Still settling in to the new house. We’ve prepped a couple of rooms for painting but then the furnace decided it would just sometimes not turn on in the middle of a cold snap, and cold rooms are hard to paint. New thermostat is supposedly coming today and we really hope that’s the problem. It looks like the former owners had some weird zwave kickstarter thermostat that was not great even when it seemed to be working, but it may well be an issue with the furnace itself. Thank goodness for good insulation so we didn’t freeze when it turned off overnight.
Painting continues, so here’s a photo of Hatch who looked at the cardboard I put on the floor and thought “must be a dog bed.”
Caption: Hatch, a black lab mix dog, is sprawled across a cardboard wardrobe box that has been flattened and placed on the floor to protect it during painting. He’s got his face in the sunbeam and is looking towards the window with his head over his paws, while his hind end is sprawled at a “draw me like one of your French girls” pinup pose with his legs stretched out.
And then, immediately, “don’t take my picture!”
Caption: Hatch, a black lab mix dog, sitting on some cardboard with his front half in a sunbeam. He’s sitting up compared to the previous photo and you can see that his front paws are crossed. He’s looking vaguely in my direction with his ears back like he’s not very impressed.
Anyhow, let’s talk inks.
A set of four ink swatches from the Diamine Inkvent Teal (2025) calendar. Day 17 Gala is a bright purple, Day 18 Laurel is deep green with so much red sheen that the green is often completely invisible, Day 19 Overcast is a light blue with pinkish tones, and Day 20 Ambiance is orange with pink sparkles.
Day 18: Laurel. Dark teal-leaning green base with so much red sheen that it’s more of a red ink than a green one. I like this one but I do wish it had a little less sheen so you could get more of the base colour, and it is very similar to Vibe from last year so it’s kind of boring in context. Still, viewed on its own it’s a fun ink and I appreciate that it’s a lot more green than all the other pink sheen inks I have. I wonder why I never see a deep red with the pink sheen? Something chemical or it just doesn’t look as cool in product photos?
Day 19: Overcast. A dual-tone ink that’s grey-blue with a pink tone. This one is really lovely, but unfortunately very close to my Fountain Pen Day purchase of Van Dieman’s Underflow. Underflow is a bit brighter and more green so they’re not exactly duplicates just very similar. I’ll use both!
Day 20: Ambiance. A peachy orange with pink sparkles. This one is unique in my collection — the closest ink I have has gold shimmer and despite the photo above making it look more gold, this one is definitely more of a pink shimmer when viewed head-on. I like it!
These are all lovely and will get used, though I feel like Laurel could have been more interesting with less sheen. I think Ambiance is the one I’m most excited to ink up and use in my journal, but probably Overcast and Gala will see more use over time due to the lack of shimmer.
Another belated Inkvent post for swatch Wednesday! I didn’t bother doing inkvent posts in December because of the move, and in theory now that some of our stuff has arrived I could probably be unpacking instead of blogging about ink. But our stuff got separated into two shipments and a lot of the furniture is on the second truck, and in some cases we have bookshelves but no actual shelves so they’re unusable for unpacking. Oh well. We don’t have an ETA yet on the second half of stuff so we’re doing what we can.
And in the meantime, here’s some ink swatches!
A set of swatches from the Diamine Inkvent Teal calendar showcasing day 13 Molten Basalt (grey with red sheen), 14 Mittens (hot pink, pigment ink), 15 Frostbite (dark blue with copper shimmer), 16 Ruby Taffeta (red with green shimmer)
Day 13: Molten Basalt. Grey with a reddish sheen. Normally I’m not a huge fan of greys because they’re either dark enough to mostly look black in practice, or they’re light enough that they’re kind of annoying to read without bringing much joy to my writing. (I like saturated colours!) But the sheen is enough to make this one interesting, and I like the name.
Day 14: Mittens. Hot pink pigment ink. I have no idea what could possibly call for waterproof Barbie pink ink in my life, but I love how saturated and unapologetic the colour looks. This one didn’t stain as badly as Brr! did but I was also a bit more careful about soaking the brush a few seconds after I was done using it.
