Hobby Intro: Books

We all know books, right? :) I used to read a lot when I was younger, mostly books about dragons and horses. I stopped after high school and tried to get back into it for years; every now and then I'd stop by Barnes & Noble and pick something up to read then struggle to get through. I used to do this all the time, even with video games and stuff distracting me, so why was it so hard now? 

(Another thing, as a side note, was that I was trying to stick to printed books. I hadn't reached the point where I accepted audiobooks as "actually reading," since... yeah, you're not reading with your eyes.)

It wasn't until 2019 that I started piecing together why: I technically stopped after high school, but I lost my love of it during high school. The books that high school has you read, the "American Classics" and such, sucked out my love for reading. In fact, I remember struggling to get reading assignments done in high school, despite me loving the classes and even signing up for more English credits than I needed to graduate. And those books I'd bought that I was excited about? Well, when walking around the store, I'd convince myself that the reason I hadn't read in forever was I'd been reading "children's" books. Dragons and ponies? That's for kids! So I need to pick something mature to read, like this contemporary fiction on relationships and... And... wow, I can't focus on this. I wonder why?

I understand the importance of classic literature but realized that reading things that someone else has decided I should like or respect isn't the way to go. I need to be true to myself and my own interests! So I asked myself: what were the last books I enjoyed before I stopped reading? And I thought of a couple: Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly and Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen. 

Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, where a black dragon holds a woman in his front claws as two men watch helplessly. This cover is a favorite of mine, and the build of the dragon makes me think of geese.

Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen. This is also a favorite cover of mine, featuring a child struggling to train the dragon he'd stolen.

I picked up these two on audio because I decided to give it a try. I hadn't really accepted audiobooks as "books" by this point because I felt they were "cheating" the reading experience. But I decided to give them a try because, well, getting through a book by listening is still getting you the contents of it. The ultimate goal of enjoying a story or learning the subject matter is still achieved, right? And, while I don't really watch movies or tv, I enjoy having music or youtube videos playing to listen to while I work on comics and other things (usually artwork of some kind). So I can just slot books into my normal working time and I don't have to cut out time specifically for them.

Of the two books, I fell completely in love with Dragonsbane all over again. I even related to the main character better, as she's a mage in her 40s struggling with her midlife crisis when the story begins - she's been studying magic her whole life, but she's never really been very good at it. I'm closer in age to her now than I was as a teen so her struggles are all the more real to me. I love the rules of magic that Hambly's books employ and her take on dragons, beings of pure magic, who are drawn to gold because it, too, is magic - and it "sings" to the dragons.

Dragon's Blood, while I still appreciate the concepts and atmosphere, had some themes I didn't really appreciate as much as an adult. I love the idea of a kid stealing a dragon egg to raise to pit fight in the desert so he can buy his freedom. But I wasn't crazy about how the love interest was treated by the author. This book has sequels and I had fun with the story, but I decided to pass on continuing. 

So this ended up being a success. I enjoyed the books and got through them both to the end, and came around to audiobooks. I can get the enjoyment from reading a book while working, too, which makes reading more easy. So for 2020, before any of the craziness began (at least in the US), I set a reading goal for 12 books. I felt that was a fair goal, and it evens out to be one book a month, right? 

I read... 35 books that year, haha. Covid "helped", I'm sure, but it was still a huge jump for me. Realizing that my library card let me check out audiobooks from an app from my local libraries was huge. And the thing was that, as I read more audiobooks, it made me want to sit and read more printed books. I learned how to speed read as well, which actually helped my usually-poor reading comprehension, which could leave me rereading a paragraph multiple times before I understood it. (Much less of that now.) I also gave up trying to force myself to finish books I'm not jiving with - if a book is a struggle to get through, why am I trying to force it? There are more books in the world than I can possibly read in my lifetime, I don't need to waste a second reading a book I hate. I don't need to wait and see if it'll get better by the end. Especially if it's all for fun anyway.

In 2021, I read 20 books - not as much, but still a good amount. After that, I fell back off again. 

