Diamine Inkvent (Red edition) Calendar 2021

[Uncial]

What does it smell like? I only get that vague, slightly metallic smell, but only if I put my nose up to it.

[Sailor Kenshin]

1 hour ago, Uncial said:

What does it smell like? I only get that vague, slightly metallic smell, but only if I put my nose up to it.

 

Sweet but weird.  A cross between being a deliberately scented ink, and one that has gone bad.

[dftr]

10 hours ago, JulieParadise said:

It didn't clog my Sailor 1911s with a 14 k music nib, sitting in the pen with use only every other day since Nov 20/21.

That's good to hear.  He was using a FPR flex nib w/ ebonite feed so it could have been the difference in feeds or just bad luck.  Did  you put up your review for day 20?  

[JulieParadise]

3 hours ago, dftr said:

That's good to hear.  He was using a FPR flex nib w/ ebonite feed so it could have been the difference in feeds or just bad luck.  Did  you put up your review for day 20?  

 

Every pen is different, and some combinations work while others ... don't. That is the exciting as well as frustrating part of our hobby. 🙃

No, I did not post yesterday's ink yet; I'm on a business trip and will be home with access to my laptop later today. But pics are on my Instagram account, the raw versions; I collate these photos with a program called PhotoScape on my laptop in order to be able to both show lots of details shots but have less hassle with uploading dozens of files.

[Uncial]

8 hours ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

 

Sweet but weird.  A cross between being a deliberately scented ink, and one that has gone bad.

The ones Smug mentioned I went back for a smell comparison (can't quite believe I'm doing this to inks!). Same metallic whiff but the ones mentioned have a certain astringency too. Can't say I found it offensive. The two inks I simply cannot use due to their smell are Noodler's La Reine Mauve (which smells like an incredibly overpowering creosote) and KWZ Hunter Green which smells the same (although they may have changed their anti-mould on this one to the one that smells of vanilla).

[JulieParadise]

Maybe my nose is immune to whatever bad smell Diamine inks are said to have, but I only notice a "not so nice" odour when I put my nose directly to the bottle opening and sniff consciously. Yeah, it is not the nicest smell, but I don't find that pens stink with the inks mentioned nor do I smell those from a distance of the usual 30-50 cm when filling from the bottles. 

[JulieParadise]

Comparison between Festive Cheer (2019) vs Festive Joy (2021):

 

I just put both ink books side by side, twice and captured from different to maybe get to show the sheen.

 

I'd still say that F.Cheer (on the left) is definitely a blue ink, whereas F.Joy is definitely what I would call purple/violet. Both look quite different.

[JulieParadise]

Two days ago one of my favourite inks from this year's calendar had its reveal: Pink Ice, a rather cold and rosy blush pink with silvery shimmer, that appears almost white from some angles, hence looking like ... pink ice. 
 

This ink is not too light, but just because of its colour, not to mention the shimmer, it certainly is no business or office ink, let alone "serious". 
 

Obviously this is a "fun" ink, but not to light to be usable, so nice to play around with but also still legible.
 

I have this ink in a Sailor Nagasawa Kobe Proske (Profit Skeleton = 1911s Demonstrator) with a generous 14 k Music nib since Nov 20 or 21. So far I have not experienced any hard starts or clogging issues.
 

Papers are a lined Life Vermilion cahier in A6 and a Midori MD Diary A5 (its last pages are blank).

[JulieParadise]

Yesterday's ink (no. 21) was Brandy Snap, a light brown / gold ochre / amber standard ink with vivid shading, that I really like in my OMAS Dama Arco Bronze celluloid pen with a rather normal to dry fine/medium stub.
 

This ink also (like all other Inkvent inks) sits in this pen since Nov 20 or 21 and behaved nicely, without any issues like clogging or hard starts. I am not sure whether it was this that I refilled already, but I can certainly say that pen & ink are a good pair.
 

Papers are again a lined Life Vermilion A6 cahier and the last blank pages in a Midori MD Diary 2021.
 

For the last pictures I could not decide which one to include and what to ditch ... so I shamelessly show off my Arco pen with this lovely ink. 😉 
 

 

[JulieParadise]

Black Ivy -- whoaw, what a sheener! In my normally generously flowing Platinum 3776 Tortoise Celluloid with its stubbish B this sheen ink looks almost black. 
 

Really, in the writing it is in most places impossible to discover any colour other than dense black. Only in the ink splatters, where I smeared the edges out you can see the dark cold green or petrol underneath.
 

Unfortunately this is/was the only ink in the calendar that gave me trouble: The ink seems to be so saturated that it slowed the writing massively down to the point of clogging the feed. For some days I tried to force ink through the feed by screwing the converter forward or dipping the tip of the nib into the opening of the converter to wet it and make the ink flowing. These issues only stopped when I diluted the ink by filling about half on the converter with water. Now everything flows freely and it is a joy to write with this pen. Although the solution (har har) was an easy one, I do not need inks that demand special treatment.
 