Day 15: Frostbite. Dark blue with loads of copper shimmer. It looks a bit gold in the picture but its more coppery to my eye. This one’s very pretty and I’d like to see how it does in a pen where the shimmer is likely to be toned down a bit so you can actually appreciate the base colour.
Day 15: Ruby Taffeta. Red with iridescent green shimmer. For some reason the camera picks this up more as a silver but it’s noticeably green to my eyes in real life. This is the red of my dreams, exactly the red I’ve wanted and I’m almost mad that it’s got shimmer because it’s such a perfect red. (Look, I bonded with red pens during my stint as an editor, okay?) This will absolutely get used but it’s gonna be really tempting to not bother stirring it up and using it without the shimmer. Not that the shimmer is bad, but the slightly greenish iridescence isn’t what I would have chosen to go with such a glorious red. If anyone knows of a match for this colour without the shimmer, let me know!
Overall: I love all of these. Ruby Taffeta is probably my favourite, but Molten Basalt may get inked up more often due to the lack of shimmer. I do have some pinks similar to Mittens but they’re not pigment inks so it’s really a different beast. And the rest are all pretty different to what I had before!
Resuming the inkvent posts as swatch Wednesday posts. I took pictures of day 9-12 before I got totally swamped with moving stuff, but I’ll have to take the rest of the pictures in the new house. (I do have all my swatches, though!)
Day 9: Bittersweet. Very bright green, no shimmer or sheen. I thought maybe this one would be a bit hard to read but it seems fine. It’s not quite as day-glow as it looks in that photo but it is pretty bright in the sun. I love greens and a lot of my other light greens are a bit muddy in comparison so it’s fairly unique in my collection. Will get used for sure.
Nostalgia ink swatch photographed at an angle for the shimmer.
Day 10: Nostalgia. Brownish burgundy/purple with pink shimmer. Very pretty, and I rather liked playing with it on the paint brush where it’s a bit lighter than in the handwriting. Not a colour I might have chosen for myself but I’m looking forwards to using it because I think it’s going to fill a nice neutral-adjacent niche in my monthly palettes.
Brr! ink swatch showing the feathering in the paintbrush swatch and some of the shimmer.
Day 11: Brrr! Light blue with blue shimmer. I love this colour a lot but it stained the heck out of my paintbrush. Which isn’t a huge deal (I mean, it’s a paint brush, it was bound to happen eventually) but I’d probably have used an older brush if I’d realized it would be that bad. Maybe I’ll try some pen cleaner or the ultrasonic cleaner on the paintbrush just to see what happens but I don’t have high hopes. It’s a pigment ink so it shouldn’t be a surprise but I didn’t have as much trouble with Carousel and staining. I’m going to be careful to put this into my pens that are easier to clean and none of the ones with clear feeds. I do rather like how the swatch feathered a bit so it looks like frost, though!
Bubbly ink swatch at an angle to show the iridescent shimmer better.
Day 12: Bubbly. A very champagne gold with iridescent shimmer. This doesn’t look too bad in the swatch but the shading makes it go to the edge of hard to read in my journal writing. I’ll be curious to see if it behaves better or worse in a pen. This is another one I wouldn’t likely have chosen for myself, but the iridescent shimmer really makes it pop and live up to the name, plus it’s not like anything else in my collection.
I liked all of these inks a lot, though I’m going to have to be careful using Brrr! now that I know it stains.
We made it! Plan “get the dog and us across the country with an RV and our friend who loves driving” was a total success. We were lucky to get a very nice agent at the border and didn’t even have to have the whole RV searched. It’s tempting to point at the past week of news to explain why I’m so happy to have made it out safely, but if I’m honest with myself I could have pointed at nearly any past week of news in the year or so since we started making more concrete plans to leave and it would have seemed just as urgent then as now. But yeah, I made it and I’m excited for J to have his turn to be the immigrant; hopefully it won’t be as demoralizing for him as it often was for me.
