Category: writing

I wasn’t actually intending to write this, but I’ve been going on and on about this pen and ink for at least two hours, so I figured maybe it was something that was worth writing a little bit about here–in part because I am at least at the moment mildly obsessed.

So, here’s the story.

For the last few weeks as I’ve been browsing Facebook, I’ve been seeing ads for a fountain pen subscription service. Now let’s be honest, Facebook doesn’t always have the best algorithm when it comes to me, but I kept tripping over this ad enough to be at least a little intrigued. So I clicked, I looked, and got a little curious. This particular company (Truphae, for those curious) is a business that apparently started from the husband’s fascination with fountain pens and he and his wife leveraged it into a really neat business model. They’ve got a few levels on their subscription boxes. On that initial visit, I browsed the site, was like ‘huh, that’s cool,’ and moved on, not ready to take the plunge yet.

Then, last week, I happened to see the ad again. They were running a special on the subscription service so I was finally “well, why not?” and took the plunge. The option I picked includes a budget-level fountain pen and a full pot of ink. What’s the harm, right? I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d get but it was worth a try for a couple months to see how I felt about it.Holy crap, let me tell you, this was better than I expected on so many levels.

When you hear “budget fountain pen” I’m sure you’re thinking like I did: “something super lightweight and super inexpensive as fountain pens go.” Well, the last part was fairly on point (the pen I got in my box retails under $25 most places as a basic cartridge pen, anyway – this one is modified so you can easily refill it from ink bottles) but the quality on this pen is much more than I expected. The casing is all metal and it’s a heavy pen–heavy to the point that I set the cap aside when I’m using it instead of letting it perch on the back of the pen like you usually would. It was extremely easy to fill (after a couple of YouTube tutorials for a fountain pen beginning like me – all of my previous fountain pens have been cartridge pens which are also great) and writes beautifully.

Then there’s the ink. The ink pot I got is a pretty big (60ml) and the color is beautiful. I love colored inks–looking at my notebooks and planners definitely bears this out. It retails for about $15 across the board at that size and my biggest problem right now is figuring out where I’m going to store the bottle safely because it is definitely still full even after filling the pen. It’s definitely a green ink (looks very dark in the bottle – you can only tell what color it really is around the edges of it) but once it’s down on paper it’s this beautiful green with a blue undertone to it. I am admittedly in love and am really, really excited to see what my box next month brings me. I can’t seem to stop using this pen and ink.

Guess we’ll see what happens…