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Toward purple

~monpetit

Two days ago, I received a gift of fountain pen ink from an old friend. It's a color I've never used before, a dark grey with purple undertones. To use it, I had the pleasure of removing the old ink from my fountain pen, washing it, and letting it dry.

At first I thought it might be too light, but the more I look at it, the more I like the pretty color. I have to say thanks again to her.

SAILOR SHIKIORI CHUSHU

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~ew wrote (thread):

Hey ~monpetit!

~bartender? Just coffee with cream and sugar. It's freezing outside, I can tell you. -8°C said the sensor at main street. Brrrrr.

So. Ink and fountain pens and the like ...

To my not calibrated eyes the Chushu ink looks fairly purple. I would not call it "grey with a purple tint", but plain purple. As such I expected it to be a lot darker than it actually is. And it seems to me, that my fingers try to make it darker by pressing stronger onto the paper --- which doesn't help, of course.

BUT, as I had intended, I am writing a page or so of nothing important in particular by hand pretty much every day now. First interesting outcome: By trying to write the way we learned in school, my brain and fingers start to remember the old or rather original shapes [a]. And I manage to stay within "my personal type face" or "school type face", once I decide which flavor to write (is "type face" correct to denote the appearance and shapes of handwriting? Or would it be "script", rather? Oh the joys of non-native speakers ...). It is my hope, that I can "upgrade" some of the shapes in my personal handwriting to make them clearer to the reader, like m n u for example.

[a] what I learned in school

Or maybe rather this one? Hmm.

Please note that this type face is a "Kurrent", it is intended to connect pretty much all characters at the bottom line in order to avoid all the "point and place" operations. In my opinion this allows for much faster writing than placing individual, not connected characters one after another. But I'm not an expert.

In a big museum years ago I saw original papyrus sheets (some 3000 years old) hand written with some for me indecipherable script. The glyphs looked almost like printed. Someone had trained hard and for years to achieve mastery of this art. It makes me sad, that today many people don't value this cultural technique. It's not so long ago, when reading and writing was accessible only to a privileged group, that had to be paid and trusted.

~ew wrote (thread):

Hey ~monpetit,

I received a small bottle of that ink now. The pen is soaking to be cleaned ...

Thank's again for sharing this.

~bartender? Any chance for another Hot Chocolate?

~ew wrote (thread):

Uh oh, fountain pens and their ink are great! Congratulations!

~bartender? A purple drink for ~monpetit, please, and a turquoise one for me. Thanks!