We’re kind of rattling around in a large empty house at the moment, and there’s some stress going on with the moving company and the internet setup, but at this point most of the scariest parts of this adventure are over. Unless you’re our anxiety-ridden pandemic dog, who now has to meet a lot of strangers who come into the house. Thankfully he’s got lots of other nice things to enjoy that make up for the stress. He particularly likes the kid’s new game that he calls “melt the dog” which involves turning on the fireplace next to the dog bed and watching Hatch slowly sprawl out. I’m not sure why the kid thinks this is hilarious but Hatch obviously doesn’t mind. We’re giving kid a few more days of vacation to sleep and adapt before getting him registered in school but that’ll be soon.
It took me a bit before I sat down and made some stationary choices for this month, mostly because cleaning up the remaining drywall dust and flooring sawdust and whatnot took precedence. Also sleeping. A lot of sleeping. And figuring out how things work and where to put stuff. And people stopping by (good for everyone but poor dog).
Stickers
Japanese birds in costumes for all seasons (Mind Wave)
Winter Dragons (Sara Capello Illustration for Stickii)
I’ll probably need another sticker sheet but I may just use up some leftover bits. We’ll see how much I write once I’m tired from work.
Fountain Pens & Ink
Platinum Preppy Wa – Koi pattern <F>. This has the original black cartridge in it.
Kaweco Liliput <BB> – KWZ Jurassic Treasure
Pelikan Pina Colada <M> – Diamine Celestial Skies from Inkvent.
Pilot E95S <M> – Pilot Iroshizuku fuyu-gaki
Two of these are new pens, both from Fountain Pen Day sales but I hadn’t gotten them inked with the chaos of December.
The Liliput has been on my wish list for a while as a shiny upgrade to my kaweco sport pens, which get regularly rotated in and out because I like writing with them but the aesthetics of them have never grabbed me. I’ve only written with it a bit but the nib is lovely and I suspect I’ll get used to having to screw the cap onto the back of the pen though that’s not my favourite. Still, I love the feel of it, so light and satisfying to hold. And the shiny blue looks just as good as I hoped it would. I wasn’t sure if the double-broad nib would be too much, but I rather like it, especially with this super smooth and shiny ink.
The Pelikan Pina Colada was more of an impulse buy because it was cheap and used the same converter I have for the Pelikan Twist. It feels light and maybe looks a bit unappealing because of the plastic, but it has a really nice clip and the grip is more comfortable for me than the one on the Twist. I’ll withhold final thoughts until I see if it handles a month of writing with sparkly Diamine ink. So far it’s not really bringing the sparkle as much as the Twist did, but I don’t think this ink itself is quite as sparkle heavy as the last thing I used in the Twist so who knows. We’ll see if it clogs.
KWZ Jurassic Treasure and Pilot Iroshizuku fuyu-gaki are both inks I’ve had a while but I’m not sure I’ve inked pens with them. I bought the rest the KWZ “all that glitters” line when it came in stock because it is my favourite sparkle ink that works in every pen and it only has 4 colours — I’ve used the blue/silver and orange/gold ones, this is gold/gold and there’s also a green/gold. I hope they make more. I’d love a purple/silver. Fuyu-gaki came in a little set of Pilot inks and I wish it was more red and less orange (the swatch is a bit darker than my writing with a non-dip pen) but it’s a fun colour even if I was really hoping for a good red.
Celestial Skies was possibly my favourite of this year’s Inkvent Teal calendar, so I figured I should ink it first. It’s nice that the gold sparkle goes well with Jurassic Treasure for a lightly matched ink palette.
Notebooks and Bags
This setup hasn’t really changed since I last posted, I think, but here’s a picture since it’s been a little while:
My current notebook setup: Lihit labs pen case with fountain pens, washi, stamps and scissors above, Lochby Field Folio case with a Campus free monthly calendar on one side and a Leuchtturm notebook on the other. There’s a wooden pencil in the pen slot and a sticker sheet barely visible on one side.
