Butterflies & Art for October 2026: Ink & Life

October 12, 2026 by Dr. Terri

After years of stubbornly resisting planner season, I finally succumbed to the lure of trying a Hobonichi. The plan is to use it as a daily art thing. But it’s a particular kind of torture to have all these fancy new planners arriving and then having to wait until 2027 to use them. (Or December 2026, since the planner has monthly calendars that start then.)

So I picked up an A6 notebook and decided I could experiment a bit with how I wanted to do my updated health/creativity trackers, and I could draw daily. It’s an Oasis notebook from Profolio and I got it on sale for $10 at the art store and it felt so absurd to get such a nice little notebook for so little after all the time I spent mentally shopping the hobonnichi lineup. It’s not the same paper, but it’s similarly thin and coated so hopefully it’ll help me ease in to 2027.

So far my favourite is a joke I drew for my kid: He likes the new fire-dog Pokemon starter Pombon but he is very concerned over the question of whether it’s going to evolve into some bipedal monstrosity instead of staying dog-like. So of course, being the terrible parent that I am, I had to draw it as if it evolved the other way and got 6 legs.

Watercolour paintings of the new pokemon Pombon, which looks like a fiery pomeranian, then a fake evolved version which is a giant puppy dragon with 6 legs drawn like a big asian serpent.

Maybe I’ll draw another one with even more legs like a centipede or an inchworm later?

I’m getting better at using the watercolour pencils on thin planner paper and I’m having fun taking pictures of things and then drawing them, or coming up with goofy ideas like the pokemon above. Very excited to talk about all my planner, uh, plans, but I’m waiting for my last order to show up before I sit down to write a post about the whole setup Still, I’m excited to already be using the Hobonichi cover and pencil board, and I’m hopeful that my daily art plans for 2027 are going to work out.

Stationary setup for October 2026

Fountain Pens & Inks

TWSBI Eco glow green <M> – Jaques Herbin Orange Indien
- Love this pairing. The ink is a bit light compared to the Noodlers Southwest Sunset sample it was replacing and the shading is less dramatic, but it doesn’t have dots that take forever to dry and wind up smearing because I missed one tiny point. So overall, absolutely better.
Hongian Maple <long blade> – Diamine Red Dagon
- Last time I used this pen I found it a bit hard to use for longer writing sessions, but I’m not having any trouble this time so I’m not sure if the ink is just a bit more lubricated or my hands are just a bit stronger from all the extra drawing time? It’s a pretty pen and an interesting nib and pairs well with this ink. This is the first time I’m using Red Dragon in a pen and it’s working out as I’d hoped.
Pelikan Pura – Wearinguel Mary Shelly Frankenstein
- I wasn’t super impressed with this ink the last couple of times I used it, but it is waaaay more impressive in the wetter Pelikan so I get to actually see the shimmer more in the writing. Glad I gave it another shot, but I still won’t be buying a bottle because I use dark purple maybe twice a year so this giant vanness sample may last me a decade.

Stickers

I think all of these are from the stickii halloween countdown circa 2024 or maybe 2024? I haven’t bought another since then because it was so many stickers, but I picked up the 2026 cute one for my kid’s birthday because he loves countdowns, and he’s been anxiously awaiting 12 days before halloween to start it.

Square halloween icons by Laurel Mae Art
Green frankenstein doggies by Cytusss__
Vampire bears and bunnies by Pippustudio
Kitties ghosts and bats by Ilbyde

Butterflies

A friend gave us her extra tickets to the butterfly show at the university greenhouse and my kid was very excited to feed the butterflies:

A child’s hand holding an orange with a butterfly on it, having a drink.

Kid and I painted some thank you cards. Apparently I forgot to take a picture of my kid’s but here’s mine and the butterfly that inspired it!

A glasswing butterfly at perched on a leaf.

A painting of the same glasswing butterfly with some creative liberties taken because my kid was using my phone so I couldn’t look at the reference photo. It’s painted on a card that we gave to the person who gave us her extra tickets, though this is before I wrote thank you on the painting.

Back to School September 2026: Ink & Life

September 20, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Phew, we’re 2/3 of the way through September and I’m just now getting to this monthly post. I’ve spent the past two weeks being out of it: first sick, then a migraine (likely caused by sickness sleep disruption). Such is life. Honestly, despite it sounding objectively bad, giving myself permission to slow down and be unproductive because I was feeling meh was actually kind of nice? Worked from home slowly when I could, took a few days off when I couldn’t. Reading and napping and didn’t feel guilty or unproductive. Plus the weather’s turning and the mosquitoes are finally starting to die down so I could sit outside more again. I guess so far September’s been hard but not actually unpleasant? We’ll see how I feel when I get back to the commute tomorrow.

Back to school time means a new monthly calendar for me. I keep my monthly calendar in synch with my kid’s school calendar in part for convenience and in part because the fall still feels more like the “new year” to me after years of PhD and also just the way the seasons change.

I fought with the decision to keep the monthly calendar as is this year. I’ve been moving some of my health tracking over to a weekly calendar that I carry at work, which is working better for making sure I jot down things as they happen because the planner is open on my desk to record other stuff, but it’s worse for analyzing the data because I need to see more than a week to identify patterns and predict stuff like migraines. Knowing things weren’t working perfectly in my current setup, I spent a lot of time examining 2027 planner offerings this month and contemplating what to try next and I’ve ordered a few things for 2027.

That said, I did decide to keep the same type of monthly planner with my a5 journal setup for this school year. I will continue to use it as a sticker chart for my almost-daily writing habit and I’m going to be copying over some health-life stuff for analysis for at least the next few months until my 2027 stuff starts. After that, we’ll see what works and this will be my fall-back.

Outgoing Campus Free Diary monthly calendar and Mugobunni A5 journal.

Incidentally, check out the cute mushroom sticker my kid drew for me on the bottom left of the outgoing calendar. I love it. And below, here’s a link to Tonkai where I got that cool big manta ray sticker.

The other side of my monthly calendar, showing a nice big sticker, and the Mugobunni A5 notebook with the camper van on it.

The other side of my monthly calendar, showing a nice big manta ray sticker from Tonkai, and the Mugobunni A5 notebook with the camper van on it.

Also outgoing is the Mugobunni A5 journal on the right. The paper in this was slowly driving me crazy with my fountain pens so as cute as it is with the camping critters, I was very glad to see it go.

September’s replacement journal is a Clairefontaine lined notebook from the local art store. It doesn’t look like anyone’s carrying my beloved thin Rhodia softcover notebooks up here so I decided to try this out as something that was really easy to find locally but had the same paper (although with a different ruling). (My other option will likely be the thicker Rhodia softcover book. My favourite has 32 sheets and the one that’s easy to find here is 80.)

What I like:

The 8mm ruling is easy on my hands and gives some more space for a bit of flourish in my hand writing.
The 90gsm paper is really lovely as always. No bleed through and the ghosting is there but not in a way that I find distracting or makes pages unusable (in the previous journal I had to sticker over spots repeatedly)
The dry time for the inks is such that I’m not smearing anything, even when I’ve got a flex pen in rotation this month.
I’m not getting weird fingerprint issues and don’t have ot use a hand guard all the time.
It’s pleasant for pencil drawing
I like the shiny gold leaves on the art deco inspired cover, and the thicker cardstock used is nice.

What I don’t love:

The ivory paper isn’t really working with my current ink selection. It’s legible but not amazing especially if I’m writing at night or with the lights dimmed due to headache.
The ruled lines are very obvious.
I don’t like drawing with the ruled lines.

Mixed feelings:

I’m using this one a lot faster than usual because my handwriting is bigger. But also because I like writing on it?

Overall, I like it, but it’s definitely not the perfect notebook for me. (That, alas, still remains elusive.) Still, I find it reassuring to know that these are easy for me to find and I don’t have to worry about shipping minimums and can just bike over to the store if I want. My rational mind knows that I have something like 6 a5 notebooks in my stash and could likely go a year without needing a new notebook, but something in my brain just wants to know that I’ve got a backup plan if I need a notebook in a hurry, so now I have one.

Onto the inks and pens and stickers for September.

Inks and Stickers close up: Colorverse Gyeongnyeolbi Yeoldo (pale green), KWS all that glitters Jurrasic Treasure (glittery gold with very mildly green undertone), Van Dieman’s Last Light (purple with blue shading), and sticker sheets with popsicles, school cats, and science animals.

Pens and Inks:

Monteverde Ritma <flex> – Colorverse Gyeongnyeolbi Yeoldo
- This is my second time using this ink sample and I won’t be buying a bottle. It’s a bit too dry and a bit too light for me. I was hoping the flex would help here and it kind of does but I have to really slow down and it’s too much hassle.
TWSBI Swipe <1.1> – KWZ All That Glitters Jurrasic Treasure
- This is the first time I’ve had trouble with this ink, but I did have it semi-clog. Nothing a quick nib rinse couldn’t fix but I was surprised!
Pilot E95S <medium> – Van Dieman’s Last Light
- A very pretty combo! I feel like I’m writing a bit faster than the nib can keep up every once in a while and that’s weird for me with this pen. It’s also a little lighter than I’d like against the ivory paper. Not bad, but not a perfect pairing.

So basically all of these are working but not perfectly, and I’ll be planning to use wetter and more saturated inks next month because I feel like these are mostly paper mismatches. Since I usually prefer wetter and more saturated inks, this isn’t a hardship.

Stickers

Popsicles by Tatiana Kovaleva
School Life by Mochi Gardens (August 2026 stickii pack)
Science animals by Milkkoyo
School kitties by Papermilio (August 2026 stickii pack)

I have not yet drowned in stickii stickers from the subscription but I’m definitely still not using up as many as I’m acquiring! Clearly I need to use more stickers. I am starting to use them in my work bullet journal / to do list notebook, and that’s been bringing some joy and an excuse to use more of the stickers with muted colour palettes that I wouldn’t love for personal journalling but are great for something I leave open on my desk regularly.

I feel like I write these monthly summaries more for me than for anyone else because it forces me to think about what I’m using and why, so if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Sepia

September 9, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Last of the set of three inks I bought to celebrate a writing accomplishment! This one is Diamine Sepia, and it looks more or less as I’d expect given the name.

Diamine Sepia fountain ink bottle and swatch. It’s a sepia brown/orange coloured ink as one might expect from the name.

This one has a bit of shading in my swatch, which initially made me worry that it might be close to Ginger Chicken but it absolutely isn’t:

Four ink swatches: Diamine Salted Carmel (from inkvent 2024), Diamine Sepia, Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, and Diamine Rose Marie (from inkvent 2025)

Salted Caramel is more brown and has shimmer. Marie Rose is a bit brighter but very similar. Ginger chicken is considerably more red and darker, so much so in the swatches that I wondered why I’d thought them similar until I compared writing samples done with regular fountain pens (my most recent swatches are done with a somewhat wet fude dip pen) and while they’re still clearly different they do look closer when run through a regular fountain pen feed.

If it hadn’t been in a 3-pack, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Sepia since I already have a bottle of Marie Rose. But the inkvent bottles are tiny and I liked Marie Rose a lot more than I expected and Sepia fits well with some sticker sheets I have, so I’m not sad to have gotten it!

And just for fun, here’s my 3 pack of ink together:

Three fountain pen inks from Diamine with swatches. From left to right the inks are named Sepia, Red Dragon, and Cool Green.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Red Dragon

August 26, 2026 by Dr. Terri

This is the second ink out of a set of three I bought to celebrate finishing a longer piece of fiction writing, This is the colour of the three that I really wanted. I love red inks, probably a bit of a holdover when I did more editing and marking by hand. When I was relatively new to the PhD one of my collaborators used to hand papers back with practically every other word crossed out and you’d think that would make me more sensitive to seeing red ink but he was so darned good at it that as a former editor myself I just had to stand there in awe of how absurdly good he was at condensing text so we could fit in more science to a 7 page limit. So it’s definitely more fond memory than grad school trauma!

Diamine Red Dragon fountain pen ink bottle and swatch.

Similar to Blush (not pictured but basically a shade lighter), I felt like Red Dragon reminded me of blood while I was dong the larger swatches because it has a tendency to look a bit brown at the edge until it dries. I don’t really notice the effect as much when writing with the dip pen, though.

A lot of the red inks that people recommend on top 10 ink lists are darker. Colours that are lovely, but they wouldn’t stand out against black text the way I want a red to work because of the editing connection. So I’ve been slowly collecting brighter red inks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones closest to this one are other Diamine ones.

A set of fountain pen ink swatches photographed together for comparison. On the top row is Diamine Red Lustre and Diamine Writer’s blood. In the centre is Diamine Red Dragon. At the bottom is Diamine Carousel and Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji.

Red Lustre has shimmer and has given me no end of headaches in pens so I’ll be glad when the sample is done because I think I’m down to only being able to use it in my Pelikan since it clogged in every other pen I tried to use. Red dragon looks pretty similar to Red Lustre but without the shimmer, and it may actually the same base?
Writer’s blood is beautiful but it’s just not an editing red. That is, it’s too dark to stand out enough against black printed text. Which makes it lovely for the way I actually use it but it doesn’t scratch the red ink itch right for me.
Carousel from inkvent has a shiny almost lacquered vibe that I love, but it’s a pigment ink so I’m a little more reluctant to use it in all of my regular writers. It may wind up in my red Preppy when I run out of what’s in the cartridge, probably 3 years from now at my current rate. I didn’t bother to swatch the Preppy cartridge but it’s brighter.
Momiji is just outright more pink and I love it but I don’t even really think of it as a red because it’s so pink.

Red Dragon is a nice no-nonsense red that works consistently and while it’s still maybe is still a touch darker than the perfect editing red in my mind, it should be lovely for journal writing which is how I’m actually going to use it. And generally speaking Diamine inks are on the inexpensive side of things: I paid less than CAD $10 for 30ml before taxes. Will this be the last red ink I ever buy? Probably not. I still think it would be fun to have one that was a touch brighter or one that had a bit more shading. But I like it a lot and since the idea was to treat myself for a writing accomplishment, I’m happy to have something that gives me more of an “editing red” vibe than a “goth vampire writing” vibe (sorry Writer’s Blood). Will I ever go back to editing on paper? Likely not. But apparently I’m never going to stop loving red ink.

Swatch Wednesday: Diamine Cool Green

August 19, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Picked this up as part of a set of 3 inks. I actually wanted the red one, but the vendor had a bundle that made it worth getting 3, and since I was treating myself as a congratulations for finishing up a piece of writing I’d been working on for months, I was willing to splurge a bit extra and get them all.

