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Today I'm reviewing Diamine November Rain ink. Diamine November Rain is a Diamine Exclusive ink made specially for sale in Germany. I’ve seen it for sale on Fountainfeder, Papier & Stift and Seitz-Kreuznach websites as well as on Amazon. It comes in 30ml bottles and 80ml bottles. I only have a sample bottle, so I can’t post a picture of the 80ml glass bottle and box. This is a saturated dark green ink with red sheen. It doesn’t have quite as much sheen as the Organics Studio high sheen inks, but has more sheen than what you would call a “standard” ink. In my opinion, Diamine don’t have a current similar standard ink that is is very similar to November Rain, although Dark Forest is probably the closest. November Rain a blue leaning green. More green than Lamy Petrol and Organics Studio Henry D Thoreau Walden Pond. I would describe it as similar to a dark conifer green forest. The fact that it’s a saturated ink that has good sheen, without having too much sheen, comes with a few benefits: It’s a very nice green colour, whether you can always see the red sheen or not. It easily washes off of my hands with cold water and bar soap (definitely not like Organics Studio Nitrogen, Ralph Emerson, or Henry Thoreau) and it easily flushes out of my converters and pens just using water. It didn’t suffer from any hard starts or non-starts when I put the uncapped pen down to do swab tests, dry times and water resistance. I like that about these inks. It dried quite quickly on most reasonably absorbent papers and once dry it didn’t smudge or smear. I tested for this by rubbing repeatedly across my writing. I saw no green or red on my fingers, and no smudging on the page. I really enjoyed writing with it. With these high sheen inks showthrough and bleedthrough can be a problem. There was showthrough on several of the papers I wrote on, although I could still have written on the reverse of all them with no problem. The red sheen is usually more visible when using pens with wet flow and broader nibs. Flow Rate: Very good.Lubrication: Very good.Nib Dry-out: Not noticed.Start-up: Immediate.Saturation: Highly saturated ink.Shading Potential: Some shading with finer nibs or dry writing pens.Sheen: Good red sheen.Show-Through:Oxford 80gsm lined pad.Royal Recycled.Tomoe River 52gsm - Slight.Rhodia Bloc.Whitelines.Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Seen on a couple of papers with my wet B nib.Nib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen.Staining (pen): Not seen after several days in the pen - easy clean-up with water.Staining (hands): Easy clean-up with bar soap.Clogging: Not seen. Seems unlikely.Water resistance: Not sold as waterproof but has some water resistance.Availability: Exclusive to Germany and available from: Fountainfeder, Papier & Stift, Seitz-Kreuznach and Amazon. I found Fountainfeder offers the lowest price including shipping, especially when you buy two 80ml bottles.

I’m reviewing samples of the new set of Diamine Shimmer inks. This one is Diamine Golden Ivy It’s a strong, saturated, dark ivy green ink with some nice shading and sheen as well as gold shimmer. It’s a similar shade to Diamine Tropical Green (150th Anniversary) but leans more green and slightly less blue than that ink. I found it a very wet and well flowing ink. It had very good lubrication with the pens I tried it with. With broader nibs it looks much more saturated than it does with finer nibs, although it’s wet enough to show the gold shimmer with all nibs. It showed through on some of the papers I used. The pens I used were a Jinhao Pearl Windows with M nib, Lamy Nexx M Stub 1.1mm nib, Lamy Nexx M F nib. In the past my Jinhao Pearl Windows pen has occasionally dried out when it has contained a shimmer ink. This one is wetter, so it hasn’t dried out in my pen. The comparison inks were swabbed with a cotton bud and their ink names were written with a glass dip pen. I found Golden Ivy a well-behaved ink. I didn’t experience any ignition or clogging problems with it. I had no problem cleaning it out of pens using cold water or off of skin using soap and warm water. It is not sold as a waterproof ink but it is water resistant. The Mebin UK Notebook I used was supplied by someone on FPN who sold TR 68gsm Notebooks. The paper in the Mebin UK Notebook is quite thick at 95gsm, it’s acid free, and has a really smooth surface with no drag or tooth at all. Inks generally take longer to dry on this paper, so wetter inks tend to pool and I knew that they would show their shimmer well enough for me to photograph the sheen. The Moleskine Notebook is a UK clone, and I found there was very little spread on it. Flow Rate: Wet, very good.Lubrication: Wet, very goodNib Dry-out: Not noticed.Start-up: Immediate.Saturation: A saturated inkShading Potential: Very good; shading can easily be seen.Sheen: Gold shimmerShow-Through:Tomoe River 52gsm.Cheaper generic 80gsm printer papers & lined pads.Field NotesSpread / Feathering: Not seenNib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen, even after over a week in the penStaining (pen): Not seen - easy clean-upStaining (hands): Not seen - easy clean-upClogging: Not seen. Seems unlikely.Water resistance: Has some water resistance.Availability: Will be available from Diamine Inks web-site and other outlets. Back Mebin, then Back Moleskine