Above you can see how the ink completely covered the numbering on the bottle. Yep, there is a thick "22" written with Platinum Carbon Black underneath that blob of colour!

Poor Black Ivy, you're a complicated beauty!

[RevGina]

I had my first ink-splosion with Black Ivy, so my hand looks like a zombie hand now! (It was because I accidentally poked a hole in the bottle with the scissors I used to cut the plastic off.) It also reminds me a lot of Organics Studio's Walden, which is also quite a fiddly ink. 

[Ted A]

What I smell in those inks is close to mildew. But my nose is different, I think. People complain about the Noodler’s Ahab’s smell but what i smell is new mown hay.

[inkstainedruth]

I don't have any Ahabs, but I do have several of the resin Konrads and FPCs, and I've never smelled anything like what people have complained about.  

OTOH, if "new mown hay" smells anything like cut grass, and that's REALLY what an Ahab smells like, I'll pass....  (Years ago I was in a local Kmart around Christmastime, and got spritzed at a cologne display by something that smelled like cut grass as I was walking out of the store; I drove back across the river with the window rolled down, proceeded to scrub my wrist with soap and hot water, and took an extra strength pain reliever to combat the headache.)

While I dislike the smell of skunk immensely, it does NOT make me physically ill the way cut grass does....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Sailor Kenshin]

If only Ahabs smelled like cut grass (which I love).  They smell like dirty sweat socks.  

 

I got probably the one Ahab that wrote 'outta da box.'  But I had to bury it in coffee grounds for three months to get that stink out.

[JulieParadise]

Wonderland, today's ink, is a bright and happy orange, which glows in a way that I had only known from Sailor Jentle Apricot resp. Kin-Mokusei before.

I have this ink in a vintage Montblanc 342g OBB and just love it. I find myself thinking ... hmm, orange ... hmm ... but when I put pen to paper I am always stunned about its brightness, that comes without turning garish or too much into the realm of neon. It is just ... bright and happy.

In thicker applications it can form a sort of sheen, as you can see above.

Since this Wonderland ink reminded me so much of Sailor Jentle Apricot / Kin-Mokusei, I put both inks next to each other (also including Sailor Manyo Yamabuki):

Wonderland is more of an orange than Yamabuki (which I'd say is still a yellow) but lighter than Apricot/Kin-Mokusei.

Another overview of the yellow-orange-ochre inks of this inkvent with some inks I had on hand:

 

From the 2019 calendar I got Fire Embers, more a burnt, deep orange, so I'll get Wonderland, too, I think, as this is somewhat of a "poor man's Jentle Apricot", not so much from the actual colour (as I described above) but from the wow-effect it gives me. 

[inkstainedruth]

Not a color for me, but thanks as always for the comprehensive review.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[JulieParadise]

Yuletide, a blue-turquoise-aqua-blue standard ink and second-to-last in this year's Diamine Inkvent Calendar, is one of my personal highlights.

Colour wise it sits right on the edge between blue and turquoise/aqua/teal, shows some nice halo on the edges when written with a more generous nib and is a perfectly usable ink.

I have this ink in a Pilot Capless IF/M since November 20th/21st; the writing samples were done about a good week ago, so the ink had some time to sit in the pen.

The blank paper is from a Midori MD Diary (last pages are blank), the paper on the bottle us standard Life Noble Note paper and the lined paper is from a Life Vermilion cahier (on the overview shot the A6 cahier on the left). The first two lines in the bigger blank Midori MD notebook were written with the dipped glass pen; the writing with the italic nib and the round-tipped glass pen shows that with wet somewhat wet application there is some halo to be expected.

 

Although I certainly have more than enough ink in that colour range, I might get a full bottle of this once it is available, as the colour is really pretty and the ink obviously behaved nicely so far.

[inkstainedruth]

Oooh.  I'd love to see a side by side between this one and MB Leo Tolstoy LE.  It might be JUST blue enough to be a good replacement for the Tolstoy (which I've kinda been hoarding, since I just have the one bottle of it...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[The Mustard]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Oooh.  I'd love to see a side by side between this one and MB Leo Tolstoy LE.  It might be JUST blue enough to be a good replacement for the Tolstoy (which I've kinda been hoarding, since I just have the one bottle of it...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I think Robert Oster’s Blue Night might be a good alternative to Tolstoy for you @inkstainedruth?

[bluebellrose]

On 8/2/2021 at 7:12 AM, tde44x said:

I've decided to wait and see the colors and then probably order a few 😉 of the inks in full sized bottles.

Hehe same thing.