What ink(s) are you waiting for in the mail?

[A Smug Dill]

Yikes! All the way from Japan...

[inkstainedruth]

Been on the hunt for a dark, rich blue black that still shows blue. Enter Akkerman Dutch Masters 08 Ruisdael's "Stormy Blue" that just arrived and its a beauty

 

Yeah, that's definitely one of my "keeper" inks. The larger size awesome Akkerman bottle is an added bonus.

Hmmm. I should crack that open -- I haven't used it in a while.... Thanks for the reminder!

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[GreenMountain]

Troublemaker Milky Ocean, Foxglove, and Sea Glass. I have a purple pen that I hope will match well with Foxglove. I've read that shipping can take a while from TMKR, and I just filled a blue pen that I think would match Milky Ocean with a large amount of ink, so I'm curious if I'll finish that pen first or if the ink will arrive first.

Where did you get the Troublemaker, please? I've been looking for it!

[aurore]

Yikes! All the way from Japan...

 

How was that packed?

 

[LobsterRoll]

Where did you get the Troublemaker, please? I've been looking for it!

I ordered it from their website. I happened to be checking fountain pen stuff and found out they were opening up orders within that hour. I believe you can get on their mailing list to find out about updates, or Shigure Inks sometimes has them in stock.

[A Smug Dill]

How was that packed?

 

 

With a thin sheet of bubble wrap taped neatly around it, such that all sides were covered and the item retained the general shape of a cube.

The bubble-wrapped cube was then taped to the inside wall of a small, relatively thin corrugated cardboard shipping carton, in which there were other items: another similarly packed bottle of ink, a new pen in its lightweight (and bubble-wrapped) retail box, and a bunch of converters (bound together with bubble wrap and tape), but no air pillows, "packing peanuts" or other void fill material.

 

Come to think of it, the bottle must have already been damaged before it was wrapped, because the only other equally heavy object in the shipping carton was the other bottle of ink, which arrived absolutely pristine and its card-paper retail box in perfect shape. If the two had been banging against each other, it wouldn't have led to just one of them suffering such catastrophic damage. The retail box of the Platinum Carbon Black ink was deformed — partly due to having been wet from the spilt ink, then dried, but also partly due to physical impact. The other items were also in perfect shape, and couldn't have caused the damage to the ink bottle anyway as they are so light. The spilt ink didn't even make it outside the card-paper box at all to stain the bubble wrap around it.

 

Never mind. The seller apologised and offered a full refund for the damaged bottle of ink, and there was still >50ml of the nominal 60ml of liquid in the bottle. (I transferred it into an empty 50ml Pilot Iroshizuku ink bottle, and the level came all the way up to the bottleneck.) It's probably thicker than normal Platinum Carbon Black ink due to evaporation over an unknown number of weeks, but for my intended use of such as a waterproof, permanent ink for addressing envelopes and filling out postal paperwork apt to be exposed to the elements, I'm sure it's perfectly fine.

[tropicalwitch]

Diamine Communication Breakdown and Purple Rain, plus Diamine Blue Lightning shimmer ink. The shimmer one is to replace the first bottle that froze then subsequently exploded in my mail. What a wild, glittery mess that was.

[sombrueil]

R&K Scabiosa and Salix, De Atramentis Document Brown and Document Urban Grey, Diamine Grey.

Working on a best gray ink and a permanent but not black ink selection project.

[Karmachanic]

MB Midnight Blue

[loganrah]

Too many: Blackstone Barrister Purple, MB Permanent Blue, Sailor Souboku, Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa, De Atramentis Document Orange, De Atramentis Document Brown.

I'm sure there will be more soon.

[Misfit]

A sample of Colorverse Morning Star.

[inkstainedruth]

I'm trying to withstand the urges -- I have too many samples I haven't tried yet as it is, and probably way too much ink to use in this lifetime. Plus I just bought a bottle of Lamy Crystal Azurite yesterday at the Lamy Soho store in NYC.

Did I *really* need another blue ink? No. Well, maybe....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Misfit]

Private Reserve Arabian Rose.

[DrDebG]

I WAS waiting for several inks, but the bottles all came in today - earlier than expected. I received:

 

Montblanc Antoine de Saint-Exupery Encre du Desert (phew! what a name!)

Rohrer & Klingner Verdegris

Platinum Carbon Black

Sailor Souboku

Monteverde Document Black

 

I was surprised to find the MB ink, since I had been looking for it for awhile. The R&K Verdegris is another I have debated about for months, but finally broke down and bought it. And, after all these years, I finally decided that I needed some permanent inks.

[A Smug Dill]

Not waiting on anything any more, with my last outstanding order of fountain pens and/or inks from retailers overseas was just cancelled. With the Australian dollar being so weak, right now I have no appetite to buy anything for "the hobby" other than Australian inks from Australian retailers, so I'm contemplating buying some Blackstone or Van Diemen's inks. Blackstone has the advantage in that its 'Colours of Australia' inks are available to me in 250ml and 1L bottles (and much lower per-millilitre prices), but given that I'm discontinuing ink sample giveaways, I really don't think I'll ever finish a 250ml, much less a whole litre, of say Blackstone Sydney Harbour Blue ink.

Van Diemen's Ink is offering a "complete" set of 54 of its inks (spanning five series/seasons) in 30ml bottles for A$500 — or $450 after discount and with free shipping — but my main reservation is that the "made in Australia" inks are quite likely just custom (but consistent and systematic, unlike N******'s) mixes of Chinese-made Jinhao inks with no actual Australian material content that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. If anyone could please convince me that I'm wrong and/or my worry unwarranted, I'd appreciate it.

[85AKbN]

Diamine Kelly Green.

[Retro-user]

An assortment of black and blue Pilot cartridges.

[millertime]

I'm a little late posting this but recently received a bottle of Waterman Serenity blue to try.

[NumberSix]

Received a bottle of Parker Quink Black today from amazon.

 

Waiting on a bottle of Parker Quink Washable Blue from endless pens.

[DilettanteG]

A bottle of Edelstein Star Ruby just arrived. I'm tempted to collect of the Edelstein inks as they're so well behaved, but to be fair the colors range from the delightful, like Olivine and Aquamarine, to the meh, like Mandarin. I guess orange inks aren't my thing. I am sorry that I missed the now discontinued Amethyst.