Pen, Ink & Paper
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We drove to the heart of downtown Chicago this morning for our first visit to Atlas Stationers. https://www.atlasstationers.com/
So many pens! So much ink! Notebooks, accessories and very helpful and friendly staff.
Purchased my first Italian pen. A just released and not even on display yet, Visconti Comedia Purgatorio with a fine nib. It is the smoothest writing pen I own.
Found a beautiful leather pen/notebook case. Two Rhodia notebooks, A Pilot dip pen and an Atlas exclusive "ink of the week" Colorverse Wolf Point. It's a shimmering ink with tiny bits of glitter in it. Absolutely gorgeous ink.
The Mrs picked out a couple of cheap pens including a Pilot disposable fountain pen and a gel pen. She also found a small sketch pad.
D1 picked out 3 inks, notepads and a pack of Leaf color swatch papers.
We had a great time despite the overpriced parking. $59 for 90 minutes of parking!
I foresee more trips like this in the future.
We will be scoping out more affordable parking for our future visits though.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Pen, Ink & Paper:
@mark said in Pen, Ink & Paper:
scoping out more affordable parking
Spot Hero is your friend.
Thank you! I will check it out.
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That's a great haul, Mark!
Visconti. I see we have an aristocrat in our midst.
(They do make really beautiful stuff.)It's my birthday next week, so my wife and daughter got me a pen and some ink.
The pen is a white Pilot Metropolitan. But, the nib is a 1.1 I tuned myself. It writes better and more consistently than any other nib I have, including the gold ones.
The ink is Baltimore Canyon Blue. So, hey, local, but with some weird properties. It's the most intense blue ink I've ever used, and it's permanent, but the stuff does NOT bleed through. I tried using it with a 1.5 on the shittiest paper I had around and it was fine. Crazy.
Here's a sample:
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Love the pen! The ink looks killer too.
I'm done buying for a while. I just reprinted some parts for my 3D printed pen and using the JOWO medium nib, and a stock cartridge that came with the Monteverde, it is writing very nicely.
Now if I only had something to write that was worthy.
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Update:
Yesterday we drove to Appleton, WI for our second visit to Anderson Pens. The first visit was last month and it did not buy a pen! LOL.
I did however buy a vintage Esterbrook mechanical pencil from 1931. It is the one to the far right in the group photo.
Yesterday we hung around after closing for the monthly meeting of the pen club. The daughter of the owners is an art teacher and we all tried our hand with creating art with fountain pen inks. It was a lot of fun.
I did pick up a new pen and a new pencil yesterday as well as a bottle of Diamine Cobalt Jazz Shimmertastic ink.
The pen i purchased is the Pilot Vanishing Point in matt black. The pencil is a Monteverde mechanical with .9mm lead, in brass. It has 4 rulers engraved with Inches and millimeters gage. It also has a rubber stylus for use with tablets and smart phones. The top is threaded and when removed reveals a small reversible screwdriver with phillips and flat heads.
Not including the 3d printed pen I now have 13 fountain pens of varying price and quality levels. Two of them were given to me by my daughter's original penabler. We visited with him on our trip to Pennsylvania last month.
The Pilot Vanishing Point...
The collection as of today.
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Very nice, Mark! I've a vanishing point as well—it's the black/gunmetal one. I used it regularly back when I was commuting. Not as much now, but they're great pens.
You've quite the collection there already!
I picked up, yet again, a Pilot Parallel calligraphy pen. A buddy of mine has been doing some really cool stuff with his and so I figured I'd give it a go again. Here's a practice page I did awhile back, using a cheap Speedball and some of my own writing as a sample. (The poem's basically my answer to AI as creative replacement.) I'm still getting used to calligraphy again, but it's fun.
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I love the calligraphy! You have a very nice technique too!
I am gong to take you up on the creative writing lessons soon. I need a new intellectual pursuit and although I am currently at a loss as to how I will ever develop that skill, I know from a lifetime of pursuit of things that I know little of, practice and persistence is the key.
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@mark said in Pen, Ink & Paper:
I love the calligraphy! You have a very nice technique too!
I am gong to take you up on the creative writing lessons soon. I need a new intellectual pursuit and although I am currently at a loss as to how I will ever develop that skill, I know from a lifetime of pursuit of things that I know little of, practice and persistence is the key.
It's actually fairly easy to get started, but don't think you need to do all the things, all at once. The trick with developing is to couple having fun with a defined trajectory. It's a lot like music.
