Pam Alison Knits

I introduced the “ferryman” theme in my previous pen and ink post with a very tenuous link to my chosen trio for September. Never keen to let go of even the slimmest analogy, today I’m going to take you punting down the River Styx. This is very apt, as some of my September combinations have already crossed to the underworld, though others have high hopes of returning to the land of the living.

The most successful pairing of pen and ink this month has been the Waterman Absolute Brown in my extra fine-nibbed Hemisphere Rose Cuivre. This combination has behaved impeccably and I’ve used it extensively in my planner. I learned yesterday that Waterman have discontinued this ink colour which is a bit of a shame as it is a pleasant wood-brown leaning a little towards the red end. The American pen shop, Anderson’s Pens, have a blog post about suitable alternatives, however my favourite browns are Graf von Faber-Castell Hazelnut and Herbin’s Cacao du Bresil so I will be happy with these going forwards. That said, I probably still have enough Absolute Brown to see me out.

This brings me on to the Waterman Exception, such a striking pen but with a nib which I simply do not like. I know that I made a mistake buying one with a medium nib when my preference is fine to extra fine, but I think I might be able to live with that if the nib were not so determined to write inconsistently. It is a complete nuisance with hard starts and, once it gets going, gushing out ink for a sentence and a half then suddenly stopping dead. This is very much the behaviour I experienced with my Parker Sonnet and the thing both pens have in common is their gold nibs. I admit two nibs is too few to make a judgement but, with two out of two gold nibs failing to engage my enthusiam, I don’t feel a need throw any more money in that direction. It’s not just the strange reluctance these nibs have to provide a consistent ink flow, I also find that when they are writing, they write on the wide side of their nib classification. The Medium nib on the Exception writes more like a broad, the fine on the Sonnet more like a medium. From this, I would deduce that they are wet writers, and perhaps the issues I have with them suddenly stopping are to do with getting sufficient ink flow to quench their thirst. Whatever the technical explanations, the Waterman Exception has been cleaned out and put away in my storage case for future pondering. To answer the question of whether the converter or ink were part of the problem, I took the converter out and put it straight into my Waterman Allure, going from one extreme to the other – the most expensive of my Waterman collection to the least expensive. Whilst the ink behaved better in this pen, allowing me to use up the supply in the converter, it was still inclined to be a little skippy on occasions and that needs further thought.

So, let’s talk about the Parker Sonnet since we’ve already mentioned it. The pen, quite a beauty in my eyes, has entered my September lineup this week after a nib downgrade from gold to steel. I found a retailer offering replacement nibs and chose a steel version in extra fine. Changing the nib was very easy as the old one simply screwed out of the section and the new one screwed in, much as nibs do on pens like the Kaweco Sport. I find the nibs which you need to pull out are slightly easier to mess up, screw-in versions are a dream. I filled the pen with Diamine Kensington Blue ink and I’m using it in my journal where it gives a tiny bit of bleed-through – just specking onto the reverse of the page, but is already behaving so much better than the gold nib did. I’m counting this as a win and I’m pretty keen to carry on using the pen through October, albeit with a different ink.

You may recall that I was having issues with the ink flow in my blue Hemisphere which I had filled with the Tender Purple ink. I flushed it out and refilled it with the same ink and it worked better for a couple of days, then the flow issues resurfaced. I got thoroughly fed up, so I abandoned the effort and inked up the Cross Beverley with Scribo Notturno Viola as my purple ink. Flipping back through the past couple of weeks in my journal, I have to say that I prefer the deep purple of the Scribo ink to the more vibrant shade from Waterman. I found it particularly pleasing on the paper used by the Stamford Notebook Company, although the combination of medium nib and purple ink was a bit too much for the thinner Filofax paper and there was a bit of spotting through on the paper in my current journal. I wonder if anyone else finds that purple inks are particularly susceptible to bleeding through the more problematic papers? I often find that I’m happy with the behaviour of a particular pen, then I put in purple ink and find I’m getting a bit of spotting on the reverse of papers that were previously perfectly fine. Then again, I love purple inks so I’m never going to abandon them, just learning to live with ongoing mild disappointment.

I know we still have a bit of September to play with, but I’m beginning to think that October might bring a chance to ink up a different three pens with the trio of Iroshizuku inks. I’ve already touched upon wanting to use the Sonnet, and I think that a fill of the moody grey Fuyu-Syogun would be just the job with that pen. I previously used this ink in my Cross Century II which is one of the finest-width nibs I own. The deep magenta of Yama-Budo wrote a bit heavily for my taste in my medium-nibbed Cross Beverley so I fancy trying it with a very fine nib: my Kaweco Al-Sport perhaps? I want to ink up the blue Hemisphere again to make sure the nib, feed and converter are okay, so I reckon the autumn orange of Yu-Yake would give that a good test as the Iroshizuku inks are generally reckoned to be well-behaved (though the same could be said of the Waterman inks which I was struggling with).

It’s been quite the ride along the river in September, possible more indicative of my general mood, with a tendency to be over-sensitive to minor issues, than of any serious problems with the pens and inks. I think the Tender Purple might not be the best ink in the world and/or have been rather older stock when it was gifted to me by a friend who doesn’t use fountain pens and may well have sourced it somewhere obscure. The box was very battered when I first unwrapped it which always made me feel it might not have been the freshest item in the world. I am open to the idea of sacrificing this one at the alter of continued learning. I am, in the immortal words of the Stylistics, a big girl now, and I need to come to terms with the pens and inks in my collection which have not been the best choices. Some unwise choices can be easily rectified, some need to be put off until a future time, and some are never going to be more than lessons learned (I’m looking at you, Waterman Exception, and you, broad-nibbed Sheaffer Legacy!). What I say is: long may the learning continue.