Diamine Cool Green fountain pen ink with swatch, 2ml in a vial that I spilled on the table, and Kaweco Sport pen in “Marble Ocean”

I used this ink immediately after swatching it because I, uh, knocked over the full bottle on my table. You can see the 2ml I rescued in the sample vial, and there’s a bit more in the pen since I was hesitant to put potentially messy or contaminated ink back in the original bottle. (It spilled directly over a swatch of Diamine Red Dragon. Though what’s in the pen doens’t seem to be slightly red or anything so clearly it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it could be in the moment.)

I’m pretty pleased by how well it matches the pen, actually:

Diamine Cool Green wirting sample in my journal with Kaweco Sport pen, fine nib, “marble ocean” colour. Also a cool sticker.

Compared to the my current collection of teal-ish inks, it leans a bit more green.

A set of ink swatches to compare with Diamine Cool Green. Top three, left to right: Pilot Iroshizuku ku-jaku, Diamine Aurora Borealis, Colorverse Gyeongmyeble Yealdo. Bottom row: Jaques Herbin Emerald of Chivor, Diamine Cool Green, Teranshi Guitar Brilliant Mint.

In colour tone, I think it’s closest to Teranshi Guitar Brilliant Mint, but it’s much darker and a bit greener. It’s also pretty similar to Aurora Borealis but again, more green.

I probably wouldn’t have bought this ink separately since I own full bottles of both Brilliant Mint and Aurora Borealis (the rest are unfinished samples) but it’s a really lovely colour and I’m not really sad to have it because I use a lot of greens to match stickers, and my love of plant stickers means there’s a lot of opportunities to use a subtly different green. Plus it looks nice and behaves well in the Kaweco Sport and I specifically picked up that pen to be a work pen (that’s why the fine nib) so I’m excited to have a kind of matchy ink to go with it. Though I kind of want one that’s more green/yellow and I definitely don’t have that in my collection! Anyone found the perfect match for this pen yet?

Creative goals 2026 mid-year checkin

August 14, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Time for a mid-year check in on how my Creative Goals 2026 are progressing! I’m a bit later than usual because I was busy doing some other creative projects at exactly the 6 month exact-middle-of-the-year point, which honestly feels like a good sign.

1. Set up my new creative space

This has been such a joy! My new office is still messy and filled with boxes that I haven’t quite figured out how to unpack, but it reached functional early on and has been going through a lot of refinement.

Some highlights:

I’ve co-opted the glider chair we bought when I was pregnant and I used for late-night nursing when my kid was little. It’s now my reading and knitting and writing space and I love it.
I put curtains on the window so I don’t have to use the finicky blinds and it’s made such a difference. They still need hemming but I at least know where my sewing machine is even if I haven’t got it set up so that’s something.
I rearranged my vintage yellow table and crummy apartment ikea desk so they function like an L-shaped desk and I’ve got enough space for painting during long corporate rah rah business quarterlies. Or just painting because I feel like it. It’s great. I probably need to upgrade the lousy ikea desk but this works while I figure out exactly what would suit me best.
I got a pegboard to put in the tiny space behind the door when it’s open, and the little shelves on those have been great for putting up art and organizing stuff that I’m more likely to use if I can see it. After I took the picture below I put up two more above and below so it’s a full wall of art and supplies.

My reading/writing area in my office by the window, showing lots of mess but also the new curtains, the comfy glider chair, and the pegboard art setup on the wall.

Some lowlights:

The office is noisy when the AC is going strong and too cold in the winter. It’s got 2 exterior walls and one that backs onto the garage, and I suspect the garage one in particular doesn’t have enough insulation (it was noticeably colder than the two exterior walls), but it could be all three causing varying amounts of cold. We’ve hacked things by plastic coating the window which helped but I also had blankets and even a small electric heater in here for when it got too cold.
I still own too much yarn, so not all of it fits on the shelves. Having this visible and in my space is really reducing the amount of shopping I want to do, but I’m going to have to make some decisions about how to handle the rest of the shelving because I don’t love having 13 giant plastic bins plus a pile of smaller ones in here that i have to rearrange every time I want something in one of them.
I don’t have a setup for my spinning wheel, which is a bit of a shame and it’s part of why I didn’t do tour de fleece this year: I forgot but could have joined late if setting up hadn’t felt like a hassle. I’ve got a new espinner coming and it should fit nicely on the painting table or the table by my glider, so I think that’s going to be the plan for spinning for the next 6 months anyhow while I get to really know the new gear.

Despite those annoyances, I’m really happy with how things are taking shape. I’ve unpacked all the boxes I found that seemed to belong here and rearranged stuff into various plastic bins for now while I decide what stays and what goes. I spend a lot of time in my office writing and just enjoying my space on top of the times I need to be in here for work or to play our regular guild wars 2 night.

Dahlia watercolour painting (from a book exercise).

And on top of all that, kid and I have co-opted the last upstairs bedroom to be a craft room!

Nice big table right under the window for painting and drawing, with two chairs for us to sit.
Single bed for sitting on and so it can be used as an emergency guest bedroom or “Everyone has allergies and is snoring really loud” option.
My sewing machine desk is up here, though I haven’t really set it up yet.
I’m slowly migrating the craft supplies into the closet.
We replaced the light with one that doesn’t make a horrible high pitched noise that only my kid can hear. (most of this house has ancient halogens and some of them are bad enough that I can hear them but this particular one was out of my hearing range)

We use this to paint or draw pretty regularly, sometimes because I’m doing daily drawings and just invite my kid to join me, but often he’ll instigate drawing time too. We got some really cute how to draw chibi dogs and birds books plus I’ve got a rotating set of painting books out of the library, so there’s always inspiration or lessons to try. I think J had some vision of our craft space being in the basement, but honestly the lighting is so nice in this room that I don’t think we’ll be moving even when we finally get the basement into a usable state (it’s currently a disaster of half-unpacked boxes, but thankfully not an outright disaster since we were spared the flooding that hit a lot of our neighbours).

2. Crafting for my new climate

Made a sweater for me, a fluffy scarf for my kid, and I’m still slowly working on that double-knit dr who scarf for J. Plus I’m always always making more socks as bus/work/out-and-about knitting. I kind of want to start another sweater but I think the scarf will never get done if I do so that’s probably all the projects for this year unless my kid wants something.

Time of the Doctor double knit scarf, about half-finished.

3. Painting with Fountain Pen Ink

I have done *so* much painting. Relatively little of it actually included fountain pen ink, but the skills I’m building will transfer so I’m not too concerned that I’ve abandoned this goal. I had the idea that I’d paint with the leftovers from my pens every month, but it turns out that because I choose fairly contrast-heavy colours they don’t blend well and I did’t like the way they looked when I tried them in a single piece at the end of the month in one of those ink colouring books. Trying to plan out colours and spread them across a bunch of pages and hope I eventually used inks that went well with them didn’t seem like fun to me, so I’m going to regroup and try something else. Here’s today’s effort, using some “leftover” ink (Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint, I think?):

A notebook with two dogs painted in watercolour. The top one is labeled “Doggust 2026 Dunker” and features a beagle-like dog with a striking grey dappled pattern on middle and tail that contrasts with the tan and white on the rest of the dog. The one below that is not labelled but features a white and black Tibetan Terrier with long sweeping hair, and the area around the dog is coloured in a bright blue-teal using the Brilliant Mint fountain pen ink.

The fountain pen ink definitely beheaves differently than the watercolours (doesn’t quite absorb the same way on the paper) but I think I might be able to have some fun making my doggust stuff more colourful and maybe even sparkly while I make use of some little leftovers in sample vials and inks that I didn’t love in pens.

Other than that, I’m really enjoying painting in general and I’m excited to keep doing that!

A couple of flower painting exercises on my beloved vintage yellow table. They depict a magnolia and snowdrop.

4. Write for joy

My biggest writing project in the first half of the year was for a fandom event and I have never ever gotten so many comments on a work. It was a really playful story and as a result my readers were having fun, I was having fun, it was absolutely the bringer of joy.

Beyond that, I’ve been trying out some weekly prompts, joining events, did a fanfic gift exchange, and I’ve just been having such a good time with fanfic and writing. I’m constantly entertained that my new fan writer community is not entirely dissimilar to my open source communities — I supposed it’s not surprising since they’re both the sort of people who put things for free into the world, even if the skills they’re sharing are different. And as I’ve mentioned before, it’s been really motivating to have “sprinting buddies” so there’s folk to write with even if we barely interact other than cheering each other on and gossiping in between timed writing sessions. Having a little community continues to be a source of joy and motivation.

I’m also starting to add a bit writing about life to my monthly posts here. Nothing fancy and carefully thought out, but it’s nice as a warm up. I’ve got some ideas for more technical blog posts I’d like to write but haven’t made the time yet because writing fiction is more fun. That said, I should have some writing opportunities at work and I’m hoping to take advantage of that as I find them!

Overall, I think I’m doing well on goals, but I am going to have to push myself a bit to try more fountain pen ink art experimentation, so hopefully that’ll come up more in the last chunk of the year. And if not, my painting practice has improved my life regardless of what supplies I’m using!

A Traveler’s Notebook for travelling? Groundbreaking.

August 12, 2026 by Dr. Terri

I wanted to jot down some techo kaigi style thoughts on what worked out of the notebook setup I took on my last trip. I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to and my needs have changed a lot from when I travelled on my own to academic conferences and would sometimes have a notebook and sit and write or draw in a restaurant by myself. Restaurants and cafess are less relaxing when your kid wolfs down his food and then is very eager to leave, alas! I now carry two tiny notebooks with me so we can both draw at the same time while we’re waiting for our meals, but he’s less interested afterwards usually.

So group one of supplies is almost identical to my usual work planner setup, only I subbed in a personal notebook for my work todo list notebook:

Traveler’s notebook (dot grid, weekly planner, and blank), a grid pencil board, two fountain pens, a grey double-ended brush pen, a multi-colour pencil, a regular mechanical pencil, a black fineliner, an eraser, and a tiny roll of thin washi tape, all sitting on top of a large flat pencil case.

You can’t see it but there’s also a zipper pouch with stickers in it attached to the back of the planner.

The notebooks:

Dot Grid notebook (the one with Leafy blue/yellow sticker).
- I use this for journal entries and writing notes, although this particular one also has a bunch of drawings from before I started carrying a dedicated blank notebook.
Weekly planner (blue and I put foil transfer stars on it)
- This is my usual weekly planner that I carry to work when I’m not on vacation. Its main use is to track headache/migraine related health stuff. I used to do this in a monthly planner that lives with my journal at home, but I’m experimenting with doing a slightly finer grained morning/afternoon/evening tracking and it’s easier to do that if I have more space per day and if I have the planner with me at work. I also use it for jotting down todo items for when I get home, occasional other notes from things that amused me at work that I might journal about later, the usual planner stuff, and some work-related tracking.
Blank sketchbook (not very visible in the photo but it’s hooked together behind the weekly planner using a Traveler’s Notebook zipper pouch such that one notebook sits “inside” using the plastic like a cover, and the other is “outside” with the cover slipped into one side of the plastic non-zippered pocket side)
- This one’s just for drawing. I’ve been doing some daily drawing challenges so that’s most of what’s in here. This one’s not actually from Traveler’s Company but rather some Canadian company who have cheaper refills. I don’t like the covers as much but the paper inside is decent for fountain pens and drawing, though not quite enough for more than a teensy bit of watercolour. Since it seems like a lot of the stationary stores here struggle to keep the actual TN inserts in stock, I’m glad to have another option.

The writing utensils (from left to right)

Two Pilot Metropolitan fountain pens – for writing. At work that’s mostly todo lists and notes about things I want to discuss with someone. For travel that’s mostly actual journal entries. I’ve tried a few pens in this setup and the Metropolitian is my favourite because of the colours, reliable nibs, and smaller capacity so I don’t have to spend 6 months with one ink colour (I write a lot less here than in my regular journal).
Pentel Multi-8 pencil crayon – For colouring my sketches and making a break to show when a new journal/work entry starts. It’s a bit finicky to use so my original plan to have it as a fun option in my purse for my kid to use didn’t work out, but I like having a bit of colour on hand that’s easier to use than the very tiny 1″ long teensy pencil crayons that have become my purse staple.
Grey “mildliner” brush pen – mostly used for to-do list checkboxes, but also sometimes drawings
Normal mechanical pencil – used for drawing and the planner tracking
Sakura micron fineliner – inking my drawings

Also the pencil case is a “large flat” one from Lihit Labs that conveniently fits TN notebooks. I still don’t have a regular TN cover because I prefer things to be zippered so they don’t get damaged in my bag, and this fits my needs.

This worked well — I didn’t feel bad about leaving my usual larger journalling setup at home!

And then because I’ve gotten kind of obsessive about painting, I threw in a little painting set:

Painting Set: A set of cheap watercolour pencils, a pouch with two water brushes and a pencil sharpener, the open blank traveler’s notebook showing all the colours, and a small square watercolour notebook.

That’s the blank TN style notebook in all its glory showing the swatch page for my watercolour pencils. This is the same one that’s attached to my planner, not a separate one. The pencils were a kid entertainment buy for a previous trip that didn’t work out super well because neither me nor kid had much time to use them and also my in-laws had insufficient horizontal surfaces available for us to use for art that would take a while to dry and thus would render a table useless for anything else for a bit after. (I’m so glad kiddo and I have a craft room with a table for our paintings in this new house! It’s been really great!)

The little green notebook was an el-cheapo online buy for me to try some cotton paper before paying art store prices. It didn’t explain on the listing, but I suspect it was cheap because the cover has a bit of glue on it that wouldn’t have passed quality control. But the paper inside is nice! I already showed some of my other travel paintings in my august post, but here’s one more pair with a fish at the aquarium. Reference photo:

A bright orange fish with a complicated line pattern on it, seen at the Toronto Aquarium.

Painting:

A painting of the same bright orange fish with interesting markings.

It’s not super obvious in this painting (go look at the one with the sea turtle), but I found I could get different textures out of the watercolour pencils if sometimes I just drew, sometimes I drew and then wetted the drawing, and sometimes I basically coloured onto the paintbrush and used it more like regular paint. Fun! You can see the draw-on-the-brush technique where I overpainted the eye because I didn’t like the way it looked drawn-and-wetted.

I’m pretty happy with the Traveler’s Notebook setup for work so it’s not a surprise that it worked well for travel: the whole thing fits into my usual travel purse when I wanted it nearby on the train, though it mostly stayed in the hotel when we were out all day being tourists and I was trying to carry as little as possible. The painting set I was less sure about, but we were so sore after walking all day that it was really nice to sit and paint while my kid vegged out to videos and my husband got stuck doing work calls. And I’m starting to get fond of those watercolour pencils for my daily sketches now that I’ve gotten better at using them. I think I still prefer actual paint when I have time to mix and space for a palette and water and stuff, but for “doing art on a hotel bed because there’s only one table in this room and J is using it” it was absolutely great to have something with way less potential for spills and mess.

