Diamine Salamander

Can you believe this beautiful weather we've been having? We've been bringing the baby and pup to Trinity Bellwoods Park for some of our last days in the neighbourhood. The baby has been busy trying to crawl over and eat grass, while the pup has been standing guard over the food, just waiting for something to drop on the ground. I think he believes in a 0.0003 second rule, which is why he has to eat everything so quickly. Every day of this weather has seemed like we're re-emerging from our winter cocoon. 

Back when we re-released Diamine inks to be shipped online (with the warmer weather), I had meant to do a bunch of Diamine ink reviews to celebrate, but I got as far as...one (Sargasso Sea) before life got a hold of me and I got distracted by everything else. Salamander is one of Diamine's newer inks. There are so many new pens and new inks and new seasonal notebooks, it's hard to keep up with all of them! Salamander was released last year, and at that time, it was a bit hard to get stock from our distributor. In fact, we didn't even release it online for a while because we had customers already lined up for the few bottles we could get in. Since then, of course, the initial excitement has died down, and our stock is a little bit safer.

  The paper is Rhodia 90gsm, which has a bit of cream to it, and the pen is a Platinum 3776 - the broad nib shows a bit more of the shading. The colour has a bit of the grey in it, so it's almost like a renaissance or vintage air. This would be a great ink for correspondence, especially on an ivory or cream paper. Salamander is one of my favourite colours. I'm kind of a standard blue or brown person, but this is a warm type of brown-green that is perfect for spring. It's not quite the bright pinks and turquoises that you might normally think of spring, but it's an earthy type of spring. If you're looking for a black-green to be suitable for work, you might try something like Noodler's Zhivago, which is more black with a hint of green. This is a bit more of a warm dark green-brown, definitely dark enough to be legible and "serious", but not quite that office-black-or-blue.  

Here it is in a flex nib:

You can just barely see a bit of the shading because the nib is so wet - and the ink also looks a bit dark, almost black. But in a regular nib, the ink will appear a bit lighter, more green. 

  Like most Diamine inks, Salamander is pretty well-behaved overall. It's not very water-resistant, but it's easy to clean out of pens, flows well and smoothly, and doesn't really feather or bleed. It's a quieter ink, not too flashy, but it's a good, reliable ink. You may not really notice it on first glance, but if you take a closer look, it has some depth and warmth that you don't always find.