It proved to be a little difficult to love my pen and ink choices for April and so I drifted through the month with a slight air of disappointment. Two weeks in I came close to simply emptying them all and starting again, then I missed the opportunity on account of it being Easter weekend. Unfortunately, the law of the land dictates that you must have your hands permanently attached to chocolate during Easter weekend. The itch to change inks didn’t abate, though, and raised its head again the following weekend, at which point I realised if I could get through one more week I’d make it to May. Swapping out inks part of the way through April would be a defeat, but inking up new pens for May would be part of a plan.

Then Tuesday came along. I was working from home that day (I usually go into the office, though I don’t absolutely have to) and before I made a start on the day job I inked up a set of pens ready for the new month. This proved to be lucky because my planner pen ran out of ink on Wednesday and my journal pen followed suit on Thursday, so I got to swap out my inks a few days early after all. However, for most of the month my lineup consisted of:

• Waterman Hemisphere (blue barrel) filled with Diamine Majestic Purple. My main diary/planner pen, the Hemisphere is always a joy to write with. However, though I do love the Majestic Purple ink, I’m ready for a change so the last drops of the purple ink remain in their bottle to fight another day. (A review of April in my planner is in the pipeline, by the way).
• Namisu Orion fitted with a cartridge of Graf von Faber-Castell Viper Green. My journal pen and the ink I struggled with. My feelings reminded me of my reaction to Diamine’s Meadow: both these bright, spring green inks are colours that I like, I just don’t like them enough. I did replace the ink cartridge with the same again halfway through the month as the Orion does eat nicely through ink, but the two cartridges didn’t quite see me through the whole month.
• Diplimat Traveller fitted with a cartridge of Graf von Faber-Castell Electric Pink. I’ve been generally happy with this colour as my accent since the beginning of the year, but I’ve touched before on the fact that it was not happy used in combination with the Viper Green shade in my journal. By the end of the month I was more than ready for a move to a different shade of red.
• Waterman Hemisphere Rose Cuivre fitted with a cartridge of Graf von Faber-Castell Stone Grey. This is the combination I swapped in partway through the month as the accent colour in my journal. I actually like the grey ink in this pen a lot more than I expected, and it was a bit better with the Viper Green, but I can’t say I loved the combination. I’m going to keep this one inked and use it as my work pen where I think it will be a very good fit.
• Waterman Allure fitted with a cartridge of Graf von Faber-Castell Gulf Blue. I don’t often cover my at-work pen, but this one has been living at the office for the past couple of months with cartridges of the same ink colour just popped in when needed. This ink works well on the okay but not great paper in the Pukka Pad Things To Do Today pad which I use at work. I’ll have to do a review of this pad sometime as it’s proving to be very useful. When I finish the current cartridge I’m going to bring it home and give the pen a good clean.

My new lineup is already making me feel much happier and, though the shades are mainly blue, my mood is anything but. The Lamy Studio with the lovely bright Waterman Inspired Blue is being used to write the main body of my journal entries with the horoscope section in the accent colour of Lamy Crystal Ruby which I’ve inked up in my Lamy Rose Gold LX pen. For my planner, I’m using my dad’s Parker 51 filled with the Graf von Faber-Castell Cobalt Blue which is similar in intensity to Majestic Purple and I find they sit quite happily on the page which they’ve shared.

Unusually, I’m not yearning for any new pens at present. Perhaps knowing I can’t afford them is preventing me from doing any serious browsing, or it could be that I am happy with my current selection and can trust the collection to mature in an organic fashion with new pens being added when they become impossible to ignore. My focus seems to have wandered off in the direction of clothes and knitting yarns recently and that is not bad thing, although it is a subject for an entirely different day.

For now I’ll just bid you adieu and hope that you are looking forward to your own new month of hobbies, whatever they may be.