Long view on a short week
Holiday earthiness
The Thanksgiving holiday in the US makes for a short work week. Selecting an ink palette for a short week is challenging. Do I go for inks and pens to use at home or do I still plan as if working at school?
I went with a small group of earthy colors: one grey, one blue, four earth tones, and a purple. The earth tones are fun colors. Together they make a well-rounded mix since school only meets two days out of five. Live a little.
The newest — ahem: the only newly — inked pen is the classic Esterbrook J. Its 2442 F Stub nib is smooth and just stubby enough to be fun. I fixed the pen up myself, so feel attached to the little girl.
Grey/Black
Delike New Moon 2 Green (EF). Birmingham Slag Gray. Wetter and more reliable than the price range would suggest. The stiff steel nib makes writing fast easy. This combo worked quite well as my daily driver. The sole downside: four rotations to remove the pen cap got old quickly.
Blue/Teal
TWSBI Vac700R Iris (F Cursive Smooth Italic, ground by Pen Realm). Akkerman Koninginne Nacht-Blauw #7. Love, love, love this combo. A generous feed with a high-shading ink made the Vac one of my go-to pens for notes, lesson plans, and a good deal of journaling. We won’t hold the broken bottle against Akkerman.
Earth Tones
Esterbrook J Copper (2442). Monteverde Gemstone Moonstone. A paper-dependent pairing. Tomoe River brings out fantastic shading, and keeps a short drying time. I used this combo for lesson plans, meeting notes, and one bout of journaling.
TWSBI 580-AL Emerald (EF). Kyo-No-Oto Hisoku. The light ink color made journaling and prep/process notes a lot of fun. The color is a tad too light for use in meetings from an EF nib. The round nib makes this a solid pocket carry, too.
Nakaya Neostandard Heki-tamenuri (B). Diamine Eau de Nil. The Nakaya stays in the house. As such, it’s useful primarily for journaling and work that I do in the evenings – like lesson planning and marking papers. This nib would be useful for meeting notes too, were I to adopt a braver posture on traveling with the Nakaya.
Franklin-Christoph 31 Smoke & Ice (M-SIG). Monteverde Sweet Life Pumpkin Cake. Letter writing, lesson plans and a few meetings during the two-day work week. The nib is just narrow enough to work in my 3.7 mm grid notebook. The SIG puts down a really fun line. I often reach for this pen while journaling.
Wild Cards
Mythic Aeschylus Black & Red (EF). Monteverde Emotions Gratitude. This became a marking pen. The EF helped fit a healthy amount of comments into the margins of two research papers I reviewed. And the purple Gratitude contrasted well on the page. I suspect it will look better with a broader nib.