So this year I'm trying to get back to it (again.) I have plenty of unread books on my shelf that I need to start knocking out. Recently I picked up a book called Black Leviathan, which is basically Moby Dick, but rewritten to be about dragonslayers. 

Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies. I'm incredibly excited for this one. If this book is boring I'm going to be so devastated, haha.

So maybe I'll share book reviews here from time to time? I'd been putting them on Goodreads but lately it's been running pretty... poorly. Lots of 403 errors while I browse the site. I created an account on BookWyrm.World and I'll likely post reviews there, but I think it would be nice to put something more personalized on my blog here. We'll see how it goes! I have a couple of library books right now that I'd like to finish before I get to this.

The moral of the story is to read what you like, don't waste time reading books that don't grab you. Also libraries are awesome, you get FREE BOOKS.

Ink Talk: Swatches!

I'd like to share how I handle swatching inks! I have a couple of ways I do this, mainly a quick way and a more detailed way that I keep in a swatch "book."

The first way is the basic one; I just use a cheap paint brush and do a line across a page. This is mostly for previewing samples, as I may not end up getting the full bottle (obviously) so I don't want to dedicate a full page to it in my swatch book. They are pretty fun to look at on their own, though, but I don't necessarily feel that I need to keep these long term. 

A friend and I traded samples recently and these are the ones she sent me. I loaded up Martian and Celadon Cat after this test.

I know a lot of people do their swatches with cotton swabs, but since I already have a bunch of paint brushes on hand (including some cheapo ones that I never use anymore, except to paint with my boyfriend's four-year-old), I just stuck one in my pencil bag and that's what I use here. When I first got into fountain pens, I saw everyone using cotton swabs and wasn't sure if there was some sort of reason to prefer them over paint brushes, but I came to realize that a lot of people... don't just have random paint brushes lying around already, haha.

The other way I swatch is the "book" I mentioned. It's not a full book, but rather an insert in a knock-off Traveler's Notebook I have. Once I fill it up, I'm sure I'll start another insert, but I haven't finished my first one yet. It took me some time to think about what I wanted out of a swatch book, and I decided the biggest benefit would be keeping a record of how an ink behaves in a specific pen. So I decided on a TN insert where I can dedicate a page to one ink, and then keep a record of how a pen behaved when that ink was put in it. I use two tools: my paint brush and a dip pen.

 

A two-page spread of the book. My Birmingham Emerald Fusion swatch has made quite the mess, which isn't actually a problem - because the intention of the book is to show me how each ink behaves in different scenarios, and this just reminds me of how unweildy that sheener can be!

 

I start each page off with my little bird stamp, just for that little touch of personality - it's the first thing I see on each page. I fill the ink bottle of the stamp with my paint brush, trying to pool more of the ink toward the "bottom" of the ink bottle in the image. Sometimes this doesn't work out well, but I view that as a good thing, because it shows me what inks will let me do that easily and which ones won't, which is in itself an indicator of how that ink likes to behave. I also include that same brush stroke across the page to show a big example of how the ink looks when it's lighter. Below the stamp I note the size of the bottle I have, because some of these inks are written in kanji and I cannot remember which is which. So having the size handy might help me find the right one. 😉 I also used to record samples in my insert, so knowing quickly that I don't have a full bottle was also nice.

I record the name of the ink and brand, of course, at the top of the page. Some inks also have additional info; if the ink is part of some sort of set or has a noteworthy classification from its brand, it might be mentioned here. That's a long-winded and vague way to say that for Birmingham's mixable inks, I just noted whether or not the ink was an "atomink element," which means it's a base color and not a mixed color. In theory I could also use this space to note other things, but that's the main "other" thing I include by the name right now. 

After the name, I do a shading test with some scribbles, followed by a water test and a smear test. I don't go as in-depth with my smear test as Mountain of Ink does, because I don't feel that I need to for myself. I basically just draw five horizontal lines and then quickly run my finger down them. Just that amount of time gives varied results and can be enough to show me that an ink might take some time to dry. The cross-hatch lines are then put on and I get my water brush to finish off. The water test is important to me as I really enjoy drawing with my pens, and I love water-pliable inks, since it lets me create some really fun doodles. 

