would get ink on my hands at times.
Next my SO and I went to the main UBookstore, they have a nice writing and art supplies section in their basement. We talked with one of the workers, who was extremely helpful, and ended up with a Pilot Metropolitan Violet Leopard Fine fountain pen, which they don't have on their website so I linked to the medium one instead. I had no idea I could get such a nice pen for such a good price.
It's a gorgeous pen, it feels good in the hand, and it writes smoothly. I instantly fell in love with it. It comes with one black ink cartridge and one bladder converter, in a nice little case. There's a piston converter available for it, which I think I'm going to pick up. And so far, at least, it hasn't covered my hands in ink!
Next I started looking for more fountain pen info. The Goulet Pen Co has a lot of educational videos that I have been binge-watching. The Fountain Pen 101 series has been particularly useful to me. They also have a nice blog.
The next pen I found was at my local Daiso. Daiso is an awesome Japanese store where most things are $1.50. So for a buck fifty I got a medium nib pen with a metal body, and one standard international cartridge (blue ink). It's an amazing pen for the price, it writes well and disassembles easily. If I start modding, I'll be using it for a base.
For a notebook, I'd come to really like the Field Notes dot grid, but with the fountain pens I've been getting a lot of bleedthrough. So I picked up a two-pack of small Shinola notebooks with plain white 90 gsm paper, and they've been working well so far.
Now I've been obsessing about different inks, there's so many different pretty inks to try. I don't really handwrite enough to justify an ink collection, but I'm not sure that's going to stop me. And if I'm trying out inks, I'll need a dip pen. There are these amazing glass dip pens you can buy…
This weekend1 I'll be going back to the UBookstore, since they're having a fine writing sale. Hopefully, I'll just buy a cartridge converter for the Metropolitan. And maybe an ink or two. Perhaps a notebook or some nice paper.
1 Memorial Day weekend 2018