Penophilia!

[susie_flo]

Good morning dearest fiendlets!

It's the loveliest day of the week, and you just KNOW you want to waste time on t'internet.

So hows about telling me your views on all things pen? I can't be the only pen fetishist hanging around these parts...

In your opinion, which is the best all-round classic pen? (The sort you like to carry in your top pocket/handbag?)   Are you a Fountainie or a Ballpointie? A Rollerballie or a Gellie? Disposables or Refillables? Posh and long-lasting or Cheap and variable? Are you a Mont Blanc/Waterman connossieur? Do you like to branch out into (gasp) coloured inks?

I do so love pens.  When G and I first met I was having a 'phase' on gel pens. (You should have seen the look he gave me when mad Job-Seekers Pauline in the League of Gentlemen exclaimed "Pens are my friends!")

Since my student days I've nursed a soft spot for the Parker Jotter classic ballpoint ... one of those pens that is just expensive enough to come in a plastic case and count as a keeper, but still under a tenner. And the cartridges last for ever. These days it remains my crossword pen of choice.  However... yesterday I found myself in my work stationery shop and had my head turned by the slightly posher shininess of the Parker Jotter Gel Pen. This costs a whole extra £2, but I threw caution to the wind and bought one. What can I say... I am in love. The smoothness! The rich inky blueness! Get one now, I tell thee!

My primary school had a rule that all of the children in the upper school had to write in italic font using a fountain pen.  I can still remember the delight of being taken to a stationer (aka Ollivanders) to buy my very first fountain pen and a bottle of Quink.  Since then I've had various fads on fountain pens... especially ones with lurid coloured inks.  I once discovered a shop that sold little metal cannisters full of non-standard ink cartidges. I went a bit mad and was able to spend a year writing in sepia, purple, teal and various shades of green and red.  (According to one of my colleagues, anyone who writes with green ink is mad.  Oh dear.)

A couple of years ago I bought G a vintage Parker 51 fountain pen with matching pencil. I managed to find one in the original 40s case that looks like something you'd see on a fat cat movie producer's desk in a black and white movie. As it turns out, there is some serious interweb fanhood for this pen... and if you combine it with a Moleskin notebook is is a veritable cult.

So anyway... tell me about pens. What do you love? What should I try next?

(Or alternatively... should I give up pen-love, on the basis that I now type 99% of my correspondence and can no longer do legible handwriting? I fear it may be only a few years before I lose the ability to hold a pen altogether...)

Edited for shocking typos!

Comments

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Ah!

I'd really like an ink pen that works (the last one I bought leaked) as despite the childhood trauma of learning to use one while being left-handed, they did slide across the paper in a way that ballpoints simply don't.

I love my high-contrast Pilot hi-tec v5 and use them wherever possible. (Or v7 if you want something really spidery.) I like the high contrast definition of the deep black against the paper.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Those Pilot V5s are much beloved of pen and ink artists. (I seem to recall having a little fad on them myself). I agree about deep black ink on white paper. Nice.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

At Primary School we all wrote in pencil until the third year juniors, at which point we all moved on to fountain pens (ballpoints were declasse), nost of us using those massive Schaeffer ones. We all used tipp-ex and ink eradicator pens, and all was well. Then I went to secondary scool where fountain pens and tipp ex were banned becasue we couldn't be trusted not to make a mess. Huh?

I have a parker jotter attached to my filofax, I have a waterman that I love but can never remember which jacket I've left it in. Day to day at work I use a Pilot V-Pen, the disposable fountain pen.

My handwriting is still illegible, though.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I think mine was a giant Shaeffer too, at Primary School. (You could never get the ink to write properly over tippex)

I might have a brief dalliance with the Pilot V-pen at some point..

[stimpy-lfs.livejournal.com]

I love to write with Quink (blue-black, always) and an italic nib, but being left handed, I invariably smudge the words I've just written.

"Pens are friends" - excellent....

