It’s been a slow season for my fountain pen endeavors here as I’m settling in the new house and trying to stay afloat at work; the overload has been unreasonable, this hasn’t been the best semester But every time I sit at the seminar table with my graduate students to talk about folklore, or I sit at a different seminar table with my graduate students to write together, I take out my Galen leather pen case and take notes. Some of my graduate students are now converts to the pleasure of putting a fountain pen to paper. If I’ve done something, I’ve done this - some technologies are older, others newer, but gathering together with other humans to make and share words is an ancient joy.
Days became shorter, if not exactly colder; as always in Fall, I felt the desire for sparkle and shimmer. In late September, I purchased a bottle of Ka-ku “The Forgotten Thing of the Little Mermaid” from M. Lovewell. It started as a sample that arrived at my doorstep in a tiny glass vial. I had my doubts about this ink, but the moment I swatched it I fell in love with this subtle, soft coral with marine shimmer. I’ve been on a Ka-ku exploration journey this year, and this ink is probably my favorite, alongside Black Jade. I ended up upgrading my sample to a bottle.
The Forgotten Thing of the Little Mermaid - a gorgeous ink from Ka-ku in my Wearingeul Ink Encyclopedia. With new Menagerie bear friend via an estate sale.
I did not have an appropriate pen for the ink. My beloved Leonardo Momento Magico developed a cracked window last year, and I retired it. Certainly I could have sent it off to be fixed, but it seemed like a major inconvenience to everyone, myself included. So I put the pen aside, at least for now. This brought me down to only two shimmer vehicles - the Leonardo MZ Fioritura Viola, inked for the season with Diamine Maple Leaf, and the Kilk Yggdrasil pen with J. Herbin Opale Nocturne in its newly installed tree-themed nib. So I did the unthinkable — I shimmered up an Onoto.
They do look good together. Onoto Sequoyah and the Ka-ku Mermaid on my desk, with a bear friend.
In most fountain pen circles, it is considered almost a sacrilege to put shimmer ink in an expensive pen. There are many reasons for this. Shimmer is so much harder to clean out, and can clog and damage expensive pens; piston fillers, in particular, are not recommended for shimmer unless they can be entirely disassembled. I have used piston fillers for shimmer before, but they were mostly TWSBI Ecos, now long gone from the Gathering. Yet, some higher end pens are not, at least in principle, too delicate for shimmer.
Still, to put shimmer in an expensive pen is to harm a potential resale. I’ve never done this before. The Onoto Sequoyah had been a grail of mine for a long time, but I did not love it when I got it. I almost sold it multiple times, with a plan to buy a cheaper pen for shimmer from the proceeds - and then, in conversation with pen friends, it occurred to me that I could save myself the many steps of sending the pen off for sale, looking for a new one at a time when pens are so much more expensive, spending even more money — when I could simply use what I already have.
What a beautiful pairing. No regrets here.
The Onoto has a cartridge converter system, a swappable nib unit, and a steel nib. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not any less sturdy than my Kilk or my Leo MZ, and it is as easy to clean. So I took a deep breath and inked it with the Ka-Ku Mermaid. And now I actually use the pen.
Roadruner friend perching on crystal; my three shimmer pens - the Onoto Sequoyah, Kilk Yggdrasil, and Leonardo Momento Zero Fioritura Viola. The notebook is my Plotter A5.
I blinked, and November came, and somehow, my desire for a shimmer pen was not satisfied by the three pens I am currently using for that purpose. Is it greed, is it seasonal gloom, is it cultural priming? I haven’t bought a new pen in a while, not even for my birthday — so I figured I’d surely find something good on Fountain Pen Day.
Alas, it was not to be. Everything I wanted sold out rapidly, and my working schedule did not help me now that most exclusive drops happen on Thursdays, not Fridays. I was teaching a class when some of the Atlas drops came, and I missed the doorbuster I really wanted. I missed a bunch more pens from various vendors. I don’t want to list them all, but it was frustrating. Certainly, I told myself, Endless Pens would have a Kilk for me. They came out with a collection of “One of one” Kilks in a new shape, the Bala. featuring a number of unique pens - same shape and furniture, different resins.
The One of One drop of Kilk Bala pens at Endless Pens, photo sourced from their website. I think this was gorgeous, if less intricate than previous Kilk drops.
The price was reasonable, the pens were cool, and so I waited for the event to go live. I must have mixed something up and arrived a few minutes too late; maybe not, but in any case, one moment my screen was showing “coming soon,” the next it was “sold out.” I was not the only one to be disappointed. In the Instagram post advertising the collection, people complained, and one commenter said, “I’m so tired of the scarcity bs” and another responded, “The scarcity bs is exactly why I've stopped buying fountain pens. It's gotten completely out of hand.” You can read the company’s response in the thread as well. They seem to be taking the concerns seriously, and I hope things will improve. But I, too, am not a fan of scarcity marketing.
The Kilk Yggdrasil and the Leonardo MZ Fioritura Viola were Endless Pens exclusives. The Yggdrasil sports a tree-themed black Jowo nib with an Imperial grind from Kirk Speer.
I’ve been a fan of Endless for a long time, and I love their collabs. I think their Hatch program is one of the most exciting things happening in the hobby. I won’t stop buying from Endless because of this, but this has been frustrating - I feel like this is more an exercise in clicking speed than a discerning purchase, and buyers are being penalized for not being available to rapidly click buy at random hours. This is not how I want my hobby engagement to go.
I think many people had good luck this FP Day, but it wasn’t me; I did not buy anything. Luckily, it’s not a problem as much as a frustration - the Gathering is thriving, and I’m sure I’ll see more shinies to tempt me before the year wraps up.