Delight in Cacography

I kind of went crazy buying fountain pens after COVID-19 hit a few years ago. It was a lot of fun trying out so many pens—from $2 pens to a few $600 pens and many more priced in between

I’ve now sold most of them on eBay, but I still have plenty of pens. I kept most of my Leonardo and Lamy pens, and I still have numerous cheap Chinese fountain pens that aren’t worth enough to sell on eBay. Maybe I’ll send a whole bunch together as a single offer.

Not surprisingly, they sold for less than the price I originally bought them at. But I got a fair amount back, especially for the higher-end pens.

I still have enough ink to last several lifetimes, along with many empty notebooks and a library’s worth of paper.

Now I just have to resist buy more pens, ink, and/or paper at the upcoming Colorado Pen Show.

Just a quick note regarding the “Quick brown fox” pangram that’s been used for so long. It’s boring. There’s a much better phrase that uses each letter of the alphabet.

Grumpy wizards make a toxic brew for the jovial queen.

This pangram comes from Garry Eves’, who has an excellent YouTube channel. All credit goes to him. You can find his videos at https://www.youtube.com/garryeves

Hi Pen Fans! I’m throwing my two bits on fountain pens, inks, paper, and related sundries. Hopefully, someone will find my comments interesting, perhaps amusing, and hopefully, at times, helpful.

The short bio: I’ve always been a fan of fountain pens. I grew up in Germany, where fountain pens remain a primary writing device. However, my handwriting has always been.. cacographic.  well, hence the name of this blog. So I occasionally flirted with fountain pens, but it never fully stuck.

I remained an outside observer until about two years ago when the interest in fountain pens kicked in with a vengeance. Since then, I’ve acquired too many pens and far too many inks (and many types of paper), all while having a great time.

Over the next few months, I hope to participate and share – really, to give something back to the pen community, even though it’ll only be a fraction of what I’ve gotten out of the great collection of people out there, public and private, who share the same passion for FPIP (Fountain Pens, Inks, and Papers – Just made that up. No doubt there’s a better acronym.)

My first bottles. Now I’m up to three boxes of bottles alone. Don’t get me started on how many sample vials I have.

Here’s a few peculiarities about me and pens:

• With few exceptions, I only acquire purple pens (this includes lilac, violet, lavender, and other related colors & shades)
• With more exceptions, it’s the same with inks
• I don’t draw, color, do calligraphy, or do anything visually artistic with fountain pens. I write down words.
• I test a lot of papers (not anywhere as many as John @ Fountain Pen Love, though. He’s the fountain pen paper guru.) So I hope to tell you more about that soon.

And because we’re all into lists (thanks a lot Bullet Journal and Buzzfeed! /s), here’s a short one to start off with.

• Favorite nib size: Medium
• Favorite nib grind: Architect
• Favorite type of ink: Shimmer
• Favorite paper size: A5

Yes, I’ll make this site look a bit better, even if that does cut into my fountain pen time.

Oh, and I’m left-handed. More soon!