Original Sailor Jentle Inks Coming Back

The original six Sailor Jentle Inks are coming back! You may recognize a few familiar names: Epinard (green) Grenade (reddish) Apricot (orange) Peche (pink) Ultramarine (purply blue) and of course Sky High (a peacock blue) There are some shipments of ink that you look forward to, but that you don't really physically hug - you know there are going to be styrofoam peanuts flying out and sticking all over to you, or possibly broken glass bottles and you might get inky, but Sailor inks are always just beautifully pristine in perfectly sized boxes just waiting to arrive at your shop. And now this original line of Jentle inks is coming home to me, right where they belong (and possibly you, you know, the ones remaining, and not the ones stashed in my closet). I suppose I'm a bit nostalgic because Sailor inks are some of my long-time favourites, some of the first inks I tried when I got into fountain pens. This line in particular, these six inks, also happens to be one of the first we carried in our shop, mainly because I loved the ink (and the pens) so much. Before Noodler's and Diamine and Iroshizuku, we had Sailor. Sailor inks introduced me to sheen, and beautiful shading, and are just beautiful colours in general. I find them to be on the wet side I think, though, the reason I'm secretly so nostalgic about Sailor inks is their smell. They have a bit of a particular smell, very inky, and almost like Chinese calligraphy inks, but it brings me back in time. Even today, the smell brings me back to the days marking tests and writing out seating arrangements with Grenade and Epinard. I'm told that this aroma might have something to do with chemicals and fungicides to stop mold growing, which is bit less romantic than the smell of ancient inks, but it is what it is. Some of these old Jentle inks are very close to the first eight Four Seasons line (Grenade and Oku-Yama, Souten and Sky High, etc.), so I'll be posting more photos of the whole line when the Jentle inks get in, in case you already have a bottle of Souten and are wondering whether or not you need the Sky High. I'm not sure if these returning inks are coming back full time, or if it's just around for a limited time. Keep in mind that there's going to be a price increase - these new bottles are going to be around $32 CAD (MSRP is $25 USD). I don't have a timeline yet, but the inks are on order and I imagine it will be within the next couple of months. For now I'll just share one of my all-time favourite inks, Sailor Sky High - these with my Pilot Custom 92 Medium and on Life Stationery Stenographer's Pad. I'm not great at catching sheen on photos, but you can just barely see it around the edges of the letters. If you've got a wet broad, even better, and of course the better quality the paper, the more sheen you'll be able to see. I am fighting a losing battle against not accumulating more inks than I can reasonably use before I die, but for some reason, Sailor inks just hold a special place in my heart. I have a few bottles stashed away, but I'm glad I can now use them with abandon - although to be honest, with so many other inks having come out or that I've discovered over the last two or three years, it's getting harder and harder to use up any bottle.

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Hearing that the Sailor inks are coming back is just one in a number of unusual, Freaky Friday type of occurrences we've had around here, where I have to look twice, pause and say, "weird."

1. Caleb went to bed with his socks on his hands for one night, and just one night. I didn't want to question him too hard (who am I to dissuade a drummer on his own path), but I feel like I missed an opportunity to find out something that I'll now never know.
2. I ran out of floss. I run out of many, many things, such as milk, clean socks, dog food, human food, patience, but this is the first time I've run out of floss in 15+ years of vigilant oral hygiene.
3. I've gone from at least 15 bowls to now around 5 up at the cottage. One of them is out in the woods where Caleb was eating his yogurt, and I can only assume the rest of them are out there too. I'm also low on spoons, and I'm sensing some correlation here. It's hard to get anything past me.
4. I'm watching a show on Netflix where a very creepy event occurs on my birthday, and there is a lot focus on this date that is sort of demoralizing for me personally. At the very least, I'm usually snacking on popcorn late at night while being demoralized.
5. In the middle of cleaning the house for guests, Caleb sits at the table and knocks over his yoghurt drink all over himself and his pants and the floor. About to enter into my standard reprimand involving statements like "you have not been raised by wolves," I then discovered that literally 100% of the yoghurt drink had fallen directly onto a shirt that Jon had taken off and left under the table. Thanks, Jon.

It must be all the spring heebie jeebies floating around.