Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 1

For Advent this year, my husband and I decided to further indulge the fountain pen habit that we... not picked up, but enhanced and refined during the pandemic. In 2019 we learned that Diamine has an Advent calendar that they call their "Inkvent" calendar. Diamine is currently my favorite brand of fountain pen ink, given the extensive and beautiful array of colors, including many with shimmering and sheening effects. As they do sell out, we purchased ours well in advance from Dromgoole's, one of our favorite merchants, and a near-local vendor that we took great pleasure in supporting through 2020. Having waited since October, it's time to work our way though the 2021 Inkvent inks! (Drumroll, please!)

Day 1: Seize the Night

The first ink did not disappoint! It is marked "standard," with neither sheen nor shimmer expected. More or less a wine-color, it trends a bit toward purple when less ink is applied. I could imagine it in the lighter shade in my Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen (medium nib). In the large swatch below, you can actually see a little bit of a greenish sheen, which was unexpected.

For testing purposes, I used

• the Pilot Parallel, 6.0 mm (which I used for the wave pattern)
• the Brause blue pumpkin calligraphy nib (a fine nib in a dip pen: kind of scritchy)
• a cotton swab

My favorite of these tools is the Pilot Parallel. I'm not committed to the calligraphy (dip pen) nib, but I'm currently too lazy to try anything else.

The paper is not technically fountain pen paper, but mixed media art paper because I wanted to keep the Inkvent Inks together, preferably on one page. Importantly, it does show sheen and shimmer, so I think it will be okay, although the texture of the paper is a bit rough. Maybe I'll rethink this a bit.

Here were the results!: