I just ordered this lovely glass dip pen from Shakespeare's Den. I saw some beautiful glass pens at the Ren Faire a few weeks ago, where I got to try them out. They have scores in the tip that hold the ink so you can write more than a few letters at a time before having to re-dip. Smart engineering!
This summer, I'm exploring some homemade ink recipes. One recipe is just a strong black tea with gum Arabic. It makes a convincing and very simple, nice smelling brown ink.
But so far, I am not at all impressed with the goose feather I cut Shakespeare-in-Love style, nor the cheap calligraphy nibs. Seems like these both worked a lot better when I was a kid writing secret messages in invisible ink ... Oh yeah, did you know that lemon juice and milk make a great invisible ink that appears when you heat the paper in a candle flame?
In a week, I should have more writing samples with my elegant new glass pen! And another ink recipe to report on. The walnuts have been falling to the ground, and I've been collecting them for just this occasion! Tonight, I put a pot on the stove to simmer and reduce to a fine brown writing ink. They need to cool, be strained and left to sit for a month ...
2 comments:
I just discovered glass dip pens for the first time last week. The one you bought looks beautiful. I'm waiting for mine to arrive in the mail and I already blogged about them! LOL
I found your blog doing a google search to see what else was out there.
Yes, my pen arrived about 2 weeks ago. Now I'm waiting for the walnut ink I made to complete it's fermentation process (That takes about a month). But things are looking good!
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