I started the August Pen/Ink Palette with an ink called Apricot Tea from Kakimori in the Conklin pen. I pick my colors using my sample cards and the sample book where I wrote out some stuff on the kind of paper I usually use right now. I currently don’t pull the ink bottles until the day I am going to fill the pen – which might change in the future haha. 

When I pulled this ink out of the drawer to ink my pen I hesitated. The consistency or texture of the ink was more…milky? Viscous. That’s the word I want. Instead of the watery consistency I am used to. It seemed odd. Different from the majority of my other inks. So I rechecked the sample book…seemed fine? And I shrugged and put it in the Conklin Coronet Orange to check it out. 

That’s when things started to go wrong. When I wrote with this ink in this pen it was really feathery. What I mean by that is instead of nice, crisp, clean lines, the ink sort of blurs and soaks further into the page, and if you look really closely you can see the ink sort of feathering out and blurring the edges of the line. I am sure there is a cool art application for this, but I am not an artist in the classical sense, so mostly this is just annoying to me. 

I thought maybe the ink just needed to settle, so I left the pen alone over night but the next day it was still blurry. Which makes me grumpy. So I started investigating what was going on – was it the ink? Was it the pen? Well, I had made the original sample in the sample book with my glass dip pen – which was not blurry, for the record. I figured a good place to start is by replicating that, glass dip pen, dipped into ink bottle, write on paper, see what happens. I was extremely disappointed to see that the ink blurred with the glass dip pen this time. I’m not sure what happened between when I sampled it originally at the beginning of the year, and when I sampled it this month. From what I’ve read it is most likely a difference in the paper between the books. But, it could be the ink deteriorating as well – or even something like temperature maybe? It requires more research yay! I do like research.

I had a bit of a conundrum – do I write with a blurry ink all month and be grumpy every time I do – meaning I prolly wouldn’t use the pen? Or do I swap it out, right now. After consulting with husband who I would need to help me with the psychical side of things (like rinsing out the nibs and converters for me), I decided to swap them. But which ink do I use instead?

I narrow my inks down for the monthly palette usually into two sets of options. I have so many samples now that I can get some good variety and some subtlety, which means I sometimes end up with colors that are super close to each other in both palettes. For the Apricot Tea, it’s partner in the other palette was Moonlight of Higashiyama from Kyo Iro. They look very similar. This time, before putting it in the pen, I dip sampled it and wrote on the paper I’d be using it on the most. What was funny is the sample card colors are almost the opposite of the sample I wrote out that day.

And the results were – Moonlight was not blurry, but was the right kind of color I wanted for that spot in my palette. Looks like we have a winner! I’ve used this one in the pen a couple of times now – just short writing – and it looks good so far. So I’ll use this one for August and report back when I’m done! 

This kind of thing happens often enough that I am trying to think of ways to avoid this. For September I will be dip testing the inks before I decide on the palette finally for sure. The glass dip pen doesn’t always give me a good idea of what it will look like coming out of a pen, so I picked up a new metal tipped dip pen by Pilot – hope it shows up before September! I am hoping this gives me a better idea of what I’ll be seeing from the pen. What I’ll be looking for is how the ink shows up on the page color wise, how thick it runs, or how dry is the ink, how crisp are the edges of the line (although that is often more influenced by the nib you’re using, I’ve noticed), and how long it takes to dry. I might try dipping the actual nibs I am planning on using in the inks I am thinking about…not sure how that would work out…I’ll think about it, maybe give it a try. And let you all know how it goes!