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

There's something lovely about the shape of the Quink bottles too :-)

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

According to one of my coleagues, anyone who writes with green ink is mad

I once met a woman from Channel 4 at a party who said that there was a term they used to describe a certain type of person who wrote in about certain tv shows (the example she used was people compaining about the scheduling of Babylon 5, which shows you how long ago this was). That term was 'The Green Ink Brigade' as so many of them wrote in green ink (to stand out from the other letters I assume). Pretty much any letter in green ink turned out to be from someone ... let's say on the ... eccentric end of the scale

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

G reminded me this morning that he once wrote a story that opens with a letter written in green ink... with similar connotations to those you mention!

I Love Pens

[whiteshadow.livejournal.com]

Like you we had to use a "ink pen" at school, I managed to get away for a couple of years by using one of these for my coursework, probably the best pens I ever owned.

Now being a little old and wiser normally use a pilot pen which write beautifully.

I was also given a lovely ultra slim Cross pen some years back ... it's so slim you can't actually hold it to write anything with it!

Re: I Love Pens

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I can see that you lot all love your Pilot V5s. Perhaps Parker has a contender for pen-love...

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Oh yes indeed, those who write in green ink are indeed mentalists.
I too am left handed and prefer to write my proper diary in real ink (it also has to be in a spiral bound a5 lined notebook) but alas I cannot find an affordable proper fountain pen apart from the disposable ones but I want to be able to fill it from a real bottle of lovely shiny ink. It has to be black or purple ink.

I' am also a lover of cheap biros (sometimes you get one with a lovely writing action and then I'm gutted when it runs out) and propelling pencils

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

"It has to be black or purple ink."
Cough[Goth!]Cough :-)

I agree that cheap ballpoints often have lovely writing action and can inadvertently become your fav pen (such as the hideous freebie ones that you get at corporate events)

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

These days I generally use Muji gel pens, if I'm not in close proximity to a free one advertising some web outfit or DNA cloning kits.

My handwriting has always been abysmal - at secondary school I had to have extracurricular handwriting lessons because although what I was writing seemed excellent, nobody could actually be that sure. As a result I used fountain pens throughout my school career because they slowed me down enough to make my words legible. There was a phase of bluey-purple ink that I found in Tuthill-Nicholls in Liverpool, but these days I don't write enough to justify spending money on ink... although sometimes I'm tempted.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh my word, inky goodness! (Now I'm tempted too...)

[tvted.livejournal.com]

Alas...I love a good pen. I in fact love fountain pens and thank you to my dear PR friend Richard own 3 hideously expensive Waterman pens. The only problem is that with my left handyness I find fountain pens really hard to use...hence the reason they have no ink in them.

Plus can't have good pens at work in case some jerk steals them and I can't be frigged to lock my desk.

So for work its gel pens but in the time of credit crunch frugleness the stationary cupboard only has 'cheap pens' like I use to use in university....WELL THOSE days are over.....OVER I TELL YOU!!! I shall never use a cheap pen again.

So bought my own. believe it or not you can be frugal and still have a good gel pen.

I can't stand a pen that splotches or leaves too much ink on the page. THat in combo with being left handed means you end up with smeared ink everywhere.

My classic pen experience was when I was attending a meeting with a bunch of head honchos, had a pen in my hand whilst wearing an off white lacy top thing. ....unbeknownst to me I had the end pointing my boob and it was open....hence pen scrawls all over my one boob. Any anyone who knows me will know that involved alot of pen and was really noticable. I had to walk around all day (this was of course first thing in the morning) with my red and black clutched to my chest.

My fav pen as a kid was one of those big ones that had the 4 different colours and you got to click them alot.

As a grown up ..it has sepia ink on some lovely high quality off white paper.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I agree about the crappy cheap pens at work... (I too have started to buy my own work pens!)

Sepia ink is rather lovely... such a shame nobody writes letters any more. Maybe we should start a trend.

As for your several Watermans... I am impressed! I used to go out with a guy who liked looking at posh pens in the shops. He dithered about Waterman, but I think in the end he bought himself a Mont Blanc costing several hundred squidoos.

[tvted.livejournal.com]

I think the key thing is that I didn't actually BUY the watermans...Richard 'procured' them for me in his PR capacity.