After all that, I write a short description about the ink. Whatever I know at the time, and later if I learn something else, I can fill it in. So I make sure to give myself plenty of space. Some inks don't have all that I need to note, but others do, so I typically will start with a short description of the color. This is where I'll note things like sheen and shimmer, and if I know the ink is dry or wet. I'll also often describe the water behavior, since sometimes it can help clarify what I'm seeing with the water test. 

After the paint brush swipe is where I make a record of how pens behave with the ink in them. The page itself serves as a sample with the dip pen, so I don't ever record that. I scribble in a quick square in the dot grid, write the name of the pen, a quick note about the nib size (and if it's a gold nib, the karet of it too), along with my nickname for the pen. Some of my pens' nicknames are just the colorway the maker named them, and others are ones that I just think of whenever I see that particular pen. The other final touch is I note how the pen and ink pair together. For this, I use a sophisticated, scientifically formulated rating system I've come up with: 🙂, 😐, 🙁. 

Which are defined as follows:

🙂 - The smile! If the pen and ink play just as I expect them to, without any problems, and the ink looks acceptable, it gets a positive rating. This means shimmer/sheen show correctly, there are no hard starts, the ink is a legible color and/or darkness, etc. 

😐 - The neutral face. This one is "agreeable." The pen and ink work, but something isn't good enough to give it a full on smile. Maybe the ink is just a bit too light, like it's legible but not as dark as I'd hoped. Maybe the ink flows fine, but the shimmer isn't coming through consistently. This basically signals to me I could use these two together again, but it's not really what I want for this pen or ink. 

🙁 - The frown. It's exactly what you think it is. Hard starts, poor flow, shimmer/sheen just don't work at all, and other problems. Maybe this ink is a "dry" ink, and this pen only really works with "wet" inks. Whatever the case, this pairing should be avoided in the future! 

The swatch page for one of my top favorite inks, Sailor Manyo Yamabuki. I like this ink so much that it's often a first-stop for testing out new pens.

 

I know a lot of folks match their pens and inks together, and I may do that now and then, but I want to avoid feeling like I need to do that. I want to use inks in pens that play nicely together, regardless of the color matching. (If they do match, that's a plus though!)

Later on I'd like to share swatches of inks as I get them, maybe talk about individual inks that I like! Sailor Manyo Yamabuki in particular is one that I'd be happy to gush about in a post, so maybe I will, haha. 

Pen Talk: Sailor Pro Gear, Limited Edition 2023 Tequila Cocktail in Cyclamen

Another post about pens! I'm trying to vary so this doesn't just become a pen blog - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I want this to be a general hobby blog. I know I can get used to what I perceive as an expectation and tell myself I "have" to do certain topics, and I want to avoid that by getting a variety of topics out as much as I can. But! I can't help that one of the hobbies I'm most into right now is fountain pens, and I have a gym blog I've been sitting on for a few weeks and only just finally queued up to post, so I also want to make sure I'm posting on a somewhat regular basis. 

Last week, I received a new pen in the mail. It's a Sailor Pro Gear, and it's one of the cocktail themed limited edition pens from 2023: the Cyclamen colorway, which is a salmony red cap, a sunny yellow body, and juicy orange finials. 

The pen in being opened, still partially in its packaging.

The capped pen on a blue notebook background.

My Pen's Details:

• Colorway: Cyclamen
  
• Default Nib: Gold 21k M, Proprietary 
• Clip: Yes
• Postable: Yes
• Fill Method: Converter
• Shimmer Ink: Untested

I don't drink, so I asked Dane what a "cyclamen" was. He didn't know either so we tried looking around online, but looking up "cyclamen drink" or "cocktail" on google images only gives pictures of flowers, which is where the word comes from, and... this fountain pen, haha. I did manage to find a small handful of youtube videos, so here's one. It's basically a tequila made with orange and lemon juice, and gets the dark orange color from adding grenadine syrup.

