Hello everyone,
I live in rural California, about 250 miles north of San Francisco. By day I’m an editor and a graphic designer, and by night any number of things, including the author of the vastly under-appreciated Amazon Kindle novel, Attack of the Drooling Shapeshifters.
Glad to be here.
Although I grew up with them, I’ve only recently started using fountain pens again. I saw a Zebra cartridge pen for about $6 in a drug store about a year ago, and couldn’t pass it up. It was everything I remember fountain pens being from my youth — scratchy nib, hard to start, dry, skipped often & feathered badly on cheap notebook paper. Very nostalgic. But at the back of my mind I thought I remembered that I once had a fountain pen that was a better writer. I think it may have been a Scripto. I know it wasn’t a Shaeffer or a Parker, although I really wanted a Shaeffer snorkel pen.
Anyway, a few months ago I saw a display of Pilot Varsity throw-away fountain pens in an office supply store, and I picked one up on whim (it had pretty aqua-colored ink). I was amazed at how smoothly it wrote. I had no idea then that Pilot made a wide range of pens including high-end, but I immediately realized that their fountain pens were worth looking at. I bought a Pilot Prera, and was hooked. That only whetted my appetite for fountain pens. I’ve since ordered a Sailor 1911 with a 21k nib, which is on its way from Japan at this very moment, and I’ve discovered Diamine inks.
Hook, line and sinker.
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