Aquatic August 2026: Ink & Life

August 7, 2026 by Dr. Terri

I really wanted to have a sea themed set of stickers for August but apparently I don’t really own a lot of sea creature related sticker sheets, so I made do with what I had on hand.

Stickers

All from stickii this month, though mostly older stuff.

Kitty dreams stamps by Jazlynn.art (I think from the 2024 stickii adevent?)
Cryptid ladies by so.meudok (2025 stickii advent?)
leafy ladies stamps by ameleafy (also 2025 stickii advent?)
ocean icons (no artist name given but also from stickii, a past pack but I bought it separately)

Once again, I wish every stickii artist would turn their logo/name into a sticker so I can put these in my journals easily and find their names later when I want to buy more art from them. Please!

Pens & Inks

After taking this photo I swapped out the purple ink for a green/teal one. I’d been thinking about doing so anyhow but then I knocked over a completely full new bottle of ink and grabbed a syringe and threw some of what spilled into my newest pen after I was done cleanup. Thankfully mostly the ink formed a small puddle and didn’t ruin too much on my office table, and I was able to suck a lot of the ink up into a vial for later use.

August 2026 Inks: Pilot iroshizuku ama-iro (bright blue), Ferris Wheel Press Crystal Blue Legacy (dark purple/blue), Diamine Cool Green (green/teal)

Pilot E95S <medium> – Pilot Iroshizuku ama-iro (a hold-over from last month)
Pelikan Pura <broad> – Ferris Wheel Press Crystal Blue Legacy.
- This was from an ink sampler I bought ages ago. I’m pretty unimpressed with Ferris Wheel Press since they’re doing some HP related stuff at the moment (among other red flags), and also I don’t love this ink. It has some pretty blue sparkles that hardly ever show up and require a lot of agitation, and the rest of the time it’s just kind of a boring dark ink. I was hoping the sparkles would look better in the Pura since it’s a wetter feed, but this ink is just meh.
Kaweco Sport Marble Ocean <fine> – Diamine Cool Green
- This is the full bottle of ink I knocked over. Bought a little combo pack of Diamine inks as a reward for finishing a writing project. I was more excited about the other two colours but this is nice. A little similar to the Teranishi Brilliant Mint but much darker. Goes well with the new pen!

Kaweco Sport Marble Ocean fountain pen. The pen is shown on white paper in bright sunlight so you can see that areas are translucent, enough so that you can see the ink inside the pen and the shadow is clear-ish in spots.

I probably should have gotten a gold clip for the new Kaweco, but the store I bought it from didn’t have any in stock so maybe some future order. This one is eventually destined to be a work pen which is why it’s a fine nib, something I mostly avoid, but the kaweco nibs have been consistently smooth enough that I didn’t think it was a high risk to try it. It’s a pleasant little pen and I’m really stoked about the translucence since I’m so bad about checking ink levels in my opaque pens.

Life

One of kiddo’s big requests for this summer was that we go back to the Toronto Zoo, so we did that in the end of July. It was very huge and very hot but a decent number of animals were happy to be on display including this lovely peacock who we nearly missed because J searched the app for “peacock” not realizing they’re listed as “peafowl” — thankfully I remembered where they were from last time. Kid was initially disappointed that they were just hanging with their tails folded but we waited a while and eventually one of them decided to show off. I brought some watercolour pencils and water brushes and painted in the hotel room, which was nice to do after a long day of walking. I’m not great with the pencils but it was fun to experiment a bit!

Peacock at the Toronto Zoo. He’s displaying his full tail.

Small watercolour painting of a peacock at the Toronto Zoo.

We also hit up the CN Tower, which was less educational than I remembered with more psychadelic art panels instead, but the views are still good. I miss the signs about how many elephants could sit on the glass floor, though.

CN Tower viewed from below.

And the aquarium, which I’d never seen before. It was ridiculously busy, loud, and did not have nearly enough seating for me and my poor sore leg, but the creatures were great. I think I’d wear earplugs next time to try to keep the overstimulation down.

Sea turtle, fish and sharks in the Toronto aquarium.

Hotel watercolour painting of the sea turtle in the Toronto aquarium.

Not as many adventures planned in August, mostly it’s all about going to the pool and enjoying our newly fenced backyard. Hatch and I are spending some time out there often in the morning in lieu of a walk down the street, and it seems to suit us both. Also, I’m drawing some doggies for “doggust” again this year.

A pair of Sealyham Terrirers for Doggust Day 4. They’re little white dogs drawn cartoon style, frolicking in the grass.

As always, I wish I had more vacation time. But I’m finding ways to fit art and writing into my life still!

Sweltering July 2026, Ink & Life

July 3, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Hot and thunderstorm-y so far this July. Went downtown for Canada Day and had regrets — so hot, so loud — but the war museum was air conditioned. Kid noped out just in time for us to get on the train and back to the car before the skies opened and the thunder and lightning started. Then we had a long power outage at home as the thunderstorms rolled in, the patio door started leaking a very small amount, and the neighbour’s fence fell on our car (no visible damage, though!). It was simultaneously too exciting and also incredibly boring, but I got lots of reading done while the dog lay nervously over my legs, stirring to look at the strange noises or to complain if I stopped petting him to turn the page.

RCMP Musical Ride. There is one black horse with mountie rider holding a lance in the foreground, and the others are visible in the outdoor arena below, all standing at attention for the lowering of the flag at sunset.

We had a much nicer time at the RCMP musical ride on the weekend before. The show hasn’t changed much since I was a kid except for updates to the pop music they used, but it was a nice night and my kid got to go pet a horsie’s nose after the show so he was satisfied with the experience. The governor general’s foot guard band played some numbers too, which was a delight for me as someone who played a lot of concert band gigs in parks over the years. (This is the longest I’ve gone without a band since I was in elementary school and it feels weird to be so out of practice, but I’m not quite up to joining a band again right now. Playing music was so much of my life but choir filled the gap until we moved.)

July 2026 Journal Supplies

A new A5 notbook with a camper van vibe, three sticker sheets, three pens and inks.

New Notebook!

I picked up a cute Mugobuni camper van themed A5 notebook from an art store in Toronto (they had the Traveler’s Notebook half-year weekly calendar I wanted). I think I’d seen some Mugobuni art on stationery blogs a pen store blog post or maybe they did stickii or something because the name and style feel vaguely familiar? I guess they’re based in Toronto just like the art store. The notebook was something like CAD $10 so I wasn’t expecting anything too fancy, but it’s pretty nice: 20 sheets / 40 pages (around my favourite size!), sewn spine, rounded corners, cute cover, dot grid that seems to be 6mm spaced. Now, 6mm spaced is fantastic for me with larger pens, but alas, the paper did not like my twsbi eco 1.1 stub and I got a bunch of bleedthrough. Then the flex nib had the same problem if I flexed it. And even my Pilot Medium had a few dots seeping through.

In the end, I swapped the Eco to have a medium nib and ditched the Monza for a Preppy in a fine, plus I tried all the other pens I still had inked on the page. No serious problems, so it seems like the eco 1.1 and the flex were just bad ideas but it’s otherwise pretty fountain pen friendly paper!

Inside of the Mugoubuni notebook with a page trying different pens/inks. My new lineup of pens for this month is sitting on the blank right hand page beside the writing.

Stickers

All of these from the June 2026 pack from stickii.

Flower Icons from CoCo MoMo
Produce doggies from Yumbrite
Gardening friends from Hello Yonnie

Pens and Inks

Glow green TWSBI Eco <M> – Diamine Apple Glory. I had started with a 1.1 stub but it was bleeding through the paper. Swapped to the medium and it seems fine now.
Pilot E95S <M> – Pilot Iroshizuku ama-iro. Also reading a bit wet on this paper but not bad enough to swap.
REMOVED: Monteverde Monza <flex> – Diamine Red Lustre. This combo of ink/nib/paper didn’t work and it was too skippy and scratchy, so I’ve swapped it out already on day 3.
Platinum Preppy Wa <fine> (red gourd) – Red cartridge from Platinum. I tried this with the Diamine Red Lustre but the results were, uh, lackluster, so I switched to the cartridge. That ink may need some dilution at this point but I might just swap it into the paint box.
Platinum Preppy Wa <fine> (blue koi) – original black cartridge. Normally this is my todo list pen but it’s nice on this paper so it got promoted back to journalling.

Notes from Last Month

The Conklin Durograph did grow on me with practice and I found it considerably more usable than I remembered. But while I liked using it for copying quotes and it wasn’t causing me pain to use it, but it still wasn’t the pen I wanted to reach for much this month. The plan is to clean it out and tuck it away in the drawer for now and mentally slot it on the giveaway list if an opportunity to make someone else happy arises. No hurry since pens don’t take up much space.

Both the Pilot Metropolitans and the Dominant Industry inks were great and they’re moving over to my work notebook next. The green pen did dry out a bit by the end of the month so I’ll keep an eye on it.

The Monza got swapped out last month for my Kaweco Liliput with the same ink. Turns out a large blob of shimmer had gotten stuck on the lid and once I got it mixed in the ink behaved as expected, so it probably wasn’t the Monza’s fault that it failed at shimmer in June. But of course now I’m trying paper that can’t handle the flex nib… this poor Monza can’t catch a break. It’s slated to get cleaned out and ignored for now since there’s no point in trying it again on this paper. Unlike the Durograph which is heavy and has a wide nib, this one’s light and has multiple nibs so I’ll try it for things like my work notebook and give it a fairer shot with more cooperative ink before it gets shelved.

MD notebook with stickers on the top of the cover.

I was glad to see the MD Paper notebook finished. It’s reasonably priced, has the smaller number of pages that I prefer, I like that the simple cover lends itself to sticker decorations, and I actually enjoyed using it for drawing. Unfortunately, the drawing seemed to result in too much hand oil on the page rendering parts of it useless for fountain pen ink or causing random skipping in pens that I know normally perform well. If I used a shield to write/draw it was fine, but I found myself hesitant to use it and drawing in other notebooks instead which … I mean, that’s fine but I kind of want to also draw in my journals? Even if I don’t do it that often?

Drawing exercises from Kawaii Doggies and Kawaii Birdies, shown in my MD Paper notebook.

I’m also kind of tired of the ghosting through the paper. It’s not unusable or anything, but I feel like I’d probably be happier with thicker paper, especially since I prefer notebooks in the smaller page count range so I can afford to use thicker paper without it being too much. So in the end, like the Conklin Durograph, this MD notebook is perfectly fine and I can use it but it’s not sparking joy for me. I’d been hoping I could just pick up these 3-packs of notebooks and have a default journaling notebook that was relatively easy to get in Canada, but alas I don’t think they’re the right choice. Alas! I’ll use the other two eventually, but in the meantime I do still have several years worth of paper to try so it’s not urgent that I find the perfect one yet.

Warming June 2026 Life & Ink

June 3, 2026 by Dr. Terri

We’ve made it to June! One more month left in the school year, and everything’s all leafed out and green and glorious. I’m enjoying the instability of the weather with the wind and sun and rain alternating so you never get bored. And we’re slowly discovering our garden as new things bloom every few days. I have lilacs now! I missed those since I moved away from Old Ottawa South where the neighbour’s bush was so huge I felt like I had my own. But now I do have my own! They’re almost done but the roses seem to be starting next.

Bright pink rose blosso in my yard.

I did have a strange flare of allergies for a few hours this morning, but mostly I’ve been good to just enjoy my new/old habitat except for one week of sniffles that might have been miserable except I enjoyed the excuse to WFH. (I don’t have regular seasonal allergies, but I do hit something once every few years.) My poor dog is desperate to get let out on the deck but the yard isn’t fenced yet and he already ran out onto the bike path the one time I let him into the yard off leash to see if he’d stay behind the bushes, so he’s stuck on a leash for now. Looking forwards to when he and I can just hang out in the yard without a tether, though.

June 2026 Stationery choices: sticker sheets featuring birds and foxes and forest-y motifs, 4 pens and inks (all described further in the post)

Stickers

Seasonal birds from Mind Wave (for tracking days that I write)
Sparkly orange birds from byjessicaelena.com (via stickii)
Foxes and forest vibes by campmustelid.com (via stickii)

I finally decided to try an actual stickii subscription starting this month. It’s too many stickers per month for my usage so I either need to go more nuts with the stickers or skip months occasionally, but I really missed getting a monthly surprise in the mail. Maybe that’s a bad reason but I love the artists they get in and it’s a hard time to be an artist right now and if I’m going to spend money on a surprise pack, affordable sticker sheets and paying for art that I will use eventually seems pretty reasonable. I use 2-3 sticker sheets per month right now and I think they send 7 so they’re definitely going to pile up, but also they’re sticker sheets so they’re small and my current binders are getting pretty empty at the moment so it’s not like it would be if I was adding to my already overflowing yarn collection. (I bought two balls of yarn this year and I’m cut off until I knit at least the one for this month’s knitalong. Which I haven’t started because I’m already doing a different knitalong but soon!) We’ll see if I can manage to cut myself off once the sticker binders start to get full.

After a year of mostly not spending thanks to unemployment and then the large number of costs we incurred thanks to the move, it’s been nice to pick up some art supplies and the occasional book, as well as slowly working out my new charitable donations and subscriptions. I’m trying to choose a few treats and causes so I feel like I’m contributing to the things I care about financially and also not like 100% of my salary is going to bills.

Fountain Pens & Inks

Pilot Metropolitan <M> (green) – Dominant Industry Tuna & Olives (Wonder Pen Exclusive)
Pilot Metropolitan <CM> (red) – Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken (Wonder Pen Exclusive)
Monteverde Monza <flex> (clear) – KWZ all that glitters Stardust Blue
Conklin Durograph <stub> (green) – Diamine Laurel

The green Metropolitan is new (from Wonder Pens, bought with the ink). It had been living in my work stationery setup with much success before I swapped it in to the journal instead. I love this ink and pen combo. This one came with a twist piston converter instead of a squeeze converter, which is nice because while I don’t mind the squeeze converter you can’t tell how much ink is left so I had eventually replaced the one on my original red metro. I wonder when they changed that?

The older red Metropolitan with Ginger Chicken in it is also great. I’ve had a lot of mis-matches with that pen but this ink seems to be a great fit, maybe one of the ones I’ve liked most in that pen so far, since that nib needs an ink that’s… lubricated? wet? smooth? I’m not sure what the issue is but you can really feel it when the ink isn’t working out in the CM nib because it feels all scratchy and awkward. I love this nib but it’s definitely not as easy to use as the medium.

