New Edison Beaumonts

Edison has released some new colours in their Beaumont! The these new colours - Amber Glass, Twilight Embers and Unicorn - replace their old colours, which are now discontinued. Their old colours were quite popular in the shop: vintage, old-style material to match the vintage model look, but it's always nice to get a freshening up. These new materials are a bit more modern, and the team at Edison have come out with some beautiful choices. All of the Beaumonts take a No. 6 nib, and come with a standard international converter. They will also take standard international cartridges, or, for the more daring in life, you can eye-dropper them. The Twilight Embers is a dark blue with some pearlescent swirls, sort of a night-sky look. Unicorn is a bright turquoise with pink and white swirls. But of course, the one closest to my heart: the Amber Glass. I've been waiting for this to arrive since the day we got the notification about new colours. It's often hard to tell with Edison materials exactly how they're going to look from photos, especially with different lighting or shades, but I just knew even just from the photos that this was the one for me. It's a translucent brown and gold that has all sorts of shade in different light, with gold trim and a two-tone nib. It was a tough choice, but its inaugural fill was Kobe #21 Taisanji Yellow. I got a broad nib. I already have a Beaumont in the old Bedrock Flake, and oh the anticipation of having matching Beaumonts! I was advised to not eyedropper the Amber Glass right off the bat, so the photos for the blog show the most accurate representation of the pen, but as soon as this converter fill is done, I'm eyedroppering both! Perhaps a darker ink for the Bedrock and a lighter ink in the Amber Glass? Or perhaps the reverse, a sort of yin and yang? Ah, the big decisions in life. And so these are the new Beaumonts! In the shop, we sometimes get into debates around pens, the usual one being Safari vs. Metro,* or we discuss the merits and aesthetics of the Lamy 2000,** etc. etc. but where things really come apart at the seams is when we discuss people's favourite Edison pens. I used to think I was a real Pearlette person, but it has long turned out that I am a Beaumont person - it's the shape, it's the clip, it's the whole package. It's always interesting to see people who fall into the Collier camp versus the smaller pen camp. It's rare that people are unsure about the models - people just know which ones they like, and it's often hard to convince them otherwise. Materials are also quite divisive: are you a Persimmon Swirl? or a Blue Steel? It's not like with the Safaris, where everyone has an opinion about what Safari colours they like or choose, but all the colours are sort of inoffensively likeable, like LEGO - I mean, when was the last time you saw a kid swearing to only build with blue LEGOs. With Edison materials, when you find one you like, you're pretty passionate about it. I think this might be as close to trash talking as pen people get.*** I recall one of our earliest days carrying Edison, back at our first shop at 906 Dundas West, and this woman, maybe in her 20s, came in close to the end of the day. She had never had or used a fountain pen before in her life, came in with her boyfriend on a whim, and saw the now-discontinued Edison Herald in their sort of reddish Copper Flake. She immediately connected with it, and couldn't stop admiring it. I remember showing her a Safari and a few other lower-priced pens not wanting her to feel bludgeoned by her local stationery shop, but she just knew that the Herald was meant to be in her life. What a way to get into pens.  

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  In other news, I have received independent confirmation from the universe that bubble tea and I are meant to be. I grew up in a small town where there was definitely no bubble tea. I remember when I was in university in Kingston, a small college town, some (Asian) friends were celebrating the rumoured opening of a bubble tea place. I, of course, had no idea what it was, and thought it was all sort of strange, how excited everyone was getting. When we went to visit, it seemed like a very dark, cave-like cafe that, as I recall, didn't even have this famed "bubble tea" drink when we went, perhaps because we were too early. In any case, it only perpetuated this idea that bubble tea was weird and probably not very delicious and these "friends" were all a bit looney. And so I didn't have my first taste until I moved to Toronto ten years ago, and life has never been the same. It turns out, despite growing up in a town of white people, I am Asian after all. Last night, I discovered Chatime Canada, my favourite bubble tea place in Toronto, has an Instagram account. At first, I was casually delighted by all the happy people drinking this delicious drink, but then I noticed something truly astonishing. On social media, numbers are sometimes a tricky thing: while it can be easy to assume that the more followers you have, the more popular you are, there is a deeper meaning hidden beneath, for those willing to look. While their account seems to be growing rapidly (alas, much more rapidly than ours, to everyone's shock and horror), at the exact moment I discovered them, they had the exact same (rounded) number of followers as we do. Just today (!) their number has already reached 21.6K. How is it that the universe brought their account into my life at that exact moment? If that is not the wizardry of all the stars combined, I will never have another bubble tea in my life. Also, what is a "Chatime Innovation Bar" if not a Wonder Pens Studio Shop in disguise? Who am I to question the mysteries of this world.     *Uhmm no contest Safari. **The bauhaus look is not really for me but that nib is just the right level of wet and bouncy. ***I'm just kidding. There's no trash talking here. We're all very encouraging.