Thawing April 2026, Ink & Life & Space Dragons
We’re in the tail end of winter according to the birds, though there’s still chunks of snow in the shade and every time we think it might be warm for good we get a little bonus freezing rain. Still, it’s nice to feel the change of the seasons even when it feels like only a tentative moment of warmth.
Three sheets of stickers: cute dragons, large botanicals and weather icons, an ivory covered MD notebook, three ink swatches (Diamine Tundra [grey], Diamine Mint Twist [green with blue shimmer], and Pennoia Selyempezgo [peach]) and fountain pens (Kaweco Liliput, Pelikan Pura, Pilot E95S).
Stickers
Inks & Fountain Pens
The pennoia ink was a random sample from a fountain pen order a while ago, the other two are both last year’s inkvent.
New Notebook Month!
After many months, I’m bidding farewell to my Leuchtterm notebook, which I started back in October with the plan that it would see me through the move. It saw me through 6 incredibly stressful months with medical emergencies on top of the expected move, but we’ve made it out the other side and that’s worth celebrating!
Green Leuchtterm softcover notebook with a bee sticker from The Latest Kate that reads “It’s enough to bee here just as you are”
I liked the Leuchtterm notebook better than expected — it was nice not having to write my own page numbers, and it packs a decent amount of pages into a small size. I did eventually get used to the ghosting but I didn’t love it. Still, it’s a relief to go back to something smaller so my journalling setup is considerably lighter.
The new notebook is an MD Paper grid notebook. Cheap and 40-some pages instead of 120-some. I usually prefer dot over grid but I wanted to try this because the lines looked light enough that it would be pleasant, and so far it’s working nicely and they don’t feel in the way. I don’t think I’ve shown a monthly spread in a while so here it is in the new notebook:
April 2026 spread in my journal, showing tracking for my yearly creative goals, fountain pens, a calendar, and a set of todo list spaces.
My monthly spreads have gotten fairly utilitarian since most of my smaller tracking and notes go on the monthly calendar now that I have space for that. I still find doing a monthly tracking of the creative goals is useful, and I’m so-so on the todo lists: I use this page so I don’t forget things that I should do this week but don’t have to be done today. Sometimes everything goes on the day’s todo list and gets done within a day or two so this page isn’t needed. But other times it’s the only way important-but-non-urgent tasks get done, so it’s staying for now.
I don’t keep a separate commonplace book of quotes and instead just write down quotes in my journal. Here’s the one from the book I finished this morning:
A quote which reads,
“The galazy is big & we are small,” I said. “It makes sense to help each other, when we can.”
– Space Dragons: Cosmic Survivors by Veo Corva
I love Veo Corva’s Space Dragons series. Book two feels especially in the moment, since a lot of it is about trying to figure out what the right thing is that you should be doing, and then doing it even if you’re scared or angry or not ready or don’t know how to make it happen. And as is a common theme across these books, it’s about finding your people. But also it’s about a society where space ships are pulled by dragons and if that’s not enough of a pitch I don’t know what else to tell you. Plus there’s crochet in this one! https://veocorva.xyz/books/ for more.
And speaking of crafts and space travel, here’s how my latest knitting is going:
Time of the Doctor Scarf, a Doctor Who themed scarf with Gallifreyan style circle-text. It has been knit in ivory and dark teal yarn, and there is a a bright orange/yellow batik project bag and a pom pom sitting beside it.
I’m getting close to the end of chart 3 out of 10. This is going to be a gift for John but I’m not sure it’s even going to be ready in time for *next* winter at this rate! It’s one that nees a fair bit of attention so it’s a bit much if I want to read, but it’s been okay for work meetings when I don’t have to participate much (we have a lot of talks on how to use new internal tools).
Notes from March
Ink Swatches from March 2026 (described below)
Three of these inks were new last month so here’s some notes:
I might have a post up soon about some pens I inherited from my grandfather that I’m trying out, but I think that it’ll be its own thing!
#FountainPens #InkSwatch #knitting #Life
Swatch Wednesday: Colorverse Black Hole
This was a gift from a friend who said it was more for the fun little bottle than anything exciting about the ink. It’s a pretty cute little bottle and I didn’t have one since I think the only colorverse ink I have is a sample.
Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is the front view showing the bit sticking out on one side. The illustration has a stylized black hole and a little planet saying “SOS” on it.