The Monza, however, is not working out very well and it apparently ate all the glitter — a bit of a surprise since I’ve never had a problem with the KWZ “all that glitters” line before! Normally it’s so glittery that I can barely see the base colour but the one line I’ve written with the Monza so far had zero. The Monza was an impulse buy on super sale because it comes with three nibs (fine, medium and flex) plus converters so I figured I’d like at least one of them. But it’s such a boring looking pen that I’m not really compelled to pick it up, so it hasn’t been inked much. I thought a shimmer ink might help make it more fun, but this one clearly isn’t working out and it’s the shimmer ink I’ve had the least trouble with in other pens so maybe the feed just isn’t great for shimmer? Not sure. I’ll give it a few more tries because one line of text isn’t a fair test and I haven’t used it for a full journal entry yet, but I may swap the ink into a different pen before the month is done. This pen is a good candidate for my work setup since it’s small, light, and has a good clip, so it may get used there next with a brighter standard ink instead.

The Conklin has also been sitting in a drawer for a while: another impulse buy at deep discount that I didn’t love once it arrived. It’s a really lovely pen that writes beautifully, but it hurts my hands to use for too long and I’m not sure why. It doesn’t seem that much heavier than my other pens, or bigger. I have other stub nibs so I don’t think it’s the extra effort of writing with the stub. It doesn’t feel scratchy or anything. But it’s… tiring. Maybe it’s where the weight sits? Something about the ergonomics of that pen is just not for me, and maybe this is one of those pens I wouldn’t have bought if I’d gone to a store in person and tried it. I’m going to give it a bit of a go this month since it’s been so long since I used it, but I suspect it’ll wind up earmarked to give away to someone who will love it more. It’s great with this ink and it is writing well so far this month, but there’s not much point in me keeping a pen that I don’t want to use because it makes my hand feel bad.

Usage notes from last month

Tried two new pens last month. Neither is completely new to me because I’ve used similar things, but the physical pens themselves aren’t ones I’d used before. So how’d that go?

A peach 30th anniversary Sailor Fude with birthday sparkles on it, set against a rainbow rug.

The Sailor Fude pictured above is from Toronto Pen Shop and thus one of my 2026 orders. I love the fude nib dip pen that I have from them and had long wanted a pen, but the colours were uninspiring to me. When I found that there was a sparkly limited edition version for their 30th anniversary I picked one up. I absolutely love writing with it, which is not a surprise since it’s pretty similar to the dip pen nib I use for all my swatching and first writing attempts with each new ink. The feed keeps it a bit less wet than the sort-of-feed that comes with my dip pen which is basically a little plastic cover that holds a drop of ink in rather than something that keeps a steady flow. This feed is nicer and more consistent, as one might expect. I also tried inking some drawings with it with black ink (before I filled it up with the Brilliant Mint) and that was fun although I think I prefer the fineliner I normally use since it has waterproof ink and I can paint over it. I’ve been doing a lot of watercolour lately! The thing that surprised me most about this pen is that it is waaaay longer than my other pens, to the point where I have to kind of angle it into the pen case I usually use. That said, I really enjoyed writing with it so I expect it’ll get inked up every few months.

I *did* have to rinse out the Sailor Fude nib because it felt like it was drying out this month, something I seldom need to do unless I keep an ink in for more than a month, but I’m hesitant to blame the pen because I’ve had a lot of pen skipping since I switched to the MD Paper grid notebook I’m currently using. I strongly suspect that it’s something about the way the oils on my hands react to the paper, and since I’d been using the MD paper for drawing as well as journal writing, I’d been touching it a lot more than usual. This wasn’t the ony pen that gave me trouble — I also had to rinse out my Kaweco Liliput in April multiple times and that’s a pen that’s never given me trouble before. And I think a few of the others had occasional skips. Trying to make things better, I moved my drawing to other notebooks/papers and started using a shield for my hand while writing and I’ve had less trouble. I did notice when painting with the new inks that the grid itself takes ink a bit differently, so it could be also affecting me? there’s a lot more printing in the grid vs the dot grid I usually use, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to cause the kind of “feels like your pen is drying out” skipping I’ve seen. That said, this notebook is pleasant but is probably not going on my “to restock” list, and I might find a non-journal/non-fountain pen use for the other two that came in the pack. I’ve got a bunch of other notebooks to try before I’m likely to come back to them anyhow!

Platinum Preppy Wa purple pen with cats on it. It’s sitting on a clear case containing blue and purple washi dots.

I had also picked up a new Platinum Preppy Wa pen last year that I hadn’t used yet — the purple one with the kitties on it — and because JetPens was doing a “get a free preppy with your order” I had also picked up a second regular Preppy with a wider nib and swapped the nibs. The Preppy “medium” is a bit thicker than the Pilot medium, which I hadn’t realized, and it actually looked a lot like the Pelikan Pura Broad that I was using at the same time. That was a surprise but not a bad one; I like thicker nibs for journal writing. Rather than cleaning out the purple Preppy I’ve moved it over to my work notebook and we’ll see if I like that nib there or if I switch back to the original thinner nib next time I use a Preppy for work notes. I’m glad to have the option, though — mostly my Preppy Wa pens wind up on todo list duty right now so it’d nice to have a nib that I like for longer writing available.

Ooly Duo fountain pen/highlighter combo showing a crack by the orange highlighter end of the pen.

Bad news about the Ooly Writer’s Duo I’d been using: it’s developed a crack that is really annoying when you want to uncap the highlighter side, because the whole highlighter unit with the cartridge pulls out unless you pinch the pen body pretty aggressively. It’s also developed a lot of cosmetic damage — scrapes on the gradient surface across the pen. Looks like I paid $13 for the set of 3 a bit over a year ago, so this is the second cheapest fountain pen I own and a year of use isn’t bad, plus it got carried around a lot in my todo list bag even before I put it into my work set, but it’s not even out of ink on either side yet and I was surprised because I haven’t had even a random free conference pen fail like this in a long time. The Platinum Preppy Wa pen with koi on it that was my other todo list notebook pen at the same time and basically got the same treatment is still going strong — no cracks, no damage to the artwork on the pen. I don’t think I’d recommend the Ooly pen unless you’re intending to treat it as disposable OR you don’t tend to carry your pens around much. But the fountain pen wrote well and I did enjoy using it this past year. The highlighter tip is also looking a little beat up, but having it on hand for work notes turned out to be really handy, so much so that I wound up buying some other less neon highlighters to add to my kit. I’ll keep using it until it’s out of ink but I’m not sure it’s going to be worth refilling the cartridge as I’d originally planned. Maybe I’ll find a way to repurpose it, but it’s probably going to wind up at the back of my pen/ink drawer for a while once it runs out of ink. I’ve got two more so they may go to live in my desk at work or at home when I finally get around to starting the cartridges, and we’ll see if they last better that way.

It’s been fun to add a bit to my collection with a couple of stationary orders, but I’m also enjoying rotating through older pens. I’ve got some notebooks I’m eager to try and a lot of inks to play with over the coming months! One thing I did do was sit down and organize my swatches. I had been keeping the inkvent ones separately so I’d actually try all the new inks, but I decided it was time to integrate them so I can flip through a whole rainbow of colours instead. I use an A5 binder with plastic card pages and papers cut to card size. It’s made it a lot easier to choose a palette for the month. I do need to label the pigment inks since those aren’t quite as obvious from the swatches as the shimmer and sheen inks are, but other than that I’m pretty happy with the new setup. It’s helped me not be tempted to get any more ink, since I actually have the type of collection I wanted to have when i started this hobby now. I’ll keep myself open to special inks like the Wonder Pens exclusive ones and I’ll see over the coming months if I find myself reaching for a colour that’s not there. But it’s a good spread! Now I just need to start more seriously working on that “painting with fountain pen ink” goal I set for myself. I’ve done some but definitely not enough!

Swatch Wednesday: Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken (Wonder Pens Exclusive)

May 27, 2026 by Dr. Terri

As promised, here’s the second Wonder Pens exclusive ink I picked up. This ink is inspired by the other cat.

Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken, a Wonder Pens exclusive ink inspired by their orange cat. It’s a deep orange/brown colour with nice shading. I’ve pictured the swatch with the packaging: the bottle with a nice wider round base, suede-like bag, pipette and cardboard box.

It’s a nice dark orange-leaning brown, fairly dark in my dip pen but you can definitely see the shading. It was nice for painting and might get used for some tree branches in art one of these days. I did try my hand at replicating the characters on the label but I don’t know how well I did.

Writing and painting using Ginger Chicken ink in my notebook. It comes out as a deep orange-brown, lighter and more orange in the letting done with a paint brush.

I don’t really have any similar inks, but here’s the closest two I could find in my collection. Orange Indien is considerably more orange and bright, Antler is a more dusty pink

A set of three ink swatches: Jaques Herbin Orange Indien (bright orange), Diamine Antler (dusty pink-leaning brown) and Dominant Industry Ginger Chicken (deep orange-brown with shading)

I really like this one! It’s a colour I use moderately frequently in art because there’s lots of trees and woody shrubs with a orange/red/brown thing going on, but it’s not at all like any of my existing inks. It’s darker than I tend to pick but I don’t think that’ll keep it out of rotation because it’s going to match so well with a lot of other colours I enjoy using. I think I’ll plan to put it in a pen at the end of the week and use it alongside Tuna and Olives in next month’s journal palette, maybe with a blue to round out the set or maybe just using my vintage desk pen since it currently has a blue-black cartridge in it. I don’t usually swatch cartridges (since mostly I get black ones free with purchase) but I should probably swatch that one so I can compare it when building palettes.

Ginger Chicken ink bottle on its side so you can see the light shining through the edge of it and showcasing the dark orange ink.

Belated May 2026 Ink & Life

May 22, 2026 by Dr. Terri

Whoops, I took pictures when I swapped my inks but then forgot to post!

This month’s inks palette was put together by my kid. I told him I wanted to use Brilliant Mint and he chose some he felt went well together:

Teranishi Brilliant Mint (bright blue-leaning teal)
Diamine Gala (purple)
Diamine Winterberry (red with red shimmer)
Diamine Bittersweet (bright light green)

Pens:

Pilot E95S <medium>
Platinum Preppy Wa – the cat one. I swapped in a larger medium nib from another Preppy though.
Pelikan Pura <broad>
Sailor Fude (special anniversary edition with confetti on it! So cute but also very long)

Stickers: three of these are from stickii and I’m too lazy to look up the last one.

I had a bunch of skipping in the MD notebook I’ve been using last month, so I’ve been more careful about using a shield so my hands don’t get oils on the paper, plus I found an actual sketchbook for a lot of the drawing I’ve been doing so I wouldn’t be touching the page as much. I can’t decide if this paper just doesn’t suit me or if I just shouldn’t have been drawing so much in this notebook. I did swap to drawing in an actual sketchbook and doing paintings on watercolour paper, both of which are actually better than doodling in my journal, so I guess it worked out? Kid and I have been doing a lot of art time together since we set up one of the bedrooms to be our craft room and set up a table by the window where the light is nice for painting and drawing. It’s been fun!

Also fun this month: watching the world come alive with all the spring flowers.

Dark pink cherry blossoms.

I did have a week of allergies but they seem to be done so unlike my poor husband I don’t have to wince every time I see a new thing come into bloom. Poor guy! It’s also been really interesting to find out what is growing in our yard. I have lilac bushes! And forsythia! and pansies! It’s all very exciting over here.

Swatch Wednesday: Dominant Industry Tuna and Olives (Wonder Pens)

May 20, 2026 by Dr. Terri

I couldn’t resist getting this Wonder Pens exclusive ink inspired by cat eyes. Isn’t that just the cutest ink concept? And they did such a great job with the colour! I would have gotten both cat eye inks, but I thought the other one was probably too close to my recently purchased Brilliant Mint, so I regretfully skipped it.

A swatch of Dominant Industry Tuna & Olives, an exclusive fountain pen ink for Wonder Pens. It’s an olive green standard ink.

Tuna and Olives is a nice olive green with a bit of shading. In my dip pen it’s pretty dark, in the pilot metropolitan I use for work, it’s noticeably brighter, and it’s really pretty on the paintbrush too as well as being lighter again.

The top of a page of writing using the Tuna & Olives ink. The big lettering and doodles are done with a paintbrush and the rest is with the sailor fude dip pen I use for my swatches. The ink is consistently olive green, shading brighter into a more leafy green on the paintbrush. It shows some shading in the writing as well.

I really like the way it matches my new green pilot metropolitan. Yes, two years later, I finally decided to buy a second one. (I still want all the colours; I still don’t need all the colours.) I decided to get a medium nib for work, and I’m really happy with how it’s working out with both the pen and the ink. I’ve found that I like having a clip on the pens in my work notebook, and I’m less excited about finicky sparkle inks because I often pull out the pen to make notes halfway through a meeting so if it blocks up when I can’t get up and rinse it easily I’m going to be miffed. So a nice standard ink and a pretty pen is pretty ideal for this purpose.

Green Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pop on top of some unfinished todo list from May 15th in my work notebook.

This is my first ink from Dominant Industry. They’ve got a cute bottle shape and comes in a cute little soft bag that presumably doubles as padding for shipping and also a way to keep your ink from getting exposed to light if you don’t like keeping the boxes around. I like the little tag with their ink bottle on it. It also came with a tiny pipette for filling pens, though I didn’t need it for the metropolitan or my dip pen.

Dominant Industry Tuna and Olives Ink swatch and bottle with packaging. The bottle has a rounded base that makes it look like a water droplet, there’s a bag with a picture of the bottle on the label, and a simple cardboard box. I’ve added a dot with an ink swatch to the side of the bottle, showcasing the olive green colour.

The closest ink I have it Diamine Pine Needle which is… really not very close. They both have green and shading, but pine needle is a vibrant “new pine needle” kind of green and includes so much green shimmer that I can’t really use it in anything other than my Pelikan pens with extremely wet nibs. Tuna and Olives is a duller olive green and I expect it’ll work in every pen I’ve got.

A comparison of two green fountain pen ink swatches: Diamine Pine Needle on top has green himmer and is a brighter new leaf green with shading, Dominant Industries Tuna & Olives is an olive ink with shading.

Normally this is the point where I say I’m excited to try this ink but that probably goes without saying since it’s already in a work pen! I also picked up a second Wonder Pens exclusive colour while they had them in stock, so expect to see that swatched soon too!

