Welcome to Issue#41. After a long hiatus, I am back - and here is what we have been working on!

We’re happy to announce the launch of an enthusiast-focused brand - starting with three products and a few more in the pipeline. Additionally, we have a couple of ink swatches, and wonder where a usual visitor at this time is.

This past Sunday, we launched Esen - a brand focused on enthusiasts and hobbyists. The idea is to bring together products that enthusiasts want, but are not necessarily available easily.

We have started with three products:

Inka Inks Palapitta Eeka: Inka is our ink brand, and Palapitta Eeka is our first ink. This is an everyday-use vibrant blue that dries quickly and washes out easily. This is a single-batch limited-edition ink to kick off Inka Inks, It is manufactured for us by Dr Sreekumar of Krishna Inks.

3-Pen Pouch: An easy-to-use pen pouch that can hold up to three big pens. With a protective outer cover and a soft velvet interior, these protect your pens whether you toss them in your everyday carry bag or leave them on your desk. Available in three patterns. These are handstitched in Hyderabad and made to our specifications with high-quality, hard-wearing materials.

Pocket Protector: A staple of lab-coat users worldwide, these protect your pocket from ink-spills and clip misbehaviour, all the while protecting your pens from the other contents of your pockets. While these are commonly available in many places, India is not one of them, which is why we sourced them and made them available at a reasonable price.

All of these can be seen at our website - esengear.com

At this point, we’re able to ship only within India.

Krishna Chennai and Sufi are two of my favourite inks. so naturally, when we had a conversation about them on one of the fountain pen groups last week, I had to swatch both of them. Here are the results for your viewing pleasure.

It’s the end of May and there is no sign of the Pelikan Hubs yet. All the usual sources of information are silent, and the only thing that is seen is speculation. And none of it is good.

Last year, by this time, we had all signed up for our hubs. While this year, we do have our fingers crossed, the general expectation seems to be that there won’t be a Hub this year, with a fair number of folks speculating that there will be no more Pelikan Hubs.

Share your take on fountain pens and related things in one (or more!) of our upcoming issues.

Any and all content you share will belong to you and will be credited to your name (or a pen name of your choice) and linked to any of your online profiles. Ideal content would be a write-up between 200 and 400 words with 1 to 5 images.

Here are a few things that can go in the Fountain Pen Weekly:

• Pen / ink / paper ownership experience

• Favorites in FP, ink, paper etc.

• Your social handles with your FP content - Insta, FB, Twitter, Reddit

• Any FP-related content you want to call out - articles, podcasts, videos.

If you have any other ideas as well, do share, and I will be happy to think about it.

That’s all from me this week.

Questions? Feedback? Just hit reply on this email or write in at [email protected]