This is a fairly quick review, so that I can get up some reviews of the 8 new Diamine inks for you to look at. I haven't tried them all on lot's of different papers yet, but that will come later. Yesterday I was writing with them in my British Mebin Notebook that is made from the thicker version of Tomoe River paper. I think it's something like 65gsm compared with thinner Tomoe River that is 58gsm. It's still really smooth paper, so dry times are very long for these wet inks. It's a cream paper, and inks don't show through on there as much as they do on the regular version of Tomoe River. I photographed my quick reviews of Dark Forest and Golden Honey because Dark Forest has a wonderful red sheen, and Golden Honey has a really interesting red halo effect. I hope I can get both of these aspects to show up on screen. The other images I've posted have been scans, where color accuracy onto a screen is sometimes more difficult. Hopefully these photographed images will be better. I noticed that these new ink samples have wet flow, good lubrication and some shading. On this paper I can see sheen too. They clean up very easily from skin and pens. I've had these inks in these various pens for over 2 weeks now, and they all start up immediately with no problems. Sorry, I haven't yet tested for water resistance, and I will do that soon. I will also get around to comparing them with other ink colours, I'm planning on comparing Dark Forest against Green/Black as it looks like that sort of color. I don't have Cult Pens Deep Dark Green, but I'm guessing that would be similar. These inks will be available from Diamine in the 150th Anniversary range bottles as well as packs of 20 cartridges. I don't yet have any bottles to show you.

Today I’m reviewing a sample of Diamine Evergreen It’s an unusual dark green. When you write with it or swab it, it looks like a dark petrol blue, but then it dries very quickly to a dark green. I found it had good flow and lubrication while I was writing with it. I didn’t see any spread or feathering, nor any woolly line with the Pelikan F nib. With the Lamy M nib it looks much darker, more like what you would imagine Evergreen to look like. When I tested it on the selection of papers, it looks darker on them all than it actually came out when scanned. When I took a photo it just looked black. So I taped all of the papers down and scanned it instead. Evergreen looks quite well saturated, especially with my M nib. It exhibited plenty of attractive shading with the F nib in the Pelikan Go! pen. I found it behaved very well, and I like it. I didn’t experience any clogging or clean-up problems with it. In fact clean-up was very easy. It washes off hands with soap and water. It’s a lot darker than Pelikan Dark Green, and is almost as dark as Diamine Green/Black, but is more noticeably green, and not as grey. This isn't sold as a waterproof ink, but it shows a little water resistance.Bearing in mind the review form paper I use is thick with a quite shiny surface at 100gsm, and I used several different nibs, this ink dried very quickly with the F nib, but took longer to dry when I used my Lamy M nib.No smear after dry.It exhibited good flow and I found it smooth to write with. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did swabs and dry time tests.It is currently available in 80ml glass bottles or 30ml plastic bottles.Diamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site.It's a reasonable price.​