This was the first Sailor pen color that made me want a Sailor at all. But when I first saw it back in 2023, the cost was far more than I wanted to spend on any single pen - I still haven't spent quite that much, but I can't remember the exact price it was at the time, either. I instantly fell in love with this color combo and started asking my friend about Sailors. She'd warned me that they have a noticable feedback that some folks don't like, which is a fair warning for the price point the Pro Gears are at. So I left it alone for a while but kept browsing Reddit's trading page for some time to see if someone would list one they no longer wanted, but never really saw anything before I quit reddit. I ended up finally settling for a Sailor Pro Gear Slim in another color (which I'll probably make a post on later?) since the colorway alone isn't a good enough reason to invest so much money. But I ended up liking that one a lot, so I got another Pro Gear Slim. A month or two ago, EndlessPens started stocking the whole 2023 cocktail collection as a set you could buy together, and maybe two weeks ago they started splitting them and selling pens individually. Endless tends to have pretty good deals, especially if you've already been suckered into spending money with them before ;) So the discounts on the pen I'd wanted the whole time became super reasonable, and after milling on it for a while, I decided to get it. 

A close-up of the 21k gold nib.

A big difference between this pen and the other two I already had was, this one is a 21 karet gold nib. The other two are gold as well, but only 14k. You can tell the difference and the feedback people talk about with Sailors is definitely less affronting on the 21k. (I will say I think I'm a feedback-enjoying person so I do like my 14ks, but this one does still feel better.) A lot of people say the feedback feels like writing with a pencil, but to me it feels closer to a high-end marker. Maybe it's because all my Sailors have medium nibs and not fine, but "pencil" isn't quite right to me.

The Pro Gear is bigger than the Pro Gear Slims (obviously) and I think I prefer it - I thought I would be a small pen person mostly since my hands are pretty small, but some of my big pens are a lot of fun. This isn't a big pen, but being bigger seems to put it in a better spot for me. I'm still deciding on that though, since overall I'm still working on changing my grip with my pens. I tend to grip too hard and my hand will cramp, so things are subject to change, I suppose. 

I decided to test with Sailor Manyo Yamabuki, since it's a bright, sunny, shading orange that leans yellow when it's applied lightly. It's also a high favorite ink for me and one I've used probably the most, so it's great for testing with new pens. I think I was pretty "meh" on this ink in my other sailors, but in this one, it's working out well.

I wrote out some of the lyrics to "Sober" by Plush.

Overall I'm very excited about this pen. It might be my closest to a "grail" pen that I've had, though I've never really called it that. The cheery color, the fit, and the writing feel are all pleasant for me and I'm excited to test this with more inks once this orange runs out. Not sure which will be next but half the fun is picking the next ink anyway. 

I'm never really sure how to end these blog posts. Maybe my next fountain pen post should be about ink? I could show how I handle my swatches, that might be fun. I don't know! But I'm having fun with this little blog so far and that's good beans to me.

Gym Talk: Consistency

EDIT Apr 5, 2024: I just wanted to pop back to this post to say I got an email from the gym saying I'd worked out 10 or more days last month, which is a first for me! So another little thing to be proud of.

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Since getting back into workouts, I've been increasing the number of days a week I've been going to the gym. At first I was planning on just one day a week, Sunday, since that's what I originally did and still saw muscle growth after one and two years. But from some encouragement from my personal trainer, I've been adding in more days slowly. Originally I didn't really have the time for it, but I've sort of forced the time in and other things fell around it, and it's just worked out somehow. 

 

A few weeks ago, I logged my 100th workout in my tracking app. I'm sharing the screenshot even though my weights here are lower than normal, since I'm easing back into workout out after being sick for a couple weeks, haha. In truth, I've done more a hundred workouts, since I haven't logged most of my sessions with my personal trainer (I only started doing that recently so I could keep track of what exercises he's teaching me) and I also logged my workouts on paper when I first started. This 100 milestone is also stretched across a huge timespan - I got the app originally in 2019, then stopped working out because of the pandemic, and only started up again last year. So I guess this is probably closer to two years of logged data. At any rate, it's still fun to see the "100 workout" text pop up, so I'm letting myself feel good about that, haha. 

