Montblanc Honoré de Balzac Dandy Turquoise is a well regarded discontinued Montblanc ink. Because it's discontinued it commands a premium price on the second hand market. However, while it is a well behaved and pretty ink I always felt it was quite similar to other turquoise coloured inks out there.
Read MoreWeekly Retrospective: Monday September 10th
For this first weekly retrospective there is a general theme of fountain pens in an international setting. This follows on nicely from my own write up of my trip to Japan.
Notebook Joy: "Stationery Shopping: Traveler’s Factory, Muji, and Other Stores" ✑ Sara talks about her trip to Japan from a more general stationary perspective compared to mine which focused more on Sailor. She has three other articles one of which talks about Kingdom Note.
The Pelikan's Perch: "Exclusive: An Interview With The Pelikan Hubs Team" ✑ Josh interviews the team behind the impressive Pelikan Hubs. These world-wide Hubs are huge this year (and they are in 2 weeks!) so it's a massive undertaking and very impressive and generous from Pelikan.
UK Fountain Pens: "Travels with pens: Austria" ✑ Anthony talks about another trip with fountain pens, but this time in Austria.
Goulet Pens: "6 Writers On Why They Use Fountain Pens" ✑ Goulet has some snippets and quotes from writers around the world about fountain pens. If you find this interesting I highly recommend Mason Currey's "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work" which delves into the rituals of various interesting people through out history and their daily rituals.
Sponsors
La Couronne do Comte (10% off with MACCHIATOMAN10) ✒︎ LCdC has a sale going right now and recently announced pre-orders for the new Lamy inks.
Pen Chalet (10% off with MACCHIATOMAN) ✒︎ Always some good sales going on at Pen Chalet including right now with a ver nice price on a Platinum Century Nice Lilas.
Pen Savings (12% off with MACCHIATOMAN) ✒︎ great international shipping prices and my go-to place for most American brands of inks including Noodler's and Organics Studio.
Fountain Pen Travels in Japan
On the 4th of August I left Fremantle, Western Australia bound for Tokyo, Japan. The purpose of the trip was to catch up with an old friend who moved there and a holiday… as well as some light Fountain Pen shopping and checking out shops! Japan has a lot of Fountain Pen stores and a lot of Sailor products. Sailor produce my favourite inks and pens so the exclusives were definitely a focus of my visit!
Read More
Ink Review Noodler's Blue Straits of Malacca
in Ink Review
Noodler's Blue Straits of Malacca isn't really a sequel to "Noodler's Pacific Dawn at the Golden Gate" as the theme, although water based like Pacific Dawn loosely is, is appropriately related to Singapore rather than San Fransisco this time. Like Pacific Dawn, again, Blue Straits of Malacca is exclusive to Straits Pen in Singapore (who kindly sent me a sample of this ink for review).
Read MoreSite Update: Donations and Online Store
At the request of a few people (after I suggested the possibility) I’ve made a small change and will be making a more major change down the road (but have begun work on it). I appreciate everyone’s feedback and especially the support following the 2 year anniversary of this site. Thank you!
Donations
First up is the minor change. I’ve added a PayPal donate button for the blog. As of now I've hidden the button on the About section and my reasoning for doing so that it isn’t too pushy and that the yellow PayPal button is a little ugly and eye-catching/distracting. I’ll eventually make a custom button image for button and I might move the donation button to a more prominent position (but not in a way that detracts from the site’s look or is too explicit). I, of course, don’t expect anything but if you do donate anything you have my sincere gratitude!
I'm still considering patreon but I don't expect to do anything with this in the short to medium term.
Shop
You can see up in the navigation menu that there is a new item “Store (soon)” (currently password protected). On this store I am going to start selling limited bundles of ink samples from inks I review. This bundle will include the reviewed ink, three inks that were compared to it in the review, and a mystery ink from my collection. Five samples in total at 2ml each. I’m still looking at pricing but the pricing will likely be dependent on which inks are in the bundle. I think this will be interesting because there are some inks (such as Sailor Store Exclusives in Japan) that people can't easily get samples of otherwise. For right now there are no plans to sell anything else than the bundles but who knows, that might change. If I sell pens I might put them up there as well.
Next month is still going to have some reviews in it but as I am traveling to Japan for a couple of weeks I’m going to be writing about my experiences there, relative to Fountain Pens and stationary. I’m pretty excited!
What this means
For me this is not a money grabbing exercise. I wouldn't mind it if the blog was able to pay for it's own hosting (that'd be amazing!) but the main reason for this is to solidify the future and reiterate commitment to this site for the long term. For readers and for myself. There's more of an incentive and a motivation to continue, not just in terms of any money that I might receive but because if people have donated then I now owe it to them to continue. It also frames the blog, for me personally, as something I'm serious about and reinforces my commitment (regardless of if I receive any donations!). I don't want to burn out (which I'm very aware of as a risk) so I don't think I'll increase the output but I will keep it consistent at 2-3 publications a month.
This will be the last meta post for a while. You don't read this blog for this sort of stuff!
Thank you again to everyone! Not just readers but also to those in the community that promote the works of smaller blogs. You're work is definitely appreciated!