Swatch Wednesday: Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint

April 22, 2026 by Dr. Terri

It’s gotten warm enough that I didn’t have to worry about ink freezing in the mail!

My first impression looking in the box was “oh no there’s something on the lid” because normally I put a label on top with the colour to make it easier to find the ink I want in my drawer.

Open box of Teranishi Guitar fountain pen ink, showing the nice box design where cardboard padding holds the top of the ink bottle safely padded for shipping. The lid of the bottle has a sticker on it that reads “guitar gold star” and has their music note logo with some other shape in the center.

As I was contemplating if I should stick my usual swatch sticker on the side, I realized they’d already provided me a solution for this problem in the form of a little label hanging around the neck of the bottle:

Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint Ink showcasing the swatch spot on the tag that is attached to the mouth of the bottle.

I don’t actually own that many full sized ink bottles so I probably wasn’t going to forget what this looked like anyhow, but it’s a nice detail that I appreciated.

Teranishi Brilliant Mint ink with a swatch showcasing the teal fountain pen ink. The box has a kind of retro design vibe and includes a typewriter. No idea why.

The idea was that this ink would replace my nearly-depleted vial of Diamine Marine, which seems to be a bit hard to find in Canada at the moment. It’s not exactly the same, since brillaitn mint is a little more green, but it’s a similar teal-ish vibe and I like it a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m used to mint the plant but this definitely isn’t the colour I picture when I think of mint. (I’d picture a light green.) But I’d seen swatches online before I decided to purchase the ink, so I was expecting what I got.

Two similar swatch cards: the top one is Diamine Marine, a light teal ink that leans a bit blue, and the bottom is Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint, a very similar ink that leans a bit more green (or mint).

Side by side you can tell the difference, but I think they’re close enough to satisfy me for now. If I manage to find a bottle of Diamine Marine that’s not gigantic and costs an arm and a leg to ship I might still pick one up, but I think this fills the bright teal niche in my collection nicely.

A writing sample in Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint. The ink name is drawn with a paintbrush and the text is written with a Sailor Dipton Fude.

For some reason my camera really wants to make this look as brilliant and glowy as the name, but here’s a writing sample that’s been colour corrected to look more the way my eyes see it. I wouldn’t say it’s dull, just not as nearly radiant as it looks in some of the other photos. The notebook has MD ivory coloured paper. Also I definitely missed an i in the company name there. (It’s in the swatch but not very well defined because penmanship isn’t my strongest skill.)

Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint Ink bottle, box and swatch. It’s a medium teal fountain pen ink that leans a bit greenish (minty).

I picked this ink one up from Toronto Pen Shoppe, another new-to-me store. They were the closest place I could find that had the Kokuyo Campus Free Monthly Diary that I absolutely *love* as my calendar for tracking life stuff and habits. It’s been the right size and allows me to start my year in September (to line up with my kid’s academic year and my own habit) plus it’s Monday-start which I wasn’t sure I’d like but now it’s my favourite. I probably could have waited on these but I like to have a plan ready to go before September so I don’t waste money buying stuff I won’t use when the “planner season” pre-orders start, and I wanted an ink to celebrate the fact that things won’t freeze in transit for a few months.

I had a mostly good experience with Toronto Pen Shoppe, although they did forget one of the notebooks I ordered and had to refund me. These things happen! I do wish they had swatches on their online listings but as it happened I’d seen this particular ink elsewhere on the internet when I was looking for potential alternatives to Diamine Marine, so it didn’t stop me from making a purchase this time.

Overall, the ink is what I was hoping it would be and I’m excited to load it up in a pen and find some constrasting colours to go with it next month!

Thawing April 2026, Ink & Life & Space Dragons

April 3, 2026 by Dr. Terri

We’re in the tail end of winter according to the birds, though there’s still chunks of snow in the shade and every time we think it might be warm for good we get a little bonus freezing rain. Still, it’s nice to feel the change of the seasons even when it feels like only a tentative moment of warmth.

Three sheets of stickers: cute dragons, large botanicals and weather icons, an ivory covered MD notebook, three ink swatches (Diamine Tundra [grey], Diamine Mint Twist [green with blue shimmer], and Pennoia Selyempezgo [peach]) and fountain pens (Kaweco Liliput, Pelikan Pura, Pilot E95S).

Stickers

Cute dragon-y creatures by Heather Sketcheroos
Botanica pop-art by Maggie Chiang
Weather related icons by Neko Mori Arts

Inks & Fountain Pens

Diamine Tundra (grey) – in my Pilot E95S <M> (although I had the pens arranged differently before I filled them)
Diamine Mint Twist (green with blue shimmer) – in my Pelikan Pura
Pennoia Selyempezgo (peach) – in my Kaweco Liliput <BB>

The pennoia ink was a random sample from a fountain pen order a while ago, the other two are both last year’s inkvent.

New Notebook Month!

After many months, I’m bidding farewell to my Leuchtterm notebook, which I started back in October with the plan that it would see me through the move. It saw me through 6 incredibly stressful months with medical emergencies on top of the expected move, but we’ve made it out the other side and that’s worth celebrating!

Green Leuchtterm softcover notebook with a bee sticker from The Latest Kate that reads “It’s enough to bee here just as you are”

I liked the Leuchtterm notebook better than expected — it was nice not having to write my own page numbers, and it packs a decent amount of pages into a small size. I did eventually get used to the ghosting but I didn’t love it. Still, it’s a relief to go back to something smaller so my journalling setup is considerably lighter.

The new notebook is an MD Paper grid notebook. Cheap and 40-some pages instead of 120-some. I usually prefer dot over grid but I wanted to try this because the lines looked light enough that it would be pleasant, and so far it’s working nicely and they don’t feel in the way. I don’t think I’ve shown a monthly spread in a while so here it is in the new notebook:

April 2026 spread in my journal, showing tracking for my yearly creative goals, fountain pens, a calendar, and a set of todo list spaces.

My monthly spreads have gotten fairly utilitarian since most of my smaller tracking and notes go on the monthly calendar now that I have space for that. I still find doing a monthly tracking of the creative goals is useful, and I’m so-so on the todo lists: I use this page so I don’t forget things that I should do this week but don’t have to be done today. Sometimes everything goes on the day’s todo list and gets done within a day or two so this page isn’t needed. But other times it’s the only way important-but-non-urgent tasks get done, so it’s staying for now.

I don’t keep a separate commonplace book of quotes and instead just write down quotes in my journal. Here’s the one from the book I finished this morning:

A quote which reads,
“The galazy is big & we are small,” I said. “It makes sense to help each other, when we can.”
– Space Dragons: Cosmic Survivors by Veo Corva

I love Veo Corva’s Space Dragons series. Book two feels especially in the moment, since a lot of it is about trying to figure out what the right thing is that you should be doing, and then doing it even if you’re scared or angry or not ready or don’t know how to make it happen. And as is a common theme across these books, it’s about finding your people. But also it’s about a society where space ships are pulled by dragons and if that’s not enough of a pitch I don’t know what else to tell you. Plus there’s crochet in this one! https://veocorva.xyz/books/ for more.

And speaking of crafts and space travel, here’s how my latest knitting is going:

Time of the Doctor Scarf, a Doctor Who themed scarf with Gallifreyan style circle-text. It has been knit in ivory and dark teal yarn, and there is a a bright orange/yellow batik project bag and a pom pom sitting beside it.

I’m getting close to the end of chart 3 out of 10. This is going to be a gift for John but I’m not sure it’s even going to be ready in time for *next* winter at this rate! It’s one that nees a fair bit of attention so it’s a bit much if I want to read, but it’s been okay for work meetings when I don’t have to participate much (we have a lot of talks on how to use new internal tools).

Notes from March

Ink Swatches from March 2026 (described below)

Three of these inks were new last month so here’s some notes:

Inkebana Cowslip (Yellow) – This was quite usable in good light but not my favourite when it got dim. I’ll try playing around with it in art but I’m not sure I’ll use it for journalling again. I only have a sample anyhow. I’d forgotten how finicky my Pilot Metropolitan CM nib can be about angles, but I got used to it again pretty quickly.
Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst (orange with gold shimmer) – I liked this a lot more than expected for an ink I really bought to be a fidget. Super pretty while it’s drying. Like most (but not all) of my shimmers it takes a fair bit of pen turning if you want to keep the shimmer consistent, but it’s a nice enough colour even with less shimmer so it doesn’t bother me as much as it might.
Diamine Marie Rose (peachy brown) – A new one from Inkvent 2025. I was kind of meh on the idea of writing with a colour inspired by chip sauce, but I actually really liked this one to my own surprise. Behaved perfectly.
Diamine Apple Glory (intense spring green) – This I’ve had for a while. It’s nice but honestly was a bit too intense a green in this mostly warmish palette which was a pity. Was nice to pull out the eco with the stub nib for this, though.

I might have a post up soon about some pens I inherited from my grandfather that I’m trying out, but I think that it’ll be its own thing!

Swatch Wednesday: Colorverse Black Hole

March 18, 2026 by Dr. Terri

This was a gift from a friend who said it was more for the fun little bottle than anything exciting about the ink. It’s a pretty cute little bottle and I didn’t have one since I think the only colorverse ink I have is a sample.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is the front view showing the bit sticking out on one side. The illustration has a stylized black hole and a little planet saying “SOS” on it.

Love that little picture on the front. The bottle has a teardrop shaped base which I guess makes it a bit less likely to tip over and mostly just makes it interesting.

Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is thebottom view showing the teardrop shape, though it sits nice and flat because of the flat label on the front.

Inside, the ink is as one expects, a pleasant black. There’s a tiny bit of sheen visible in the swatch on the right, and indeed I can see that in my writing occasionally if I look at it under a sufficiently bright light, but it’s more a cute coincidence than a regular feature of the ink on the paper I’m using. Might be fun to try it on the iroful paper to see if it happens more consistently there; my current notebook is a leuchtterm.

My swatch card for Colorverse Black Hole, a black ink with a tiny hint of sheen in the bigger swatches.

I’m not too worried about getting the sheen to show up more, though, since the only other black ink bottle I have is a black with sheen from Inkvent Black (uuuh, Good Tidings I think it was called?). I’m guessing that Black Hole dries quicker, though I didn’t actually test that. I did, however, have some fun painting with it in the margins of my journal.

Some margin patterns in my notebook using Colorverse Black Hole ink on a paintbrush. One side has curly vine-like shapes, the other a geometric zig-zag with partial triangles.

Fun bottle and a nice practical ink. Overall a very nice present! And I think this is the last ink bottle or sample I had that I hadn’t swatched in my collection, so I’m all caught up and there’s no ink purchases on my horizon until the weather warms up, and maybe not even then — I’ve got so much to play with now!

An order from Wonder Pens

March 12, 2026 by Dr. Terri

I have done my first stationary order since moving back to Canada! I was looking specifically for a clip for my Kaweco Liliput, which had unfortunately been falling out of my pen case enough that I was worried about losing it, and a couple of extra traveler’s notebooks in the regular size for my commuter notebook needs. I chose Wonder Pens mostly because I liked the Wonder Pens blog, which is a good enough reason for me, and they are at least in the same province. Maybe someday I’ll get to visit them in person, since my kid is very excited about the idea of going to the Toronto Zoo again.

The package came with the prettiest stamp on it:

Wonder Pens Stationary Shop stamp, featuring a scene inside an ink jar with a squirrel writing and a cat reading a book while sitting on top of a stack of books. there are stars sparkling over their heads.

And here’s what was inside:

A set of items from my order: a wide flat case from Lihit Labs, a regular sized traveler’s notebook, a small bottle of stamp ink, a clip and converter for my kaweco liliput pen, a blank passport sized traveler’s notebook with a zipper case to match, and a pretty postcard with a photo of a collection of year of the horse themed stamps on it.

Since it’s what motivated me to do a purchase, let’s start with the clip for my pen.

The Liliput Clip fits nicely and most importantly, has solved my problem. Now the pen clips securely into the pencil case I use for my journal setup and it doesn’t slip out into my bag, the couch, or wherever I’m writing. I love this pen a lot but it was absolutely an escape artist. I decided to go with a more complementary colours vibe instead of getting the silver and I still haven’t made up my mind if that was the right choice (so it probably wasn’t) but I don’t care enough to get a second clip when this won’t transfer to my other kaweco pens. I also picked up a spare folding converter. I already had one of the regular ones and one of the folding ones and I’d been a bit mystified by the folding one because it didn’t make any difference in the kaweco sport — they both fit and have the same ink capacity. But it turns out that if you try to use the old converter in the liliput, the plunger has to be half depressed or it won’t fit in the body of the pen, so suddenly the folding piston thing makes a lot more sense. I didn’t desperately need a 3rd converter but now I’ve got the option if I want to ink all three kaweco pens at once. I do like them for travel because they’re easy to fill and clean in a hotel room and don’t hold much ink, so it might happen!

I’ve been been using a TN sized notebook as a kind of “everything notebook” for work and commuting, and I’d already squashed a few pages when something else in my backpack fell in between them. This happens to me a lot, which is why I prefer zippered holders for my notebooks. I switched to using an A5 “ghost whale” pouch that I already had, the same type I had used for my whole journalling setup for quite a wihle, but it didn’t fit well and I found it unsatisfying. It turns out that the Lihit Labs flat wide case was the right size, so I added it to my order. I also grabbed two spare TN notebook refills, one to use immediately so I could separate my personal and work notebooks, the other on hand for when I filled one or the other up.

My work bullet journal (a lochby TN sized notebook with a TN zipper case used as a cover) slipped into the front pocket of the new Lihit Labs flat wide pencil case. It fits but it it’s sticking out of the top a little.

Just in case you were wondering: one notebook does fit into the front pocket. With the zipper case on, it sticks out a bit, but without the case it kisses the edge of the zipper. I know it’s hard to figure out what will fit from online listings so I thought I’d post a photo. Having it in the front wouldn’t work for me, since I was aiming to keep the notebook from getting banged up in my backpack, but if you’re not stuffing things in your bag in a hurry when you get to the right bus stop, or you just cared more about fitting pens in the case, this would probably work? It does fit better in the inside pockets, though I actually use the inside pocket for a pencil board instead and just leave the notebook floating in the middle for easy “flip open and write” usage.

Inside of the Lihit Labs Flat wide case, showing some pens on the left and a traveler’s notebook pencil board on the right. The latter is also in the inner pocket, showing that it fits snugly but there’s enough room to close the zipper without any difficulty.