My workouts over the last year have been much better than before the pandemic as well, since now I'm working with my trainer. I mentioned on my last fitness post that he's helping me with things like targeting muscle groups, learning the gym equipment, and more. Overall it's been a great experience since he's very knowledgable and also cautious - any time an exercise doesn't feel right, if we can't improve my form to get it to, we just don't do it and move on. He's careful to not let me injure myself and that's great. And I feel like I'm understanding a lot more about how to get the results I want - which is mostly a tone body. Not trying to be a body builder, but I'm not worried about that happening accidentally, since I know that look is very very hard to achieve. More than that, I want to be strong and have energy to do the things I want to do. The looks are honestly secondary, but seeing how I look in the mirror is still very exciting. 

On that note, I don't know if I'm going to share progress photos in this blog or not. I don't really want photos of me just kind of floating around online. I've posted some very mild pictures on twitter in the past (my face) and got weird comments, so I don't know that I need to actually show anything here. This blog is more to just dump the stuff in my head anyway. 

Anyway. With my trainer we're moving from two full-body workouts a week to push/pull/legs instead. Which is you target specific muscle groups on the days you come in, and since I'm aiming for three days a week, it's split up nicely with that. 

• PUSH days target the chest, shoulders, and triceps. 
• PULL days target the back, traps, and biceps.
• LEG days are obviously legs, but I'm also doing core those days.  

My workouts can vary from around 40 minutes to about 70, depending on what all I decide to do and how busy the gym is. The full-body workouts are about an hour. So spending that ~1 hour time targeting specific groups of muscles lets me do more for them while also being more flexible with my time. Full body workouts need at least a day of rest (probably more) in between each other, so if I go to the gym on Monday, now I can't go Tuesday since I need to recover. But if I just work one group out on Monday, now I can go in on Tuesday for another group - which is great if my schedule changes. Very happy with this setup. It also helps to keep the gym from being boring; if I'm changing up what I do whenever I go, even just a little, it doesn't become monotomous and it stays fresh. That combined with having a trainer teach me how to work out the same muscle groups in different ways, I can swap out the individual workouts for targeting muscles too, and it's always interesting. I'm definitely the type to just fall into the same routine, but once I've gotten used to something, I can keep that rotated in.

Maybe later I'll share my specific workouts as I'm recording them from my app. But I think this post is long enough for now and I've been sitting on it for a minute, so I'd like to move on to another post at the moment. So I'll come back to push/pull/leg talk later. 

Hobby Intro: Fitness

Not sure yet how I want to label this topic, since "fitness" is pretty broad. I might branch this into sub-topics later, but we'll see how it goes for now. 

I try to be active and have a few hobbies that fall into this category, most of which are: weight lifting, bicycling, and roller blading. Not to make it sound like I'm a super-active person, because I'm not - I'm very lazy and computer-addicted, haha. It's more that I try to keep these hobbies in my life that will encourage me to keep moving around. I'm also scared of hurting myself, so I don't jump fully into everything and try to be careful, so my skill progress with some of these things is slow. 

Biking is something I've done for years. It's a great sort of "default" exercise outside, and gets you around the neighborhood to just look at the plants and things while moving. My city has a paved bike trail that will take you effectively anywhere you want to go in town, which tends to be where I ride now. Until the last couple years, I used to live next to this big cemetary with wide roads on the side of a small hill, which was great for getting a nice ride in with some fun downhill action as well. When Pokemon Go came out, I bought a phone-holding attachment so I could play while riding, though that game never really worked well with biking. Incredibly frustrating that I couldn't really hatch eggs in that game on a bike - the speed I road was right in that nebulous area where the game decided you were going "too fast" to count as walking, but for whatever reason they still would let you hatch eggs while driving. How is a game all about getting outside and walking around going to penalize you for biking when it doesn't for driving? But anyway, I quit PoGo at the end of 2020, trying to hold onto it during the pandemic by biking alone, but it was too much work to maintain anymore.

