When I graduated from college, the gift my father gave me was a Mont Blanc pen, which was really special to me. A few years before that, he’d given his brother one and I remember my uncle got very emotional about it. I asked my mom why it was such a big deal, and she said that giving someone a Mont Blanc as a gift was a sign that “you’d arrived”. Somewhere I still have a photo of me opening the box and seeing it for the first time, then hugging him.

While I love the pen and love writing with it, the refill rollerball cartridges aren’t cheap. A while back I found a YouTube video explaining how to refill them, and while it does work, eventually the rollerballs wear out and you have to buy new cartridges again (at least, that’s what I think is happening, or maybe I’m not using the right kind of ink, who knows).

When doing a search for ink, I found the Goulet Pen Company and a few weeks ago I decided to give writing with fountain pens a try for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the informational videos from the Goulet Pen Company are really funny and engaging. So, I bought my first fountain pen, and wow, what a difference.

I’m not going to go into detail about how they work and why they write so nicely as Brian Goulet does a fantastic job of that in his video blog in Fountain Pens 101. But I’m having so much fun with it that I’ve ordered a couple more pens (each has a specific purpose) and I am having a blast playing with them. Writing has become a lot more fun again, which has led me to restart my journaling. I have two that I’m working on right now. One is just some general thoughts on day-to-day things and I don’t know that I’ll ever plan to share that as it’s really more like a diary but the other is kind of a ‘memory book’ where I’m trying to record as much information as I can about my childhood, recollections that I have or stories I was told. An early post that I wrote titled “Fancy Pillows” has some of those memories and stories about my grandparents and events around them. So many of these tidbits just get lost to time, and if they aren’t written down someplace then they’re gone. I’m finding myself really searching my brain to find things to write down since it’s so fun to use the pen. My hope is that someday my niece and nephew will read the book and find out some interesting things about their great- and great-great-grandparents that they didn’t know.

Goulet also sells a TON of different kinds of ink, and I think nearly every color and type comes in a sample size vial that’s 2 ml, so you can try out many different ones until you find something you like. There are “wet” inks and “dry inks”, which sounds odd because aren’t all inks wet? And yes, they are, but what that means is that some bleed through paper more, feather on the edges more, and that kind of thing. If you’re using a fountain pen as a daily writer like I am now, that’s important if you are like me, taking notes on plain old loose-leaf paper. Wet ink bleeding through means I can only write on one side of the paper, so I prefer drier inks.

One of the pens I ordered is called a “dip pen” and as you might guess, it is a pen that you dip into the ink. This one is from a company called Jacques Herbin, and the pen is all glass, each one individually crafted. It has ridges on the clear glass end and as the ink flows down the ridges and is used up, you just redip it again. If you decide you don’t like the color just wipe off with a damp paper towel. No need to refill a whole pen which makes it a great choice for playing around with all the ink samples I’ve gotten so far (too many, really!) Another pen I ordered is one that has a flex nib which allows you to write with both thick and thin lines as well. It writes a little like calligraphy with the variable line width, or you can just keep it as a fine point writer.  I also ordered a book on cursive writing, because apparently this is a lost art. I grew up taking penmanship and writing cursive and was quite surprised to learn that is stopped being required in schools around 2010 (Wikipedia has good info on this) but is now starting to be required again.  One thing that has become very clear to me with all of this, is that writing slowly is key to writing fancier. Here’s a sample of what writing with a flex nib looks like.  I’m using practice calligraphy paper, and if you look closely, you’ll see some bleeding (around the x and the n) due to the paper being cheaper quality and using a wet ink. 

There are so many different pens at all different price points, which I think has my husband slightly concerned. He commented the other day “you’re really getting into this fountain pen thing, aren’t you?” and all I could do was smile and nod my head. Just doing a quick check of their site, the prices start at $3.95 and go all the way up to $16,000! When you purchase one of those, you’re actually getting a one-of-a-kind pen with a barrel crafted by an artisan. I can’t imagine spending that on a pen, but I’m sure someone must or they wouldn’t have them. For now, I’m happy sticking with my entry level starter pens that work really well and learning how to write fancier.