The Goulet Pen Company and Anticipation

One of the things I love most about my obsession with pen, paper and ink revolves around ordering. There are no local stores that carry the things I want so I must (!) pour over internet pages from online companies. What a joy that is! My first discovery years ago was Pendemonium but they turned more to the collectors side of things, next came Pen City in Georgia (their site is down right now) and then Jet Pens, a choice that was reinforced by The Pen Addict, Brad Dowdy. That site is where I discovered the delights of pencil cases and bags. Now each day I not only have to decide which pens to take, I must agonize over which bag or pencil case is needed.

There's a new company I stumbled across and want to try, the Goulet Pen Company. I've been shifting things in and out of the basket for several days, getting closer to the time when I hit the buy button. Such hard decisions although in two cases not. I want to try a Noodlers flex nib pen with - wait for it - piston fill! Yes, a cheap fountain pen that doesn't require a converter. Yay. Another thing I want to try is Clairefontaine's French lined paper. I think that might be just the thing for italic handwriting practice. For the rest, I am still undecided. Delicious anticipation, oh how I love thee.

Italic Nibs

To improve my handwriting, I decided to learn a little calligraphy. The book I took from off the library shelf was called The Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting: Cursive and Calligraphic by Fred Eager and it clicked with me, so much so that I bought my own copy. I admire people who can do calligraphy but all I really wanted was a legible hand plus be able to write names on certificates and have them look good. Italic handwriting seemed to fit the bill.

And that led to my discovery of italic nibs. The combination of thin and thick lines just does it for me. It seems to me that they are even more finicky than the pointed nibs, however. Still, when the ink, paper and feed is right it is a glorious thing and sure to charm adults and children alike. I have never bought a custom ground nib. My experience is with the cheap Pilot Plumix, Pelikan calligraphy pens, Manuscript, Schafer and one disasterous Parker Frontier pen that was recommended to me but never worked well.

Now when my handwriting becomes impossible for me to decipher, much less the public, I pick up my old Fred Eager book, a pen with an italic nib and practice until my handwriting is once again legible. I'd like to find a piston fill pen with an italic point. I'm sure they exist.

Pelikan Go!

The first fountain pen I fell in love with was the Pelikan Go! I began using one maybe 13 years ago or so during graduate school when I discovered that writing with a fountain pen was a lot easier on the fingers than using a ball point pen. Less pressure is needed and that's a good thing when one is doing a lot of writing.

The Pelikan Go! can still be found on eBay only now they sell for double what I paid. I believe that one can get picked up for somewhere in the mid in the mid $20s now. That still qualifies as a cheap pen, in my book.

The pen has a medium nib and refills from a bottle of ink by twisting the end of the pen (piston fill). It is a real pleasure to have a pen that doesn't need cartridges or converters. I wish more pens on the lower end would include that. Just put the nib in the bottle and twist. It is much easier than refilling a cartridge with a syringe or dealing with a converter.

My Pelikan Go lays down a medium line. I prefer a thicker line but I believe that fine nibs are available, too. Just remember that it is the German idea of "fine" rather than the Japanese. The nib glides smoothly on most paper, except for a few exceptions. I had a red ink once that did not do well in the pen. Still this was the pen that converted me to love fountain pens. It is a good dependable German made pen.

Moleskine & Clairefontaine

I like Moleskine. I like the convenience of examining & buying it at local stores rather than having to send off for it like I had to do with my Clairefontaine notebooks. I like the pocket, the color of the paper, the hard back & the band that keeps my 4 X 6 notebook shut. If I never wrote with fountain pens, I expect that I would think the surface of the paper is just fine but I do like using fountains pens & a lot of different colors. Last night I tested the Moleskine paper against a larger, spiral bound Clairefontaine notebook paper using cheap fountain pens.

Just by running the tip of a finger over the two, I could tell a difference. The Clairefontaine paper is much smoother. There is probably a term for that! I got out a handful of cheap Pilot Plumix pens with italic nibs which I bought from Target while they still had them.

Note to self: discuss converters someday.

The more expensive pens I used were two Lamy Safari fountain pens & a 1980s Pelikan fountain pen I ordered years ago off eBay. The poor thing is probably on its last legs. The cap doesn't stay on anymore so the ink dries out & then it is a pain to get it going again. In its time, it was beloved.

As for ink, I used all kinds & all colors in converters. Some pens were nearly empty, some full. The conclusion? The pens that were draggy on the Moleskine, slid across the page much better on the Clairefontaine. Some doodles I drew & colored soaked through several pages of the Moleskine but with the better paper of Clairefontaine, the ink only barely showed on the other side.

& there you have it, Clairefontaine paper wins but I still like Moleskine.

Pen, Pencils, Inks, Paper, & &

First post! There is nothing like a clean sheet of paper, is there? That moment of anticipation...sometimes it is a bit difficult to lay down the first mark, I confess, & here I have a clean blog. The best thing about a blog though is that if I don't like what I've written, I hit the delete button.

I'm a librarian by profession. I like & enjoy pens, pencils, inks, paper, & writing & I am also of the opinion that the ampersand needs to be added back into the alphabet. About the thorn, I'm undecided. It is handy but a little too close to the Y after all. Some of the other letters we could probably do without, don't you think? Well, that can be explored in another post.

I'm no great expert, don't think that. I just want to write about what I like. & so I will. :)