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 ...was yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post this before going to bed. 

I won this fountain pen in an online auction. Not my first vintage pen, but the first I bought online.



What happened was: I was bemoaning that while I had a Chenqing pen to go with my WWX notebook, I still didn't have a great pen to match my LWJ notebook. @tunalaq.twitter suggested looking for something that echoed the look of his guqin, to follow the theme, so I typed in "pinstripe fountain pen" to see what would come up. This...obviously isn't what I was going for, but I thought it was really neat.

Arnold pens were apparently the cheap knockoff of their day, so I wasn't expecting anything in perfect condition. Almost surprisingly, the sac appears to be intact. But the feed doesn't really work--it doesn't bring the ink to the nib. The nib itself is great, though! It's a flex nib, and I've been wanting to have one of those for a while, and so far, it seems to work fine in my Moonman pen. I'd be pretty happy with this purchase if the nib was the only thing I got out of it.



But I'm not going to stop there--look at this:



Those two sections look the same size...I wonder if I could make a frankenpen?

 A little over a year ago, I realized that it was much easier for me to avoid distractions while writing if I didn't write at a computer. At the same time, I started collecting fountain pens. I like to choose ink colors based on the mood of what I'm writing or the characters I'm writing about. Some people say that writing with fountain pens improves their handwriting. Can't say I've noticed that effect, but I'm not particularly trying for it. It is easier on the wrist though! Mostly, I just think they're neat. 


Left to right: (modified) Platinum Preppy, Pilot Metropolitan, Ohto Tasche, Jinhao 1000, Faber-Castell Basic, Wing Sung 3008, and Parker Inflection. None of these are super fancy--the Parker would've been the most expensive if I'd bought it new, but I got it secondhand at a pen show.

So--just for fun, a handwriting meme. Leave a comment with a quote, song lyric, or you can ask for a line from one of my WIPs, and I'll write it out in the pen of your choice!