Hello and welcome to Issue#38.

A lot has been going on in the Fountain Pen world, and a lot of anguish and heartache surrounds the main drama, which I have been following, and have some thoughts on, but will not inflict them on you just yet.

This issue is a Pelikan special - what with the Hub and the ink it brought with it. So, without much further ado, let’s get into it!

Like the rest of the world, we had the Hyderabad Pelikan Hub 2024 this past Friday.

We had about 25 attendees, and much fountain pen fun was had by all. Even though we meet every month for a Fountain Pen Club meeting, the Pelikan Hub brings everyone together at once, and it was no different this time.

As you might know if you have been reading this newsletter regularly, I’m an ink fiend and have derived much satisfaction from using spoons for making ink swatches. This Hub, we all had the experience as we got spoons for everyone to use with the inks in the Ink Bar we had set up. I do believe we have a few converts to Inkspoon usage!

We dispensed with the speeches and lectures that some other hubs seem to have organised and got right to it - generally going around and meeting each other and talking fountain pens. Our first arrivals were before six o’ clock, and it was almost ten by the time we wound up.

As with any good Hub, we also ended up with a few more members joining the Hyderabad Fountain Pen Club!

The ink given away at the Pelikan Hub was this year’s ink of the year, Golden Lapis. A blue ink with copious golden shimmer, this ink has two avatars. Like Superman and Clark Kent, the raging shimmer makes for a spectacular Superman-type ink, while if you wait for the shimmer to settle down in the bottle and use the ink from the top without the shimmer, you get a mild-mannered Clark Kent of an ink. The blue without the gold is quite a nice one - a rich royal blue with a hint of red sheen in large swatches.

I present to you swatches and writing samples of both the avatars for your viewing pleasure.

First up, the Superman avatar. The shimmer is so much that after it dries, it sheds like a long-haired Golden Retriever in the summer. This is not just in large swatches like this, but even with a page full of writing.

The Clark Kent avatar without the shimmer, but is a beautiful royal blue that is appropriate even for the most formal official purposes - I daresay you can even sign a treaty with it! Which is quite unbelievable if you’ve seen its Superman avatar!

Golden Lapis, with its two contrasting avatars, is the perfect candidate to be called business at the top, party at the bottom!

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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