I was journaling some emotional debrief stuff and realised my nib was expressing its opinions on my writings 😦
Funny accident of ink splotches on the pen. Now I have to carefully cap the pen to see how long I can retain these "eyes."
RULE 5: Fountain Pen is Conklin Hippocrates with a Stub Nib and the black ink that comes with the pen.
When I first got into fountain pens, I didn't believe all the long time users telling me that samples would supply my ink needs for years.
Seriously? But my Lamy cartridge ran out after 3 days. Surely that means I'll go through 3 bottles of ink a year! LOOK! The ink level has DROPPED after only ONE paragraph! *cue dramatic gesturing and panic buying*
Anyway, I clearly didn't understand volume. Even my excel spreadsheet converting 50ml to number of days to years did not estimate correctly because I chose the 3 days where I wrote pages and pages and drew pages and pages, and did not factor in the days I wrote/drew nothing. I based my estimate on a Lamy medium nib on absorbent paper. I mostly use EF nibs now, and broad/stub nibs sparingly.
Needless to say, I'm sitting like a dragon on 50 ink samples and questioning life decisions as I refuse to look at my bottled ink collection.
50 ink samples of 2 ml/sample, is 100ml. I told myself that I need to trim my samples down by using them up. It was only as I started part-filling pens tonight that it dawned on me how long that is actually going to take.
This made me reflect on my early days, and realise, yes. Those people telling me to get samples and not bottles when trying inks were right. I was silly not to believe them.
But I know, if I were to go back in time and repeat things again...I would still buy bottles because ink decisions are not rational.