Welcome to Issue#32. The summer has reluctantly made way for the monsoon, and we have occasional showers making sure the days are cool and pleasant.

In this issue, we look at an impromptu pen meet, a surprise in an ink bottle package and a new favourite old pen.

It’s always fun to meet fellow fountain pen enthusiasts. So when work took me to Bengaluru, I had the lovely experience of being part of a mini pen meet!

Arun, Karthik and I met up in a café on Church Street - we decided which one by walking around looking for a place that wasn’t dimly-lit!

We spent a few hours swapping fountain pen stories and trying out the pens each of us had brought. Some lovely and rare pieces were explored - some of the stories behind the pens were equally interesting. If this meet was anything to go by, Bengaluru is ripe for regular pen meets - hopefully a monthly meet up on the lines of our Hyderabad one would be lovely. Here’s to Arun and Karthik carrying the torch forward!

One of the outcomes of the pen meet was that Karthik gifted me a bottle of Sailor Ink Studio 440. It’s a lovely blue, and my first Sailor Ink Studio ink. As you might already have guessed, the inkspoon was put to work to get this lovely swatch.

Now, as this is my first Ink Studio bottle, there was a little feature it had that I had no idea about, and I was so thrilled when I discovered what it was.

The box in which the bottle came in had a small user guide and a little sticker sheet. This had 4 tiny stickers with the ink name on it. The purpose of these stickers was to use them to label your convertor so you know what ink its filled with. As simple as this idea is, I was quite thrilled by it as I have never come across this before.

Compare this with the Lamy ink bottles - the ink name is mentioned nowhere on the bottle or the box, and you have to depend on the retailer’s price sticker to figure out what colour you have.

When I mentioned this to my wife, a confirmed non-fountain pen user, her question was why this is not a standard feature on all inks. I now wonder the same too!

The Sheaffer inlaid nib has fascinated me for the longest time, and I have been on the lookout for a gold one. So when one came up for sate, especially as it was in a really striking pen, I jumped at the opportunity and acquired it. Now, this is a well-used pen and has all signs of that usage. However, it writes beautifully and I am absolutely thrilled by it.

The large 14-carat diamond-shaped gold nib is exactly what has captivated me. It has a fine tip, and writes with the lightest touch.

The cap and barrel have a shiny gold diamond pattern cut into them. This reflects the light at different angles, and makes the pen sparkle in the sunlight.

There is a crown stamped into the cap-band, which I am guessing denotes that this is the Sovereign model, but I could be mistaken.

And of course, the Sheaffer name is emblazoned on the cap band as well.

From whatever I could find out, this pen could have been manufactured at any time from the 1970s to the 1990s. It is a beautiful piece, and is definitely going to be a permanent part of my collection.

We are in the last few hours of being able to sign up for this year’s Pelikan Hub. If you have been thinking about it, now is the time to complete your registration.

We have a bunch of us signed up in Hyderabad, and we’re really looking forward to a vibrant Hub this year - hopefully our largest yet!

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.

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