Esterbrook Funky Town

 

 

Esterbrook just released a new set of Estie fountain pens, Funky Town. I could not resist! They are super bright, in case you need a light saber or something to blind someone with. This is it, this is what you need in your pocket.

 

There are four different colours, and I of course chose the neon yellow. They apparently glow quite nicely under a black light, but I have not yet tried it myself.

 

While the Estie is known for their beautiful acrylics in different colours and mixes (my favourites include the Tortoise, Seaglass, Botanical Gardens…), the pen is a great medium size and weight, and there are little details like the spring-loaded inner cap that have made it a well-established pen model.

 

 

Here is a writing sample with Sailor Blue-Black, from their standard line, a tried and true ink for me. Quite a bit of grey in there, along with the blue and the black, and a bit of sheen as well. A smooth and even writer.

 

 

I am all about pairs of pens, a little family of matching ones, tiny collections that go together in some very obvious and cliched way, and now I am adding to one of my favourites: a little group of bright neon in my otherwise somewhat muted pen collection.

 

 

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It was Fountain Pen Day! Did you celebrate? I got myself a new pen. It was unplanned and coincidental, or maybe the universe was planning it all along. Who am I to question the stars that have brought me Tuna, who has outlived his diagnoses with the aid of increasingly high dosages of daily steroids?

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a new pen, just busy with re-entering into the school year and figuring out our new routines, or also busy trying to sort through and use up the hoarded up and overflowing piles of stationery currently crowding me out of my own office/closet. I am like Big Anthony having misused Strega Nona’s pasta pot, and without the appropriate rhyming spell to stop the accumulation of stickers and papers and bottles of ink.

 

And I love it! I love my hoards of stationery, and I am loving this new pen in my life. It is just what I needed. Here in Toronto it has snowed dramatically, and I have flailed dramatically in horror at the sudden grossness of weather. The doorway looks also very dramatic, with various non-fitting boots and single mittens and coats for varying coldnesses and fashion senses. But now, this very minute at which I write this, the kids have been delivered to their educations, and I am at home, with my cat and my new pen, putting some doodles into my journal for the satisfaction of feeling the nibs on the paper.  

 

Here I am, working on this very blog post with this very neediest of cats. Every once in a while he reaches out a tiny paw onto my keyboard and then I’m forced to brush it away, as he keeps pressing the caps lock, and I don’t want to shout about the internet. Is he trying to send me a message? I have no time to decipher his coded communications, probably along the lines of increased snack volume and/or frequency. He must resist his interference or get kicked off.

 

Such are the compromises we must make in life.