Weekly Retrospective: Monday October 15th

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks for me so I missed out on this last Monday, my apologies! I have also been quiet with proper articles but don’t worry I have three ink reviews ready to be photographed, and a pen review and a notebook review planned so lots to come!

• UK Fountain Pens: “The great uninking” ✑ Anthony seems to think eighteen inked pens is a lot (and in fact too many); I disagree! I have almost everything inked all the time!

• The Pelikan’s Perch: “News: Edelstein Garnet Added to the Standard Line-Up” ✑ I’m not a fan of this. Takes away from a collection and makes the ink less special.

• The Well-Appointed Desk: “Eye Candy: Birmingham Pen Co. Purplepalooza” ✑ Lots of lovely purple inks here (I love purple!)

• Hand Over That Pen: “2018 San Francisco Pen Show Quick Recap: Pay-It-Forward Table & Pen Dash Mixer” ✑ Franz goes over two interesting events at the 2018 San Fransisco Pen Show.

• UK Fountain Pens: “2018 London Writing Equipment Show: success!” ✑ Anthony goes over his experience at the London Writing Equipment Show.

• Fountain Pen Friendly: “Bookbinders Design: A Custom-Made Review” ✑ a review of the Bookbinders Design Cloth Notebook I reviewed this time last year.

• Mountain of Ink: “Ink Review #466: Robert Oster Carbon Fire” ✑ Kelli briefly covers the new Robert Oster Carbon Fire.

• Fountain PenArchy: ““That Looks Ugl-Nope, I Love It”- Sailor Rikyu-Cha” ✑ I definitely understand this title! Rikyu-Cha definitely isn’t the prettiest colour on first glance but really grows on you.

Sponsors

• La Couronne do Comte (10% off with MACCHIATOMAN10) ✒︎ LCdC recently got stock of the beautiful Platinum #3776 Celluloid models and they are stunners!

• 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 and Lavende.

• 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.

Weekly Retrospective: Monday September 24th

Hubs, Inks and the Nock Co. Tallulah!

• The Pelikan’s Perch: “Pelikan Hubs 2018 – Philadelphia: A Recap” ✑ Josh goes over his Local Pelikan Hub. I was the Hub Master for my local Pelikan Hub and it was a lot of fun. Big thanks to Pelikan for providing for these!

• The Well-Appointed Desk “Ink Review: Bungbox Happiness“ ✑ Julia goes over an interesting Bungubox ink and one of the few I don’t have.

• Wondernaut: “Kyonooto Hisoku” ✑ A more recent release from Stationary TAG and a very pretty colour.

• FPQuest: “This Just In: Nock Co. Tallulah (Kickstarter)“ ✑ Ray reviews the newest Nock Co. design. I can’t think of a use for this myself and I certainly couldn’t restrict myself to only two pens (I generally carry 10-20 pens with me)!

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. They also have stock of re-released Noodler’s Russian series.

• 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.

Weekly Retrospective: Monday September 17th

Paper quality, a digitally integrated notepad, new ink, and soon to be released inks.

• The Looped Square: “The Paper Series: Whitelines Pad Review” ✑ Joseph reviews the Whitelines notepad which has a interesting colour scheme and phone integration.

• Fountain Pen Love: “A Tale Of Two Notebooks: Differences in Leuchtturm Paper Quality” ✑ John covers something that I’ve found as well: inconsistent paper quality in Leuchtturm.

• The Well-Appointed Desk: “Ink Preview: Taccia Inks” ✑ really pretty inks from Taccia coming out soon. Ana covers 4 of them. Really looking forward to these!

• Wondernaut: “J. Herbin Bleu de Calanque” ✑ I always enjoy Visvamitra’s reviews and this is no exception. This review covers one of J. Herbin’s new additions to their standard lineup.

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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.

Site 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!