The bike trail is also great for roller blading, though it's not my preferred spot. When I can, I try to get one of the tennis courts at the local parks to myself. It's not safe to skate near the nets, but as long as you avoid them, you have a really smooth turf to skate on. I'm still working on my stopping skills, which sounds weird when you hear someone say that, but stopping on skates is its own skill and has different levels of difficulty. You can use the breaks that come attached to one of the boots, but I ended up removing the brake since I would trip over it, and that was far more dangerous. I am able to stop my skates, it just takes a good bit of real estate to do so, and I would like to be able to master the quick stop methods I see people do online. But they're scary for me still, haha. And because I'm not quite there yet, there are spots on the bike trail where I avoid, since they'll lead to me crossing traffic - and I don't really feel safe doing that in those spots without a reliable quick-stop skill.

But the main thing I'm doing for fitness right now, partly because it's winter and cold/snowy where I live, is weight lifting at the gym. I originally started lifting dumbbells at my apartment complex gym room in 2018. They had a basic set of exercises hanging on the wall that I would do one day a week, and I would just follow that, since this workout room didn't offer a lot in terms of equipment and space. In two years, I put on some noticable bicep muscle and was very proud. I've always been an underweight person who wasn't ever really happy with my looks, but putting on some muscle finally helped me realized what made me unhappy with myself. It's not my goal to get ripped, but some muscle would be nice. Though 2020 hit and I stopped going to the gym and lost the progress I'd made over those two years.

I got back into it last year, having moved into my boyfriend's house and no longer having access to a paid-by-my-rent workout room, so I joined a proper gym. I've been working with a personal trainer who's showing me all sorts of things: how to use new equipment, since a lot of them look very strange; how to use proper form; what muscle groups I'm hitting; different exercise setups (like I'm switch from two full-body workouts a week to three workouts using Push/Pull/Legs); etc. I'd lost the progress I'd made from before the pandemic, but I've regained most of what I could do, and I'm working out more muscle groups that I ever did alone. The big gripe I have with all this is, this cuts into the time I'll have for biking/skating once the weather is nice, so hopefully I'll work that out over the spring. My gym also just finished renovating the indoor pool, so I just bought a new swimming suit to hopefully make use of that soon.

I'm sure I'll talk more about the individual hobbies here later on, but I think that's good enough for an intro. Bye for now!

Pen Talk: PenBBS 308

Today I want to talk about one of my favorite fountain pens I own: my PenBBS 308 in Hawaii. This was the first "expensive" pen I bought, which was around $40 on JetPens. (I found out later they were cheaper directly from the official PenBBS etsy page, but I wouldn't have found it from there, anyway.) Not my first fountain pen ever, but the first one that I intentionally sought out for it being a fountain pen, and the first pen I've spent over $10 on. 

My PenBBS 308 (left) and my PenBBS 456 (right). This photo is the most blue the color looks in just the right light. In a lot of lights, it leans sort of purple.

I'm going to throw in that I haven't edited the colors or added filters to any of these photos, but the colors will vary based on the lighting in the room at the time taken. The photo above had a lot of good sunlight coming in through the window at the time.

My Pen's Details:

• Colorway: Hawaii
  
• Default Nib: Steel F, Proprietary 
• Current Nib: Gold F, Proprietary
• Clip: Yes
• Postable: Yes, but long
• Fill Method: Converter or Eyedropper, currently Eyedropper
  

The pen I received from JetPens isn't the prettiest for this colorway. From photos I've seen of others online, the blue has a much more even spread with the yellow, and is more of a mid-range royal blue. Mine is mostly yellow with just bits of blue toward the bottom of the cap and the body. It doesn't blend as nicely as photos of others in my opinion.

