My Pens

It is time to introduce you to the tools of my trade. The first thing that you need to know is that because they are first and foremost tools, or instruments, to me these pens are of a more functional design than beautiful art objects. My work requires that a pen have the ability to produce very fine lines combined with great portability and durability.

As a total novice in the world of fountain pens I know of only one type of pen that satisfies these criteria. This is the Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pens with a Fine nib. It writes very fine lines, as fine as any ball point. It has a retractable nib that works like a regular retractable ball point pen. You just press on the button at the top in to click the nib in or out. This means that the all important nib is protected while not in use. Finally it is portable. It is small, lightweight and doesn't have a separate cap that can be lost or left behind. It looks a bit bulbous and funky, but is ideal from a functional point of view.

As I have mentioned before, I now have two of this type. The first one I bought, Pen One, was recently lost. I believe that it fell out of my backpack somewhere during transport.

Sigh.

It has been rough, but I'm almost over it. Anyway, within days of that tragic loss I had purchased a replacement pen of the same type which I have named Pen Three. So perhaps you can figure out that my other Pilot pen is called, Pen Two. Here is pen two:

And here it is with the nib out:

Pen Three is almost exactly the same, the only difference is that it has a solid black body. Actually it is different in another way too, but I will discuss that in another post.

Now those are the pens that I use to draw my mazes, write in my journal, and make various lists of things I keep track of. Recently certain persons with whom I correspond  mentioned, or perhaps complained is more accurate, that the handwriting in my letters was too small. They are probably correct about that, so I recently bought a pen with a Medium nib. This is a Monteverde Invincia. Here it is, Pen Four:

Here it is with the cap off:



It is very difficult to make it out in these pictures. It is so black. It matchs the black plastic of my Casio Illuminator. Darth Vader probably carries one of these for personal correspondence. It is cool and more importantly it forces me to write larger so that human beings can read the silly nonsense I tend to fill up paper with.

So there they are, my four … I mean, three pens. I really wish I could do a video for you. Maybe later!

Tomorrow is a day off. On Monday we get the next page of the maze. Tuesday is another day off, so that means that Wednesday it will be time to check and see how much progress I've made on the Line Around The World.

Jonathan