Honestly, I could probably do without the plastic zipper case now that the notebooks are protected in a different way, but I like being able to swap pretty stickers into the back where I can see them and it’s fun to be able to “glue” the two notebooks together by tucking a cover into each side of the non-zippered edge. I don’t think anyone cares what notebook I’m writing in at work but it’s nice that I can grab them both when I’m going to sit away from my desk with a coffee for a bit and write whatever’s on my mind. I’ve been doing a lot of writing at work just to organize my thoughts while I’m ramping up and it’s helping with the information overload.

The Lihit Labs pencil case opened to show some pens in the pocket on the left and the same notebook with cover on the right, although the notebook has been flipped over so you can see the stickers inside the zipper pouch. Prominent is one with an animal bones motif (from fireside textiles/tonkai) and some washi dots are visible behind.

Now that I’ve been using both notebooks, I will say that the Lochby refill that I got as a surprise “oopsie out of stock” substitution from The Gentleman Stationer is clearly a slight upgrade over the official TN refill. The paper is a little more resilient against feathering, there’s nice stitching so it lies a bit more flat, I like the rounded corners, and it has a slightly thicker cover. It’s probably not enough of an upgrade to be worth the cost and hassle of cross border shopping, but it was a generous substitution and if I were still in the US I’d probably stock up on them instead of the TN ones.

The passport sized notebook and zipper case were so I could duplicate my “covered notebook with sticker space” commuter notebook in a size that would sit in my smallest purse. Here it is with a little yamamoto ro biki book that I’d been toting around before I got the case. You can see it’s a little squished from use. I use the smallest purse for a lot of trips where I’m going to be on my feet most of the day because extra weight is hard on my body, but it’s nice to have a tiny notebook that my kid or I can draw in if we stop for a snack, and kid’s at the age where people give him stickers and it’s nice to have a pouch to put them in or flexible plastic to put them on because he doesn’t want to lose them. I’m honestly a little miffed that the zipper case in passport size has card sized slots because I think it would look prettier without, but I guess that’s what I get for not actually buying something intended as a notebook cover.

A rust coloured Yamamoto Ro Biki notebook with a stylized tree on it with spindly long branches and round dots for leaves. It has a plastic TN passport “zipper case” over the notebook being used as a cover.

The stamp ink I haven’t used yet, but it’s for this auto-advancing number stamp I got with the intention of quickly stamping page numbers into notebooks that didn’t have them. Unfortunately the ink that came with it takes forever to dry so the process isn’t quick at all and I have to blot the stamps or they take days to fully dry. I don’t know if the midori stamp ink will be better, but since I was already going to be paying for shipping I figured it was worth a shot. I haven’t gotten around to cleaning out the stamp pad and trying it, though.

A close up of a dot grid notebook with the page number “22” stamped inside. You can see that there’s some messy ink transfer from the stamp on the facing page.

I avoided adding fountain pen ink to this order because it was so cold and I didn’t want to risk having a bottle freeze solid and break en route. Thankfully the stamp ink came in a forgiving little plastic container and there were no problems.

Overall, I had a nice online shopping experience, and it was such a relief to find somewhere that would send me “back on stock” notifications for the TN notebooks after it turned out my local dealer either doesn’t carry the dot grid ones or they’re just out of stock all the time and I don’t know which. Hopefully I’ll get to visit Wonder Pens in person some day! And maybe next order (likely when I need a new planner in the fall), I’ll be able to get some ink.

Chilly March 2026, Life & Ink & Knitting

March 3, 2026 by Dr. Terri

It’s March! Traditionally, February is the month where I used to feel the worst when I lived in Canada, likely because it’s when you’re sick of winter and the dark, but honestly it didn’t seem so bad this year, possibly because I wasn’t in winter in December so I haven’t really gotten sick of it. It’s amusing that the number of people with masks on the bus seems to go up when it gets cold — a nice n95 really keeps the face warm, I guess. Even I keep mine on on the walk from the bus stop some days just for the warmth!

A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He’s sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.

Possibly I’m not sick of it because of the sheer relief of being here and not there, though. As exhausting as it is to live in a house where you can’t find anything because it’s “in a box” and hasn’t yet been unearthed or it’s been broken by the movers’s terrible packing, it’s hard not to watch people’s driver’s licenses get yoinked overnight in Kansas and think “I’m so glad I got out before they yoinked my work permit like that.” One of my new co-workers was aghast that I’d abandon a green card, but I’d definitely reached the point where no amount of getting paid more was worth the risks of being declared illegal at any moment. And then I wasn’t even getting paid more. Though I *did* just get my promised partial annual bonus from the old job so that was nice.

New job is working out, even if it doesn’t pay as well. I like my new co-workers and we have interesting discussions about technology and security. I’m less excited about the constant AI push in corporate land (it feels every single Microsoft product is yelling at me all the time), but I only have to use the parts that have a clear benefit to my work flow, so that’s something. I’m spending a lot of time on the bus to commute and although I miss having more time with my kid at home, I do like having dedicated time where I don’t get interrupted. I’ve been enjoying podcasts, audiobooks, mentally writing stories and just having time to think about whatever. I’m not thrilled to have been hired as hybrid and told I’ll be going back to work 5 days a week in the fall (I definitely wouldn’t have applied for this job if it had been listed as 100% in office) but I’m trying to wait and see how it works out in practice.

This month’s palette was pretty much built around matching those cute corgi stamp stickers.

Stickers

Corgi food stamp stickers – bought in Japantown San Jose but I don’t know the artist/company.
Tea Time Bunnies – ByMossyPine
Tiny Dogs – I think these were from Mind Wave.

Pens & Ink palette

Pelikan Pura – Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst. I mostly bought this ink as a fidget because of the lovely bottle which is designed to be swirled, but I decided to see how I like it in a pen too.
TWSBI Eco <1.1 stub> – Diamine Apple Glory. I bought this ink specifically for this pen!
Pilot Metropolitan <CM> – Ikebana Cowslip. Accidentally got some green ink on the nib while wiping it off after filling, so this may not be the right colour in my notebook. Oh well!
Pilot E95S <M> – Diamine Marie Rose. From the latest inkvent.

Quick check in on creative goals

2026 Goals List

Creative space: My office is set up enough to be usable for work and for writing, haven’t quite figured out the desk situation enough work on painting yet. There are still a lot of boxes but I’ve switched most of them to be clear ones so I can at least find things, and I suspect there’s at least a couple of boxes missing still. I’ve got an initial stationary shelf started (see photo below) but I’m thinking I’ll use drawers for most of my inks and samples and I haven’t decided where in the shelf those should go.

Crafting for the climate: Finished a scarf for my kid and a sweater for me. Still working on a very complicated scarf for my husband, but it’s definitely not getting finished before it warms up this year!

Painting with fountain pen ink: not set up for this yet but I did get some more watercolour painting books from the library so I’ve got some exercises to do once I figure out where the heck my watercolour paper got packed (or give up and buy more; I’ll use it eventually.)

Writing: wrote a bunch of fanfic for a valentines event and I’m really happy with how things turned out. Got a few things in progress and with all the ao3 downtime the past couple of days I fit some extra writing time in.

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 21-25

February 4, 2026 by Dr. Terri

At the time that I’m preparing this post (a week in advance), we’re still waiting on moving company nonsense, my internet keeps cutting out while I’m trying to do stuff, the furnace still doesn’t work, and the work training I took today got glitched somehow so I can’t finish it and I’m stuck re-listening to an hour of video. But hopefully by the time this posts, everything will be great and this frustrating day will be a distant memory. In the meantime, I have pretty inks and a nice crisp apple to eat.

A view of the "green" space by the power lines, with trees and ground covered in snow and with the sun breaking through the clouds near the horizon. — A view of the “green” space by the power lines, with trees and ground covered in snow and with the sun breaking through the clouds near the horizon.

Let’s talk inks:

A set of 5 ink swatches from the last of the Diamine Inkvent Teal calendar. Day 21: Chaos, deep burgundy with grene sheen. Day 22: Pineapple Spritz, two-toned yellow with yellow sparkles. Day 21: Let It Snow, bright light blue with blue shimmer. Day 24: Antler, light brown with a bit of a pink tone. Day 25: Myrrh the Merrier, rich medium blue with blue shimmer and red sheen.

Showing 5 samples to finish out the calendar!

An ink swatch of Diamine Chaos, a dark burgundy ink with green sheen (although it looks more red and less purple in this image)

Day 21: Chaos. Deep burgundy with green sheen. I think this ink is considerably more attractive than last year’s Sleigh Ride, so it might actually get used. Not in love with it, though.

A swatch of Diamine Pineapple Spritz showing the yellow shimmer in the yellow ink. It isn't very legible, though. — A swatch of Diamine Pineapple Spritz showing the yellow shimmer in the yellow ink. It isn’t very legible, though.

Day 22: Pineapple Spritz. Yellow with yellow iridescent sparkle. This ink is very pretty but only barely legible in my journal even with a dip pen so it may get relegated to decorative status because I doubt it’s going to be better in a regular pen. It’s really pretty with all that shimmer so I’ve got some hope that it might be fun for painting or filling in tracking squares or something.

A swatch of Diamine Let it Snow fountain pen ink. It's bright blue with blue shimmer. — A swatch of Diamine Let it Snow fountain pen ink. It’s bright blue with blue shimmer.

Day 23: Let It Snow. Bright blue with blue iridescent shimmer. Absolutely the kind of fancy holiday ink that I wanted out of this calendar. Love it. Describing it makes it sound similar to Brrr! but it’s not a pigment ink so it should be a bit less of a hassle in a pen. And it is a very different bright blue instead of the more moody Brrr! blue.

Day 24: Antler. Light brown. Fairly similar to Smoky Tobacco from day 4 but with less yellow and more of a pink feel to the brown. Also, it doesn’t stink. Basically better in every way than Smoky Tobacco thanks to the lack of scent. I’ll use this one and possibly never open Smoky Tobacco again.

A swatch of Diamine Myrrh the Merrier fountain pen ink, a jewel toned blue with blue sparkle and red sheen.

Day 25: Myrrh the Merrier. Blue with red sheen and blue sparkles. This is the 30ml bottle and it’s completely over the top holiday ink. I expected something more green-leaning for Inkvent Teal and this really reads as blue to me especially with the blue shimmer, so I would have swapped this with day 1’s Celestial Skies if I were Diamine. But it’s a really lovely ink and I’m excited to use it.

Overall: I had fun with this year’s calendar despite how busy my December was! Most of these inks are good additions to my collection: I’m glad to try some pigment inks, I’m excited about a lot of the colours, and there were only a few disappointments. If I’m honest with myself about what inks I reach for most, I’ve got to admit that I don’t really need more shimmer or sheening inks so maybe I shouldn’t get an inkvent calendar next year. If I’m talking purely about inks I use most, I should focus on getting a few more “standard” inks. But if I treat it as an experience, it’s definitely been fun! It expanded my ink collection in a few ways I might not have done otherwise: I was curious about pigment inks but hadn’t worked up the nerve to buy any and now they’re right there — I’m especially excited to try them in art. Some of this year’s colours wouldn’t have been on my radar if I was shopping but they’re going to work so well in my monthly palettes. So I’m absolutely not sad to have done it again this year, and I’m excited to play with these more in 2026!

Moving continues, February 2026 life and ink

February 3, 2026 by Dr. Terri

As of this writing (happening on Monday), I’ve gotten the paperwork done at customs and in theory we get the rest of our stuff tomorrow. We left Oregon on December 29th and had theoretically paid for the truck to get packed and our stuff delivered ASAP, and instead this is more like the time I moved the other way where, among other chaos, my work visa claimed that I was an 11 year old with a PhD and understandably that wasn’t going to fly at the border but without a valid work visa I couldn’t do import paperwork. Le sigh. So now we have a move that has been both extremely expensive, slow, and caused huge amounts of stress and labour that we didn’t expect. But it’s nearly done so I guess that’s something? I’m excited to finally set up my office maybe later this week, though!

Stickers

dinos with shiny hearts (stickii, no artist listed)
doggies with sweaters (stickii, no artist listed)
valentines objects (Neko Mori Arts via stickii)
Katrinkles (from an advent calendar)

Using up some unfinished valentines sheets from last year!

Fountain Pens and Inks

Pilot E95S <m> – Diamine Blush (Inkvent 2025)
Kaweco Liliput – Van Dieman’s Underflow
Pelikan Pura – Diamine Ruby Taffeta (Inkvent 2025)
Pelikan Pina Colada <m> – Diamine Celestial Skies (Inkvent 2025)

Leaning into the new inks for this month: three from the Inkvent calendar I just opened and one new ink from Fountain Pen Day (November 2025). Celestial Skies is continuing from last month.

Commuter Stationary

TWSBI Eco T <m> – Organics Studio Nitrogen
Pilot Kakuno <m> – Robert Oster Rose Gold Antiqua
Lochby TN-sized dot grid refill
Traveler’s Notebook zipper pouch (used as a cover)

The new part of this is the Kakuno — I was finding that I really missed swapping in colours day to day to make it really obvious where yesterdays’ stuff started. I’d bought the Kakuno to be my purse pen (cheap, light, easy to write with) but it hasn’t gotten used in a while because I was rotating other pens in and out. I’m not sure I’m going to love Rose Gold Antiqua in this pen (I’ve had trouble with it clogging in other pens) but I’ll give it a shot since I’m trying to use up some samples and it is a pretty ink when it works.

The Eco has been working beautifully, and I love Nitrogen’s shine on the Lochby paper. The notebook itself has worked out nicely for commuting — I mostly write with it at work and it’s a mix of work notes, todo lists for home, journal-style entries, and creative writing. I may eventually get a second TN-sized refill to be just a work notebook, but for now the everything notebook format is working well. It’s a little bit less weight, I can get by with the zip case as cover, and I’ll use up the refill faster this way.

In the same vein: the plan is to write these pens dry unless I run into clogging problems, so you likely won’t see these next month!

And In Unrelated News…

I finally went and found a plugin that replaces WordPress’s Block Mode editor. I’ve never been a huge fan, but lately it’s been… hanging? Not switching blocks? Whatever is happening, it’s actually been getting in the way of writing a lot lately. So far this is the first thing I’ve written with the new old-style editor and it’s really helped.

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 17-20

January 28, 2026 by Dr. Terri

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.”

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. — 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!”

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. — 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 17: Gala. A nice shading purple. I really like this one! It’s a little more pink than J Herbin Violette Pensée, which is the closest thing in my collection. I’m pretty much always going to have the My Little Pony song “At the Gala” stuck in my head when I use this, especially since it’s a very twilight sparkle kind of purple.

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?

A pair of ink swatches for comparison: on top is Van Dieman's Underflow which is a similar two-toned ink with a slightly brighter and more green base, on teh bottom is Diamine Overcast which is a bit more grey with a similar pink tone.