The model photo from the JetPens store page. The blue reaches about midway on the body, and the whole image of the pen is brightly saturated. Or, at least, that's what JetPens wants you to see. 😉

 

I will say that while that's a bit disappointing, I still do enjoy the color overall, and this is a fairly minor complaint. I also know now that this is something you generally risk when you buy a resin pen online; most times if you're buying from an online store, you don't have the luxury of picking or seeing the exact pen you'll get. Something worth noting, since I eye-dropper fill this pen, is that the body is influenced by the color of the ink inside. Here's a photo of the pen filled with Sailor Studio 230, a bright red ink, which creates its own color effect in the body by fading the bright yellow to blue and turning it more purple. Similarly, if you put a dark blue in, it extends that dark blue area sort of how I wanted the actual body color anyway. 😅 So my initial disappointment has since been replaced by a "wow, this is pretty neat" feeling. 

When I first got this pen, I had trouble getting it to work. The problem was two-fold: one, I didn't realize the ink I'd ordered (Robert Oster Blue Moon) was a glitter calligraphy ink. I have a bad habit of scouring an online listing to make sure such-and-such is the right thing that I'm trying to order, and then somehow still messing it up and getting the wrong thing. Robert Oster does make fountain pen inks, but Blue Moon isn't really meant to go in a pen, and says so on the bottle. 😥 It also says so on the JetPens page but I missed it somehow. So when the pen jammed, I had no idea why, and multiple cleanings didn't really help. I've been reluctant to try shimmer in this pen ever since, though it might work with just the right ink. Maybe one day I'll find out.

The second problem was that, PenBBS pens in themselves are a bit quirky. Since, from what I understand, they're really meant for a Chinese audience in that they work best writing Chinese characters. I don't know much about Asian characters so I couldn't tell you why exactly this is, but to get them to work well for western letters, you just have to apply a bit of pressure. Youtuber Inkquiring Mind has a method he calls the "Seven Strokes of Happiness", where you effectively tweak the pen to your hand by holding the pen how you would write, and pressing down just a bit harder than you'd need for writing - spreading the tines just slightly - and moving the pen in a downward stroke. You don't want to do this too hard, since you may spring the tines and ruin your nib, but just slight pressure. You do this about seven times and your pen should be tuned to your hand. For me personally, since I have a pretty light hand, it takes closer to 15 to get the job done. But once it's done, the pen does work great. 

When I'm just looking for something random to write, I usually go with song lyrics, since I normally have something permanently blasting in my head. These are from the song Divisive by Disturbed. The ink here is Sailor Studio 230. And yeah my handwriting isn't anything great, but why make a post about a pen without a writing sample?

This pen is also sort of sentimental since it was my first pricey pen (and I am always highly biased in favor of the first thing I try, a trait of mine for some reason), so when I eventually ordered a pen directly from the PenBBS Etsy page, I ended up picking up a gold nib from them as well. Took a while to decide which pen to put it in, but it's in the 308, and I'm not inclined to remove it. The gold nib was worth it (it still needed the Seven Strokes treatment, but that's not a problem once you're aware of it), and this pen has moved up to a top favorite for me. It honestly just makes me happy to write with, and there's been a number of times where I'm using it and I just stop to think, dang I super like this pen. Wow. What a great pen.

A close-up of the 14k gold nib, which has two mirrored Chinese lion-dogs engraved into it, along with beautiful decorative designs.

My understanding is that PenBBS retired the 308 model, so if you're looking to get one, it might have to be second-hand. JetPens at the time of this writing still has some of the Lucky Koi colorway in stock (which is also very pretty), but it looks like JetPens may be getting rid of their PenBBS stock in general, so get it while you can. (I've been thinking about grabbing another myself but I really don't need one.)

I'll be talking about more individual pens going on, maybe in a random order, but I wanted to lead with this one since it was an early pen and I like it so much. I've already started writing up another post for another PenBBS I have, but will probably post something else before that one, as I'd like to mix up the brands a little bit. Maybe I'll go with one of my BENUs or a Fine Writing International pen or something.

Hobby Intro: Fountain Pen Collecting

At the moment, I'm expecting a good number of my posts to be about fountain pens. It's one of my newest hobbies, as I've been collecting for... a year? And a half, maybe? I'm actually testing out writing these blog posts out in pen first, to help give me an idea of where I want to go. It's very easy for me to over-edit text and spend way too long on it, and I'm finding this is more succinct. (I want to try writing my comic script rough drafts this way next, but still working out how I want to do that exactly.) Anyway, so far this is nice. 