All of this is working well for me: I used one of the calendars in the back of the campus diary for swatching inkvent and was impressed at how well it handled even some of the wetter swatches. The Leuchtterm is about half full from my start in October and it also handled some paintbrush swatches of ink. I won’t say I’ve completely gotten used to how much more ghosting it has than some of the other notebooks I’ve tried, but it’s usable and I could see myself using it again if I wanted a higher page count. Mostly I want less page count so I don’t have to carry as much with me, though. The pen case and A5 Field Folio are both great. I’m tempted to try some of Lochby’s other offerings, but they’re a bit thick for what I want out of a purse notebook so this bigger journal setup may be the only place they fit in my life. Oh, also I’m using a little midori calendar stencil instead of calendar stickers this year for the little monthly calendar I put at the start of each month for a quick “what day is it again?” check.
Commuter Stationary Planning
I’m going to be commuting to my new job on the bus several days per week, and I decided that rather than just transferring my existing little purse-backpack notebook back and forth, my commuter backpack should get its own notebook. Not sure yet if I’ll use that for work or it’ll just be for doodles on the bus.
A Lochby TN size notebook tucked into a TN zipper case insert, with a clear TWSBI eco sitting on top of it. Beside it is a small maurman flip notebook with a todo list in it from december, sitting on a Tom Bihn ghost whale pouch. there are two more fountain pens beside it: an Ooly duo and a pilot varsity.
Right now I’ve put together a TN-sized notebook from Lochby and my TN zipper case and stuck them together so the zipper case serves as a notebook cover (I used to use this zipper case stuck to the back of my calendar to hold stickers). I’ll probably fill up my TWSBI Eco with something non-sparkly so I don’t have to worry about clogging. Maybe pull out the bottle of Nitrogen for a bit of sheen, not sure yet.
In practice, the only stationary I really used in my last job was my running todo list notebook. I’ve yet to find a digital to do list that works as well for me as a little paper notebook does. Not sure if that will still be the case but I threw it in the picture with the commuter notebook because there was space. I’ll see if I wind up using it for work or if it will be only for personal lists. Mostly I stick two or three pens and the notebook into the pouch and then into my pocket and use it around the house on days when I will absolutely forget to do things if I don’t write them down, or when I need a little boost of checkboxes to keep me on track.
Stationary Shopping in Canada
Shipping even small stuff from the US seems to cost about $25 minimum so I’m unlikely to do many orders from the US in the future, stationary or not. That’s definitely not a surprise, since before I left it was pretty common for people to put together big group buys of stuff to defray shipping costs. And with the political situation in the US, Canadians are kind of aggressively refusing to shop American and support the whole war machine, which rather makes sense. Thankfully it’s not much of a concern if I can’t shop where I used to: I’ve got a comfortable amount of supplies after my enthusiastic shopping since I started using fountain pens again in 2024, and I could probably write happily without buying anything new for a year or two. Still, I’m intending to find some Canadian stationary/pen stores to shop at, online and maybe offline (I know there’s one near my old apartment that has a small selection). If you know if great stores in Canada that carry fountain pens and ink, let me know!
I don’t have a big wishlist at the moment: maybe some standard inks to balance out my collection which is very dominated by inkvent holiday inks? No pens on my radar right now, since the Liliput was the last one. A friend may be storing his pen lathe in our garage so maybe I’ll get a kit and try turning a pen or two if we get that set up. I’ve got paper and stickers enough to last for probably over a year at my current journalling rate, though I’m always open to stickers when I find new artists I want to support.
New Job
New job starts next week and I’m excited! This was the best team I interviewed with and I’m looking forwards to getting to know them. I’m also very much looking forwards to having income again as we deal with the last moving bills and no doubt new expenses as we figure out what we need in the new house. I’m less looking forwards to a long commute to the office three days a week, but I also have no furniture for my office and for some reason the flooring guys forgot that room so I also have to wait for a new floor… which is all to say that I’m going to be glad to have a desk and proper chair!
Mom, I’m bored
I feel like I should wrap this up somehow but my kid is telling me he is BORED so I guess that’s that. Happy new year!
