Tidying up: Swatching with an improvised dip pen, curating my collection

This is a continuation of my recent series on Marie Kondo-inspired tidying; I’ve already talked about displaying my notebooks and organising my inks and refills. This time I’m talking about all the inks I am getting rid of.

I am already confident in my tastes when it comes to my ink collection. I’ve already talked about my criteria for inks before. The problem is that I haven’t been able to make myself get rid of the ones which don’t meet the criteria (the one exception being a bottle of Diamine Florida Blue, which I was able to throw away only after writing a whole blog post about it).

The worst thing about keeping the stuff I don’t want is that I repeatedly come back and give it another chance. As a result, I’ve written pages and pages in colours of ink that I hate. Even in the 1/100 chance that I did end up liking one this time around, I’ve lived until now without it, so how much do I really benefit from suddenly being able to use it again? There’s no way it’s worth it.

So, time to swatch them all and say goodbye!

Making a dip pen from a Pilot Kakuno

It’s convenient to have a dip pen when making a lot of writing samples for inks. Shout out to this Reddit post for showing how you can convert a Pilot Kakuno or Penmanship into a dip pen by taking out the feed. It was a perfect use for my spare Kakuno in Fine. Tip: it’s easier to push the feed out from the back with a small item (such as the tip of a blunt syringe) than to pull it out from the front.

The nib lodges into the section even when the feed is not there to hold it. I found that it was wobbly unless I pushed it really far inside, which made it difficult to dip it deep enough without getting ink on the section. It worked though.

Later I realised that the Pilot nib also fits into this Kuretake Zig nib holder I have. It’s perfect for me. I am vindicated in having no interest in the trendy new dip pens!

The inks being removed from the collection

Disclaimer 1: As usual on this blog, the photos are not representative of the real colour of the ink. A lot of them are more vivid in person, I’d say.

Disclaimer 2: my bottles of Claret, Pumpkin and Yellow have evaporated somewhat because they are made of plastic and are about a decade old. They are still good inks but maybe are more saturated than they would normally be.

The rejects after a decade of using fountain pens! Let’s have a run through…

• Claret, Lavender, Amazing Amethyst - Nice but don’t fit into the wider colour scheme of my inks.
• Twilight - Performs badly on cheap paper. I would be more okay with that if the colour wasn’t so plain.
• Indigo - The one ink in the list that makes me think “wait! I want to keep it!” This is not a coincidence. I bought it because it is very similar to one of my all time favourites, Diamine Prussian Blue, and I wanted to see which I preferred. The anwer is Prussian Blue; whenever I use this ink I just wish I were using that one.
• Majestic Blue - Performs badly on cheap paper, smudges easily and I do not like the combo of saturated blue with pink sheen.
• Pumpkin - The most boring shade of orange imaginable. It is more boring in person.
• Yellow - I have never inked a pen with this. I bought it as a primary colour for mixing back when I was interested in mixing inks¹.
• Blue Lightning, Pink Glitz - I find them a bit obnoxious. If I get shimmer ink again in the future I want something more subtle and quirky.

The fact they are all Diamine may reveal my unconscious bias against cheaper inks. I prefer to think it’s because Diamine makes up the majority of inks I’ve bought, especially when I was younger with less understanding of my own tastes and less of a budget. Even after letting go of these, 40% of my bottles are still Diamine.

Some inks can expire

A special mention to Diamine Registrar’s Blue-Black. I like all the special properties of this ink, especially the pure black colour that the writing oxidises to after a few months. But the sooty stuff that it leaves in pens freaks me out so I gave up on it.

I tried to swatch it and found that it had expired: it was now a weak grey and I could see all the pigment had collected at the bottom. It was about 4 years old but I hadn’t touched it in 2 years. I always kept it tightly shut in its box so I don’t know what went wrong.

How am I disposing of the inks?

Thanks to Mastodon and, I suspect, especially thanks to the wonderful Penfount group bot at penfount.social, I was able to find someone to send them all to. I hope they will get more love at their new home(s)!

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1. I lost interest after trying to mix Claret and Pumpkin to make dark red. The result was a dry, thin and weirdly foamy liquid. ↩︎