My collection so far is twenty pens. Here's a list: 

• PenBBS 308, Hawaii
• PenBBS 456, Autumn
• PenBBS 495, Fairyland
  
• Pilot Petit1, Clear Blue (x2)
• Pilot Metropolitan, Red
• Pilot Prera, Parrot Green
• BENU Briolette, Luminous Blue
• BENU Talisman, Peacock Ore
• BENU Euphoria, Early Bird
• Opus 88 Koloro, Blue
• Opus 88 Mini, Busy Bee
  
• Nahvular (Narwhal) Nautilus, Macaw
• Sailor Pro Gear Slim (x2)
• Nekoyanagi & Haha
• Pillow Book
• Fine Writing International Wheel Of Time, Autumn
• Fine Writing International Demonstrator
• Monomi Olika, Orange
• Fountain Pen Revolution, Jaipur V2
• Retro 51 Tornado
• Edison Beaumont, Unicorn

Most of my fountain pens, including the disposables.

When I buy pens, I look for a few things. As you might be able to tell from the picture, I really like colorful pens, so the colors and overall look of the pen are definitely a factor. If I'm going to get into buying expensive writing tools, I might as well get ones that make me happy to look at. 😊 I've seen some people on the fountain pen Reddit call pens like the BENUs "gaudy", but it makes me think of when I played Flight Rising and everyone mostly collected small lairs of white, black, and gold dragons... and then I had a huge of all sorts of bright colors, called "eyeburners" by the community. This is who I am and I'm fine with it. 

The rest of my collection.

I try to get something "new" almost every time I buy. Very rarely do I get the same thing for the same experience again; I usually aim for something different out of a purchase, like the model, the nib, the nib size, the fill system, etc. I like the tinkering aspect of fountain pens where you can make small changes to see how the pens write, or how the ink behaves, etc. There's been maybe twice where I bought another pen because I wanted the same or similar experience to a pen I already had, but usually I try to change something about a new purchase so I can compare to what I already have. I've been enjoying learning how the pens work and making what adjustments I can as a beginner and seeing how it changes things. For example, some inks behave differently in different pens.

Since I work as a software developer, I don't spend a ton of time writing anymore. It's only been over the last handful of years that I've started seeking it out, and what I've found is that writing... hurts. My grip seems fine and I don't ever remember having trouble in school with writing for long periods, but now I can't do it without getting sore and cramping up my hand. Drawing doesn't do this, I've just gotten worse at writing specifically since leaving high school, and my handwriting has deteriorated along with it. I've been re-teaching myself cursive and practicing, as it turns out I thought I still remembered cursive, but I didn't. So the last year I've been getting better, my handwriting has improved significantly from the practice, and I'm working on loosening my grip and trying to suss out what I'm doing that's making it hurt.

Another thing is that, this is effectively a new art medium for me. From talking with a friend who's been into fountain pens for a long time, she gave me the idea to touch up my drawings with a water brush. It's sort of an easy, cheater watercolor painting thing, which is a lot of fun to do. I often have to start from scratch every time I watercolor (in terms of remembering how to do it), but a lot of fountain pen inks will spread easily with water, and there's a lot less technique needed to make something fun. Usually  just doodles right now, but I've just picked up my first "permanent" black ink, and am hoping to do some fun things with it. :) I may share some pictures of what I've been drawing here, but I often share them on mastodon too. 

But that's all for now! I'll probably do individual posts of my pens and inks later on. Not so much "reviews" as it is just my own experiences, since I'm not really going to make recommendations or anything, I guess. Just show how I use things and what I like about them, personally. (That might count as a review?) But that's later. I'm aiming for about one blog post a week, but that's not a strict schedule, as I don't want this to be something where I feel pressured to maintain anything - I just want to chat when I'm feeling up to it. So yeah, that's that! Talk to you all later!