For the past 10 years, rather than doing new year’s resolutions I’ve been doing “fiber goals.” (First 9 years in summary, last year’s wrap up was posted yesterday). The idea has always been to set goals around chasing joy, directing my creativity, and making space in my life for things I want to do rather than things I think I should do. But I don’t think that’s going to be as much about fiber this year! So I’m changing the name to “Creative Goals” and opening it up to other types of creativity explicitly in 2026.
1. Set up my new creative space
I’m moving (at the time this posts I’ll be en route to my new house!) and will have a whole new office to setup. My needs have changed a lot since I set up my old office around 12 years ago, and it’s going to take a lot of thinking and acquiring of furniture and tools, and probably a bunch of iterations before I settle on a final configuration. I’ve been slowly working my way through the book Structuring Life to Support Creativity by Sandra Tayler so I’ll probably be using some of the exercises there to help me along.
A few things already on my wishlist: I’d like a more dedicated space with better lighting for painting, journaling and photography, as well as better storage for the related tools. My dog would like a space for napping. It might be nice to have a reading/knitting chair for when I want peace and quiet. I’ll be working remotely some of the time so I may need to plan more carefully for privacy when on a call, too.
2. Crafting for my new climate
I’m moving to a much colder area, which leaves lots of room for knitting new accessories and clothes, and maybe some for sewing too. I expect to be making up some warmer mitts and hats and scarves and sweaters, but also possibly adjusting my stash and tools and pattern collections to support more heavyweight knitting.
3. Painting with Fountain Pen Ink
Towards the end of 2025 I got into watercolour painting, and I’d like to mess around more with applying those skills and tools to my fountain pen ink collection. I keep thinking about it and not actually sitting down and doing it, which makes it a perfect candidate for a yearly goal so that I make time!
4. Write for joy
Writing was my substitute goal part way through last year, but I think i’d like to carry it over for 2026 even though I don’t usually do that. I’m going to tweak the goal just a teensy bit for this year and specify that I want to write for joy.
Writing has brought me a lot of joy in 2025 and especially with so many big changes coming for me in 2026 I want to re-affirm that writing for fun (and not just necessary work documentation type stuff) is still a priority to me. Mostly I think this will take the form of more fanfic and personal journal entries, but it could mean conference talks or blog posts or original fiction too. I’ve got a story I want to finish and more I’ve barely started, I want to try more writing prompts, and I think maybe in 2026 I’ll finally try participating in a story gift exchange? There’s a bunch of other ideas down in my brainstorming section that might be worth doing too. I don’t know, but as long as it’s fun it’s going to count. The big idea behind it all is that I need to make sure I have time and space for writing and keep up a regular writing habit even as my schedule changes.
Other brainstorming ideas
These are ideas that didn’t make the cut above, but I like to record them anyhow in case I feel like working on them even if they’re not a big focus of my year.
Writing: talk transcripts/associated blog posts. I have a lot of older talks that I never really made blog posts about.
Writing: more ao3 comments. I love getting comments but I sometimes forget to leave them on other people’s stuff because I read offline a lot! I really need a better system and practice for making sure I leave comments/kudos more often because my current system is not working out great.
Writing: Hone my craft. It’s been a long time since I went to writer’s workshops or anything and honestly I feel like it’d be weird to go into that sort of thing when I’m primarily writing fanfic, but it might be fun to pick up some books on writing or listen to some podcasts or something.
Fiber art: A use what you have goal. My overflowing bins are minis and sets, so maybe one of those?
Fiber art: Publish a pattern. I’ve got at least one that’s 80% ready and would just need photos and stuff.
Fiber art: mending. I always have some to do but maybe it would be good to focus on doing a bit every month?
Fiber art: find a local crafting group?
Painting: complete some kind of challenge, book, lessons?
Music: find a choir? re-join the band? something else?
Games: More silly Scratch games
Games: Learn a “real” engine? (which one?)
Games: Try making html games. are there frameworks for this?