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!

A swatch of Diamine Inkvent Teal day 20: Ambiance held at an angle to show the pink sparkle in the orange/peach ink.

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.

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 13-16

January 21, 2026 by Dr. Terri

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.

Many tall boxes in my new bedroom. The bed is in the foreground and has a lovely quilt made by my friend.

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)

A swatch of Diamine Inkvent Teal day 13: Molten Basalt. This fountain pen ink is grey with reddish sheen.

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.

A swatch of Diamine Inkvent Teal day 14: Mittens. This fountain pen ink is a pigment ink (waterproof) and it's kind of a hot pink (think Barbie).

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.

A swatch of Diamine Inkvent Teal day 15: Frostbite. This fountain pen ink is dark blue with lots of copper shimmer.

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.

A swatch of Diamine Inkvent Teal day 15: Ruby Taffeta. This fountain pen ink is a medium red with green/iridescent shimmer.

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!

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 9-12

January 14, 2026 by Dr. Terri

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!)

Diamine Inkvent Teal inks, Day 9-12. Bittersweet (bright green), Nostalgia (maroon with shimmer), Brr! (blue with shimmer), Bubbly (gold with shimmer)

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.

Happy New Year! January 2026 Life and Ink

January 8, 2026 by Dr. Terri

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.

A largish RV sitting in our new driveway in the snow, with lots of winter shrubs and trees around it.

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.

Hatch, a black lab mix dog, is sprawled in a white fluffy dog bed with his front feet sticking out one side. There is a lit gas fireplace behind him, warming him up.

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. — 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!

Creative Goals 2026 (Formerly Fiber Goals)

January 1, 2026 by Dr. Terri

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?

Games: walking game! finally!

Fiber Goals 2025 – How Did I Do?

December 31, 2025 by Dr. Terri

This year’s goals were as follows:

Revisit Old Goals
Try Something New
~~Something Stash Something~~ Write more
Game Design

I realized that my original plan to run a stash-focused social media event wasn’t something I wanted to do any more, so I swapped that one to be the more vague but intensely more fun “write more.”

Here’s the mid-year check-in:

Fiber Goals 2025 mid-year check-in

Revisit Old Goals

August: Used up some leftover gradients for a sock (goals: self-striping, top to toes). Started a cable sweater (goals: complicated cables, knit a sweater)

September/October: Fall Finish or Frog Along! This is my favourite social media event where we finish languishing projects or reclaim the parts and let them go.

I wanted to focus on finishing things that would allow me to start packing parts of my craft supplies (goal: lesser used crafts, Whittle down the WIPs), so I finished a last couple of spins on my big wooden spinning wheel then packed it up:

A handspun skein of yarn in mixed purples is being held in front of a hydrangea bush that is trending towards hot pink and brown flowers but still has some purple left.

And I finished the sampler scarf I’d had on my loom and failed to finish last year, then packed up the loom:

A sampler scarf showing different textures and weaving techniques, done in blue and grey yarns.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll be pulling the loom out and re-assembling it anytime soon after I get moved, given how I felt about that last project.

I also made up a little “Chillow Collar” knitted jewellery kit that had been in my stash a while (goal: kits in stash). I totally failed to do some quilting or finish the sand seal my kid had started before he got bored of the sewing. I did get a bunch of work in on my fall sweater before abandoning it for October MKALs, though!

November: Working on xmas presents. They did use some stash yarn I had earmarked for projects, so they fit a few old goals! (goals: gradients, kits in stash)

December: One of my old goals was “toys” so I’m counting the gnome for that! plus I am still working on a sweater which was also an old goal.

Overall, this was a fun goal to recognize 10 years, but it didn’t turn out to be as fun as I hoped. Still a success but I think I’d have been better off choosing a specific goal or two to revisit rather than wading through the whole pile of them every month to find something to do.

Try Something New

I was feeling a bit burned out on coming up with ideas for this goal so I mentally de-prioritized it, but without trying to plan for it I wound up doing some fun new things anyhow:

August: I tried a little bit of bookbinding and then some soap-shaping with my kid. We didn’t work with lye or anything, he just melted soap blocks into fun shapes, and now we have a bunch of tiny soaps with polished rocks in them that he likes to dig out once they’re close to done.

September: This month was “fall finish or frog along” so I didn’t start anything particularly new.

October: Watercolour painting exercises from random books at the library. Some of them turned out really nice!

A watercolour painting of three mixed drinks with ice and garnishes.

I also did some hand lettering exercises, but didn’t get as far with that.

November: More watercolours. Also I had to learn an entire web development framework in a “language not on my resume” for a tech interview, which was fun but tiring.

A botanical watercolour painting featuring wild roses and berries. there is a paintbrush and a box with a palette holding the painting on the corners.

December: I’m also counting the gnome for this because it’s my first time knitting one in DK weight yarn, so I need to adjust the tools I use. And Imagined Landscapes often throws in a new technique or two to play with so who knows maybe i’ll learn something.

So even though I’d been planning to mostly drop this goal, I did some fun new things and didn’t stress about it and it was great. Absolutely finished this one out perfectly.

Write more

Kept chugging on fanfics, including writing for another event. I spent a lot of time in “writing sprints” where we kind of turn writing into something that’s a cross between a pomodoro timer and parallel play. I’ve had writing be a bit social back when I used to write for the Geek Feminism blog, but this is differently social and I love it. I’m starting to understand why every novel I read lately thanks their writing group.

For the blog, I’ve been keeping up with the monthly stationary posts. I’d hoped to spend some more time writing tech stuff in conjunction with my slow job hunt so my blog would look more nerdy again, but I haven’t gotten around to that as much. Turns out planning an international move eats up a lot of time, plus we had more than one medical emergency, and then I spent 3 weeks solo parenting while J flew to Canada to prep our new house. Oh, and I hit my head badly after the dog took off after a squirrel, and healing head injuries is rough and made worse by the fact that most of the signs you’re supposed to watch for are things that I experience regularly: headaches, dizziness, nausea.

The fanfic experience this year has been fantastic and the writing sprints have improved my life and honestly probably my mental health. If you combine the blog and fanfic I’ve published over 100k words this year and have written more that’s still in drafts or got edited out. So this goal has been a huge success!

Game Design

I got really into making silly games in Scratch with my kid and for my fandom friends in the fall, so this was a huge winner.

I still want to work in some less kid-oriented frameworks, but I’ve actually been really pleased with the amount of stuff they packed into Scratch. It’s been fun to look at the stupid mobile games and stuff my kid sees streamers play and think “Hey, we could make that in Scratch” so I think we’ll have some more fun prototyping silly ideas about how to make games better.

Also, I love that kiddo and I have been having real conversations about game design and fun and difficulty curves and art assets and stuff. I may need to see about joining some game design oriented communities the way I’ve been enjoying fandom communities if I want to turn this from a casual sometimes thing to a regular activity in my life, but for now kid and I are having a good time together. So I declare this goal a success!

Conclusions

Honestly, I think these weren’t the best goals: obviously the stash thing didn’t work out, and I think maybe revisiting old goals and doing “something new” were both a bit too open-ended and looking through that big list of previous years goals wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. That’s probably because this was a year of burnout so I could have used more direction from my past self (but I was already very burned out last year when I was putting these goals together, so it is what it is). I got a lot out of the 2025 goals in the end, but it was a bit more of a struggle than fiber goals have been for me in previous years. Of course, everything has been a bit of a struggle this year so maybe the goals aren’t to blame.

For my personal goals tracking, I switched to re-writing the goals in my monthly journal spreads, then recording one or two things I planned to do to fill them, or added things after when I wrapped up the month. It made writing these wrap-up posts a lot easier! I think it helped me to have them where I was checking off completed projects so I saw them when I was deciding what to work on next, too. One of the things I enjoy about using a blank journal rather than one with preset pages is that I can slowly tweak these things as I find different things I need to record or keep in the front of my mind.

I still love the idea of fiber goals, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m stretching out from fiber right now and that’s unlikely to change in 2026. So I’m going to keep the idea of “have goals for things that bring you joy” going, but switch to calling them “Creative goals” for next year. Stay tuned tomorrow for what those goals will be!

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 5-8

December 18, 2025 by Dr. Terri

Second set of Inkvent inks! Yes, I’m behind. It’s been an absurd month as we prepare to move, with our entire plans getting derailed repeatedly, but most of this week’s news has been good so here’s hoping!

Swatches from day 5-8 of the Diamine Inkvent Teal (2025) calendar. The colours are named Marie Rose, Fir & Fob, Blush and Dream Catcher.

Day 5: Marie Rose. Kind of an orange-brown that shows a bit of black at the edge of the bigger swatches. I wondered why it was names “rose” when at best it might be a really desiccated old rose petal colour, but apparently it’s named after a type of sauce and not after the plant. I actually don’t have anything particularly close to this colour and it’s a nice uncomplicated standard ink so it’ll definitely get used even though it’s a colour I might never have thought to buy.

Day 6: Fir & Fog. Beautiful blue-leaning green with iridescent shimmer. It makes me think more of spruce than fir trees but I don’t think most people think that deeply about their evergreens. Love it. I’d probably get this even without the shimmer; it’s a really nice colour. Plus the name really makes me feel like Pacific Northwest winter, where I see the big Douglas Firs looming out of the fog many mornings.

The same Diamine Inkvent Teal day 5-8 swatches shown with the camera at a different angle to show shimmer & sheen better.

Day 7: Blush. Pink. This one goes on the page looking like fresh nosebleed (look, I was one of those kids and I’m very familiar with what a drop of fresh blood looks like on the page) but it dries pleasantly into a red-leaning pink. I think the closest colour I have is Pilot Iroshuziku Momiji which is more pink and less red. I’ve been struggling to use Momiji in palettes because it’s a bit too bright, so I think the slightly more muted feeling Blush is going to fit in really well.

Day 8: Dream Catcher. There is so much pink sheen that you can barely see the base colour, but it is actually blue. This is fun but *very* similar to last year’s Cosmic Glow, so even though it’s lovely it maybe wasn’t quite as exciting as it would have been if I didn’t have last year’s colour. I had to really stare at them together to see that Dream Catcher’s base blue is subtly more greenish than Cosmic Glow’s (but it’s not as far over as Vibe, also in last year’s inkvent). I have a few other similar blue-with-pink-sheen inks but none of them have as much sheen as these so they feel pretty different.

Dream Catcher and Cosmic Glow swatches showing that they have the same colour of pink sheen but slightly different base colours.

Dream Catcher and Cosmic Glow swatches shown at an angle so the sheen is less visible and you can see that they have slightly different base shades of blue, with Dream Catcher leaning slightly more greenish.

Even though Dream Catcher is nearly a dupe and a colour family that’s already over-represented in my collection, these are all very pretty and will definitely get used. If I had to guess, Blush is the one that’ll get used most often because I have wanted a different pink for a while, but I’m really in love with the spruce green of Fir & Fog plus the name will make me think of the pacific northwest winter.

2025 Diamine Inkvent Teal – Day 1-4

December 17, 2025 by Dr. Terri

Every week this month I’ve had to completely re-evaluate all my plans and expectations. So I got a late start with Inkvent after a sudden emergency, but I’ve been swatching inks daily since I caught up and it has been a nice ritual amidst the chaos. Turns out the chaos of a house in the middle of packing makes for terrible photography conditions so I haven’t been keeping up with that so much, but here’s the first few swatches from when I was lucky enough to get a day with ok light.

Four swatches of Ink from the 2025 Diamine Inkvent fountain pen ink calendar. The ink swatiches are named Celestial Skies, Energy, Carousel, and Smoky Tobacco and they're described in more detail in the post.

Day 1: Celestial Skies. Lovely lightly teal-leaning blue with a touch of red sheen and gold shimmer. This was amazing in the dip pen — lots of shimmer and the sheen around every letter looks spectacular. If it looks half as good in a regular pen this will be a treat.

Day 2: Energy: purple with green sheen. Looks cooler in the swatch than in regular writing but I really like the underlying purple and don’t mind the sheen but I wish it was a little less intense so you could see more of the purple through it. Since the dip pen tends to be wetter and thus showcase more sheen, I may like this one a lot better in a regular pen. But it’ll be usable either way.

The same Inkvent Teal day1-4 swatches at a slight angle to showcase sheen and shimmer better.

Day 3: Carousel. Red with a very tiny bit of gold sheen that makes it look like enamel paint. I really love it. This one is listed as a pigment ink. I didn’t think to test how waterproof it was but it was definitely harder to clean off my tools. I’ve been looking for a “correction pen red” kind of colour so I’m pretty delighted to have this one even if I may need to be careful to put it only in pens I can clean easily.

Day 4: Smoky Tobacco. Brown with a tobacco scent. I saw someone describe this as smelling like cancer. It definitely made my nose unhappy when I had the bottle open for a bit, so I’m probably minorly allergic to this, or it smells enough of tobacco that it’s brining back bad memories of all the second hand smoke one used to inhale in restaurants and bars before cigarette bans started to happen. Thankfully the smell doesn’t seem to linger on the page and once I realized my nose was running and closed the bottle I was able to write with it okay so it could just be that there’s a bit more alcohol in there than usual and it won’t be an issue in practice. It’s a nice enough brown with a bit of a black sheen on the iroful paper (not pictured, my swatches on Rhodia) and I don’t have anything particularly similar, but we’ll see if the smell is a dealbreaker in practice.

I think of these four, Celestial Skies will be the first one to go into a pen and I might not even wait until the end of the month.

December 2025 Ink and life

December 5, 2025 by Dr. Terri

I knew that this month was very likely to go off the rails with our upcoming move, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have hopes even as I tried to build slack into my plans. One of the things I’d hoped was that I’d be able to take a little time out of my day and do Inkvent swatches and journalling as a bit of a meditative practice in the face of chaos. Turns out chaos was stronger than that and I’ve been mostly offline for the first few days of the month, but I’m catching up and getting into it now.

Ink

No ink palette for this month — I’m writing half of my journal entries with the day’s Inkvent ink using my dip pen with the reservoir and finishing them out with whatever pens I still have inked. I might swap inks eventually but there’s basically no colour scheme going on here.

The front of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, Teal edition. It's a box with numbered doors on it and each one has a new mini vial of ink behind it. The design features a wintery scene. — The front of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, Teal edition. It’s a box with numbered doors on it and each one has a new mini vial of ink behind it. The design features a wintery scene.

I am making swatches of each ink as I go, so I’ll probably start posting those in groups or something if things have really settled down enough to allow for that.

Stickers:

Christmas bears by Kawaiihentaii
Holiday squirrels by Nettle & Twig
Shiny snowflakes don’t list an artist, just stickii.

