New Toys

My dear, naive sister took all my blathering about fountain pens to heart and bought a few to try out. She didn’t like them, and offered them to me. I got them last Thursday.

What was in the box?

1. A neon pink Lamy Safari with a fine nib, plus a converter to go with it. Yeah, it’s a chick color, but I love the Safari model. I cleaned it out and filled it with Franklin Cristoph Red 182 ink.
2. A fuschia/pink Nemosine Singularity with an extra fine nib and a converter. This one will is now inked with Waterman Tender Purple.
3. A 50ml bottle of Lamy black ink. (I now have five different black inks, not including Parker or Nemosine cartridges, but one can never have too much black ink.)
4. Extra Nemosine nibs, consisting of a standard medium and two different widths of calligraphy nibs. As you well know, I don’t do medium nibs, and my chicken scratch is not conducive to calligraphy, so I will probably try to find a new home for those.
5. A gray (gunmetal) Nemosine Neutrino with a metal body, also with an extra fine nib and a converter.

This is my first experience with Nemosine pens. I had to ask my mentor about them when I found out that they were on the way. She had nice things to say, and my experience agrees with that assessment. Both are attractive, but the Neutrino is a particularly pretty pen. It’s not as awesome in appearance as my Parker Sonnet, but it’s quite nice. The major difference is that the gray seems to be a coating or paint of some sort, likely to be slightly less robust than the (probably) electroplated Parker.

If she had offered them to me a few weeks earlier, she may very well have saved me delayed my spending of $100+ between the Parker Sonnet and the Platinum 3776. The Neutrino is ideal for what I bought those to be – a reliable, attractive pen with a conservative, professional appearance that is nice enough to be appropriate when wearing something nicer than jeans and a t-shirt.

Not only is it a pretty pen, but it writes very well. It was still inked, who knows how long after Sis set it aside. It took off right out of the box – no hesitation, no skipping. It’s smooth and a true extra fine. It also has a feature that I had never seen before. The trim near the tip of the barrel is actually threaded. The cap screws on when posted. I prefer screw caps over pull caps, and making a threaded barrel to secure the cap while posted is a nice bonus.

In other news, my Sonnet has returned. It is now fitted with what Parker claims is an extra fine nib. Just like Lamy, Parker’s XF is barely a fine, but it is a huge improvement over its original equipment magic marker width “fine”. Like its predecessor, however, it dries out enough to produce a momentary skip if left uncapped and unused for more than a minute or two.  Otherwise, I’m happy with it. Which one of the three (Platinum, Parker or Nemosine) I choose for the rare occasions when I wear nice clothes will probably depend on my mood more than anything. They are all beautiful, quality pieces.