Five years ago, October 2013, I bought my first fountain pen; two years later I helped Jonathan Deans with co-founding Fountain Pens Australia; and two years ago today, July 15th 2016, I started this blog, Macchiato Man. I started with fountain pens fairly slowly, and somehow avoided jumping head-first down the rabbit hole. By October 2014 - one year after my first pen - I had 6 pen (but three of these were hand-me-downs) and 4 inks (one ink came with my first pen). Unfortunately the slow start was just the beginning of exponential growth: 6 months laterI had 9 bottles of ink; another 3 months, 32 bottles, and fast forward another 11 months to July 2016 and I had around 300. Boom.
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Melbourne Pen Show 2017
On Sunday was the Melbourne Pen Show. Itβs a small show but it has a 20 year history and this year there was quite a few interstate visitors (and even at least one international). The Melbourne Pen Show isnβt the DC Pen Show; it isnβt the London Pen Show; itβs a small regional pen show. But because itβs small and regional itβs very people focused and I expect offers a different experience to that of the bigger show.
Read MoreSailor Pens and Inks Facebook Group
Sailor inks have been my favourite inks for a while now. They frequently satisfy the characteristics of inks that I appreciate but are also very collectable. They have limited edition pens and inks as well as difficult to acquire Store Exclusive inks. This makes hunting down and collecting their inks fun (and pricy) but much of the information on the inks is non-existent or very limited, difficult to search for or not in English (which is understandable). I have created a Facebook Group to help fill this gap.
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