Other Stuff

It’s been a rough month and we’re only a few days in, but I’m still working on holiday knitting and haven’t started the advent-style knitting I had planned because emergencies took precedence over winding yarn. The house is starting to look like we’re prepping for a move with boxes starting to pile up, and kid’s got a big countdown chain to help him visualize how many days before the end of school I’ve got a cough at the moment that has kept me out of choir, which honestly is a bit of a blessing because it’s one less thing to worry about. But we’re surviving and we were lucky enough to have a friend visiting when the worst went down, so I’m feeling tired but supported and hopeful that we’re making our way through it all.

November 2025 Ink and fiber thoughts

November 11, 2025 by Dr. Terri

Going with a spooky kitty theme this month, since I had a pair of good spooky kitty sticker sheets from last year’s stickii Halloween countdown. (I didn’t get this years halloween countdown because I still had plenty of spooky stickers.)

Stickers

Fountain Pen ghost cats by Yudoart (from stickii halloween last year)
Witchy sticker sheet by November Rush (from stickii halloween last year)
MU “print on stickers” (transfers, really)
Droplets sheet by Starriesena (also from stickii)

Pens and Ink

Pelikan Pura with Diamine Baltic Breeze (blue with copper? sparkle)
Pilot Metropolitan <cm> with Diamine Twilight (dark grey)
Monteverde Ritma <flex> with Van Dieman’s Last Light (purple-blue)
Pilot E95S <m> with Sailor Mayo Asagiri (pink)

The Van Dieman’s Last Light is a new sample I picked up from their line of two-tone inks. I actually really like the way this ink works other than the fact that I keep thinking it’s too light to read while I’m writing but it does dry darker as so many purple-ish inks do. It’s especially nice in this particular flex nib, which basically lets you pour out more ink with bit of extra pressure, and a bit more ink in this case gets more of the dual colour effect.

Using the Metropolitan right after using the Maple pen last month has cemented that the Metropolitan is significantly easier on my hands, so my ranking continues to stand.

Thoughts on last month’s selections

Some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t from last month. The architect nib in that maple pen is very fun to use but definitely tires my hands out. Not sure if that’s primarily due to the nib or it’s also the heavier and larger pen. It worked really well with Southwest Sunset except that I’d forgotten that this particular ink leaves little dots that take forever to dry, so I smeared it a few times. I had this trouble with the other noodler’s ink I had as well, and wound up giving the rest of that sample away. I like the colours of Southwest Sunset enough that I’m keeping my last tiny bit of sample but I’ll try to remember that it’s kind of annoying to use even if the shading is super pretty.

The combo of Wearingeul Frankenstein and my TWSBI Eco worked, but it was clear that all the shimmer was getting stuck in the feed and very little made it to the page, so next time that ink goes in the Pelikan to see if I can get a better effect. It is really nice without the shimmer, though, so not too sad.

Using KWZ All that Glitters Firecracker reminded me how much I enjoy their easy to use shimmers that work in all my pens. Since they’re only $10 per 30ml bottle, I just went ahead and bought the two colours I didn’t have. I don’t think they’re as pretty as the two I bought first, but I think I’ll enjoy using them anyhow!

The Pelikan Pura made Diamine Pine Needle work much better than last time I used it. Very happy with how much the Pura improves my ink collection!

The Leuchtturm1917 is working well. The paper definitely is a bit thinner so I found myself rearranging inks so the dark purple Frankenstein was mostly used on the left hand page and I wasn’t writing on something with seriously visible ghosting. I don’t find it too disruptive but it’s there and I notice and think about it regularly. It’s been nice enough for writing, though — not too slow to dry or anything. I do really love the pre-numbered pages and the way the top and bottom have wider margins, though, so the layout is great. I think my perfect notebook would be this dot grid page layout with thicker paper in a smaller page count, but I’ve still got a small collection of notebooks to try so maybe I’ll find something I enjoy even more.

Pen collection changes

Three fountain pens: the first one is a large, teal Jinhao 100, the second a dark blue marbled Noodler's flex nib, the third a light purple Hondgian M2 that is a pocket pen (as in, much smaller than the other two pens). — Three fountain pens: the first one is a large, teal Jinhao 100, the second a dark blue marbled Noodler’s flex nib, the third a light purple Hondgian M2 that is a pocket pen (as in, much smaller than the other two pens).

I passed 3 pens on to a friend this month. From left to right:

Jinhao 100 <fude>: This one has to be held at a steep angle for the width of line I want, which made it not super useful for regular use since my normal writing angle produced very thick lines. It’s probably tuned for calligraphy? It would have been nice for making cards or something, but I seldom do that. It’s a pretty pen but it really wasn’t working for me, and I have a few other fudes in my collection. My friend is a lefty and it worked better for her, so off it goes.

Noodler’s Creaper <Flex>: This is actually the only fountain pen I’ve ever had which I hated the feel of the pen body rather than the nib. It constantly gave me the vibe of one of those cheap conference giveaway pens that didn’t quite fit together right. No idea why, it wasn’t actually loose, maybe it was something about the shape. But it’s been sitting in a cup because I don’t want to use it, so I’m glad to pass it along where it might get used!

Hongdian M1 <ef>: The extra fine nib in this felt like I was writing with a toothpick, scratchy and too small. Actually, I think I’ve painted with toothpicks that I liked better than this. I’m not a huge extra fine fan, but the other ones I have don’t feel as bad as this one did to me. Could have replaced the nib but I decided it was better to give it away.

I’d intended to reduce my pen collection by not replacing these, but then Fountain Pen Day sales happened and I picked up a couple of cheaper pens on my wish list. A paragon of restraint I am not, this month. Which is fine, my unemployment can cover a few pens and inks if a bit of retail therapy is helping me survive a month of solo parenting and all the preparation for an international move and dealing with job interview stuff. I’m still feeling less burned out as a whole, but the past few weeks have been A Lot.

Countdown time

In other related news: I wound up buying both the Stickii Advent and the Diamine Inkvent calendar.

The stickers were an easy choice: I’ve used most of last year’s, and with my regular usage at around 2.5 sheets per month a December countdown isn’t so many stickers that it’s going to overwhelm me for the year. Unlike the halloween collection, these aren’t all wintery so I used last year’s year-round easily. I love picking out stickers and matching inks every month, and the stickii ones are a bit thinner, smaller and more convenient for journal use than some of the others I get from individual artists. I’d probably like their subscription club too but that one is more stickers than I use per month so this fits my life better plus I get a cute binder to store my sheets in. I use last year’s a lot.

The inkvent calendar was a harder choice: I use maybe 2ml of ink in the average month, so I strongly debated just making myself a 12-sample pack to enjoy over the holidays which would match up better with my ink usage. But then I kind of overwhelmed myself trying to pick 12 colours and the ones I chose kept going out of stock and I realized I wasn’t actually having that much fun with that plan. So in the end I decided to just get the Inkvent set and stop fussing over picking things. It’s “too much ink” but I really loved the experience last year and the excuse to swatch and use a new ink every day. And I know I won’t be sad about having more colours to use in my monthly palettes, since I know I sometimes struggle with finding something to match my chosen stickers. In hindsight, I should have just planned to trade ink samples with my friend and use those, but I didn’t think to do an ink swap until nearly a month after I ordered the inkvent calendar. Whoops.

Not sure how I feel about the sparkle-sheen gimmick for Inkvent but now that I’ve got the Pelican pens that seem able to take advantage of my shimmer inks, I’m sure they’ll get used.

Also, it’s got me thinking about painting with fountain pen inks as a way to enjoy them more. I’ve been doing a bunch of watercolour painting by going through lessons in various books I’ve gotten from the library, and it’s been really pleasant and I’m starting to get some paintings I’m proud of even if they’re just duplicating the exercises. Inks are more complicated pigments than I’m used to using but I can learn and experiment. So ink painting might go on next year’s “fiber goals” though it’s a little less fiber-y.

Speaking of fiber, I skipped out on bigger yarn advents but did get the 8 day Chanukah set from ChemKnits again because I love supporting her videos and 8 minis isn’t too much yarn. I haven’t always knit with these right away because I’m usually doing advent stuff that starts earlier in the month, but since this will be among the yarns I have with me when I get on the plane in December, it makes sense to plan some socks in January or something.

I have to actually plan a few months of projects in advance so I have the right yarns and tools on hand during the move. I usually do have rough plans of what I want to knit next, but it’s definitely different when almost all my yarn and half my tools will be packed and on a truck! So far I’ve got a half formed plan to do Grand Opening with a mini set from my stash, but I’ll figure out more soon!

October 2025 Ink Palette & Stickers

October 1, 2025 by Dr. Terri

Happy Spooky Month! I’ve got a lot of Halloween-themed stickers leftover from last year’s Stickii countdown, and I’m slowly trying to make a dent in my ink samples this month.

October 2025 journal supplies. Shows a brown/honey Lochby A5 Field Folio with two notebooks in it, a Lihit Lab pencil case (red), four fountain pens and inks (described in post), 4 sticker sheets, some ink vials and small bottles, and a Leuchtturm1917 softcover journal.

Journal Stuff

My Clairefontaine Triomphe journal is a few pages from done so it’s getting retired this month. (In theory I’ll use the last pages for ink swatching.) I started it in April 2025 so it lasted 6 months. I liked the blank paper ok but didn’t do as much drawing in it as I hoped. Most of the reason was that I got really into writing stories instead so visual art fell by the wayside, and I’m okay with that.

October I’ll be starting a Leuchtturm1917 softcover book from my collection of paper brands I haven’t tried yet. This one reminds me a lot of my beloved Pentalic notebooks that I used to carry everywhere — slightly more rigid cover, big pocket in the back. I’ve heard mixed reviews on the fountain pen experience but I’ve tested my current set of pens in it (including my two broad nibs both of which are currently inked) and while there’s *definitely* ghosting I don’t think it’s going to be a dealbreaker for me. At my current rate of writing this should last around 9 months which is good because I’m moving and there’s a non-zero chance that my other stationary supplies will wind up hard to find for a while, so I didn’t want to use one of the smaller 3-month sized notebooks this time and be scrambling for a new notebook at a time when my office might be still packed or even on a moving truck.

Front cover of the Lochby A5 field folio showing two places A6 sticker sheets can fit (middle pocket and side pocket) and some ink swatches and washi tape in a smaller mesh bottom pocket. There's also a short pocket at the top that is not in use, and a horizontal pen pocket (also not in use, but sits above the journals so sometimes I have my pencil or the day's fountain pen in there). — Front cover of the Lochby A5 field folio showing two places A6 sticker sheets can fit (middle pocket and side pocket) and some ink swatches and washi tape in a smaller mesh bottom pocket. There’s also a short pocket at the top that is not in use, and a horizontal pen pocket (also not in use, but sits above the journals so sometimes I have my pencil or the day’s fountain pen in there).

In September, I picked up a Lochby A5 Field Folio. I’d been eyeing it for a while but couldn’t tell if it would work for me, and finally decided the only way I would know was to try it out. So far it’s going great! This replaces both my green notebook cover and the ghost whale zipper pouch: it keeps my calendar and journal notebooks together and stops them from getting too beaten up when I carry them around in my knitting bag all day. It’s got a more rigid structure so I can write more easily when I don’t have a flat surface (honestly, I rarely write at a desk). And it’s got significantly better pockets for the size of sticker sheets I have (I think the stickii ones are A6). I like that they thought to make the pen pocket be usable even with the notebooks open, although since I keep a pen case and have multiple writing tools going, I only sometimes use it. I’ve had the Field Folio a couple of weeks and things are going great; we’ll see if it starts to feel too heavy once I’ve got the thicker Leuchtturm notebook in there.

Lockby A5 Field folio back cover pckets. A set of A6 sticker sheets is sitting in the half-height pocket with enough sticking out the top that one can see which stickers are there. there's also a pocket on the side that woudl work for stickers or for fitting the back cover of a journal. The fabric is honey yellow/orange and has a honeycomb texture on it. The stickers are somewhat visible through the fabric. — Lockby A5 Field folio back cover pckets. A set of A6 sticker sheets is sitting in the half-height pocket with enough sticking out the top that one can see which stickers are there. there’s also a pocket on the side that woudl work for stickers or for fitting the back cover of a journal. The fabric is honey yellow/orange and has a honeycomb texture on it. The stickers are somewhat visible through the fabric.

Stickers, Fountain Pens, Ink swatches, Ink and some stamps. They're described in more detail in the post.

Stickers & Stamps

All of these are from last year’s stickii halloween countdown. I was tempted to get the new one this year but clearly I have enough halloween stickers for the moment and didn’t need more!

trick or treat kitties from Tiny Yume
More costumed kitties from Moon Attic
Halloween tickets from Asakodraws
Icon squares from Laurelmaeart

Got some black/gold washi tape to go with it, and I also picked up a couple Pilot FriXion stamps to track when I floss my teeth and when I practice singing. It’s taken a bit to get used to how lightly they should be pressed to look their best, but I like them! I have a few others in different colours that I’m not using for specific tracking at the moment, too.

Fountain Pens and Inks: KWZ All That Glitters Firecracker (red-orange with gold shimmer) paired with a Kaweco Sport, Wearingeul Mary Shelly Frankenstein paired with a glow in the dark green TWSBI Eco, Noodler's Southwest Sunset paired with a Hongdian maple leaf pen, and Diamine Pine Needle paired with a Pelikan Pura.

Fountain Pens & Inks

KWZ All That Glitters Firecracker (red-orange with gold shimmer) paired with a Kaweco Sport
Wearingeul Mary Shelly Frankenstein (purple) paired with a glow in the dark green TWSBI Eco <1.1 stub>
Noodler’s Southwest Sunset (orange) paired with a Hongdian maple leaf pen <long blade>
Diamine Pine Needle (green with shimmer) paired with a Pelikan Pura

Trying to make a dent in my ink samples. That Noodler’s sample comes from before I learned more about the company so I won’t be picking up a full sized bottle once it’s done even though the colour is nice. The Wearingeul sample honestly didn’t wow me that much when I used it last year so it’s unlikely to get re-bought either but maybe I’ll like it more this year in a different pen? I think it’s just too dark for my tastes. Unlikely that I finish either this month unless I start using them for painting. (That isn’t actually too far fetched; I’ve been practising watercolour painting techniques from library books!) The Firecracker / Kaweco sport was already inked as kid entertainment for last weekend’s trip.

You might note that this is a rare time when my Pilot E95S isn’t in the line-up: it’s because it’s got a few drops of Aurora Borealis left in it and I’m going to use them up before cleaning and re-inking it.