Love that little picture on the front. The bottle has a teardrop shaped base which I guess makes it a bit less likely to tip over and mostly just makes it interesting.
Colorverse Black Hole ink bottle, which has an unusual teardrop shaped base. This is thebottom view showing the teardrop shape, though it sits nice and flat because of the flat label on the front.
Inside, the ink is as one expects, a pleasant black. There’s a tiny bit of sheen visible in the swatch on the right, and indeed I can see that in my writing occasionally if I look at it under a sufficiently bright light, but it’s more a cute coincidence than a regular feature of the ink on the paper I’m using. Might be fun to try it on the iroful paper to see if it happens more consistently there; my current notebook is a leuchtterm.
My swatch card for Colorverse Black Hole, a black ink with a tiny hint of sheen in the bigger swatches.
I’m not too worried about getting the sheen to show up more, though, since the only other black ink bottle I have is a black with sheen from Inkvent Black (uuuh, Good Tidings I think it was called?). I’m guessing that Black Hole dries quicker, though I didn’t actually test that. I did, however, have some fun painting with it in the margins of my journal.
Some margin patterns in my notebook using Colorverse Black Hole ink on a paintbrush. One side has curly vine-like shapes, the other a geometric zig-zag with partial triangles.
Fun bottle and a nice practical ink. Overall a very nice present! And I think this is the last ink bottle or sample I had that I hadn’t swatched in my collection, so I’m all caught up and there’s no ink purchases on my horizon until the weather warms up, and maybe not even then — I’ve got so much to play with now!
#FountainPens #InkSwatch #stationery #SwatchWednesday
September 2025 Ink & Pen palette
Back to school for my kiddo! And I bought the Pelikan Pura to replace my Pelikan Twist and I have zero regrets.
Here’s this month’s stationary supplies:
Stickers
These were the intersection of being a little bit back to school-ish and also having the right colour vibe to go with the inks I wanted.
Paper Products
I already talked about my new calendar for the year, a Campus free monthly diary. It worked great with the fountain pen I used for numbers in September so I’m pretty happy with it so far, and I’ve got it slotted into the green cover (pictured above) on the opposite site of my current journal. Because they’re slotted in opposite sides rather than using strings or clips in the middle, there’s a bit of a gap in the centre. I was worried this would be a problem for writing but so far it seems to be fine. I’ll try some ink testing with dip pens on the back pages when I next do swatching.
Three fountain pens and inks: Pilot Elite E95S with Diamine Aurora borealis, Pelikan Pura with Diamine Snow Globe, Pelikan Twist with Diamine Winterberry. The latter two have sparkles.Fountain Pens and Inks
The theme of this month is “omg I finally have pens that work with shimmer ink“. I loved these colours in the Inkvent 2024 calendar but was worried I woudln’t be able to use them.
Since my blog post about the Pelikan Twist I managed to find someone selling the particular model of Pelikan Pura that I’d fallen for with the broad nib I wanted at a sale price, so I decided to jump on it even though I’m unemployed and should probably not be buying $100 pens. But I *love* this pen as much as I hoped I would and it fills a gap in my collection so I don’t feel like I made the wrong choice. The Pelikan Pura anniversary design with the little Y geometric snowflake shape and the pretty teal colour is fantastic, and obviously I’m very excited about having a feed that doesn’t clog up with sparkle. It has a round grip so no issues with that (the way there were with the Twist’s odd triangular grip). I expect this pen will be inked almost constantly since it will likely be my sparkle pen going fowards, and I have a lot of sparkle inks from Inkvent to use. Honestly, this pen jumped immediately into second place in my collection (behind my beloved Pilot Elite).
After this month, the Twist will probably go back to being relegated as a sometimes pen because of the annoying triangle pen, although I’ve been playing with a coil grip thing on it that helps a bit and we’ll see how I feel about it after a month of use.
Main St. Marmalade ink from Ferris Wheel Press.
It looks much tanner in this picture than it looks to my eye. I even tried in a couple of different lights but it wasn’t cooperating.
It is a little more orange/peach color than it shows in this picture.
It is a pretty color but a little too light for longer writing for me. I got it in the Twilight Garden charger set.
Terri K O 🍁
Dr. Terri
Parker51
K.R. Paradis
Allyson Shaw