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a whisper of spice engulfs the mouth with delight - chili awaits you

Rating: 4.0 November 15, 2010 J. Herbin Bleu Myosotis is a lovely, pale blue ink that evokes a field of wildflowers – like its namesake “myositis,” which is more commonly known as “forget-me-not.” The low level of saturation allows for an extremely high degree of shading in both fine and wide nibs. In fact, in a wide enough nib, it almost looks like one is painting with watercolors. Like Vert Empire, Myosotis is one of the wetter J.

DIYSara asked, in a previous thread, “Any chance we can see a photo of your ink “shelf” or storage method? :)” Sure! Here is my shelf of ink and other miscellaneous things, including origami paper and stationary. To the right is my art desk with some sketchbooks, and an origami book open. Behind that is my easel and various painting supplies.

Rating: 4.0 November 2, 2010 I do not use black ink on a daily basis. To me, one of the joys of using fountain pens is the broad spectrum of available ink colors and black ink just isn’t all that interesting. However, there are a number of situations for which only black ink will do, so when Diamine offered to send me ink samples for review, I requested Jet Black.

Happy Halloween! To celebrate the season of ghouls and ghosts, I posted five horror stories during the month of October: four flash-fiction-length and one short story. Thanks to everyone who read along and commented on the stories - I certainly appreciated all of the encouragement and I had a lot of fun writing them. For those that might have missed them, the five stores are: The Girl with the Ebony Eyes

Jim stomped on the brakes, but the car kept moving. He jerked the wheel to the right, just as Cheryl screamed, and the car flew off the side of the rain-slicked road, crashing through the guard rail with a deafening screech of metal on metal before careening down the embankment. The descent simultaneously took forever and an instant. They crashed through brush, bushes, branches; over rocks and dirt and gravel before slamming into the bottom of the ravine.

I didn’t have time to write an ink review this week, but I did have the opportunity to look through my ink collection to figure out what to review next. In the 8 months I’ve been writing reviews, I’ve managed to publish 24 ink reviews, but I’ve got a lot more left to go. Since there are no signs that I’m going to stop collecting ink any time soon, I suspect I’ll be writing up reviews until I’m old and grey.

“Oh, no,” Maggie thought as she watched the wasp crawl out of her ear, “Not again.” She’d been in the middle of brushing her teeth when she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, and she stopped and stared at her reflection in the mirror as the creature emerged. “No, no, no,” she thought as the wasp unfurled its wings. She didn’t want to startle it, so she held very still – her toothbrush in one hand and toothpaste in the other.

Rating: 5.0 October 18, 2010 I’ve been using Diamine Imperial Purple for the past two weeks, and I can’t get enough of it. It’s a vibrant, majestic purple that makes me think of royal banners waving in a bright, sunny sky – of knights jousting on horseback and ladies waiting in…um…waiting. It is a highly saturated “red” purple that exhibits moderate shading. It is not reddish per-se, but rather red by contrast with a blue-purple or indigo.

The tiny acorn lifts its head And sees the mighty tree “When I grow tall and I grow strong That’s what I’d like to be” So now I grow and everyday I’m thankful for you, Dad — The greatest tree to strive to be An acorn ever had