Introducing my other obsession...

Stationary!
I've always loved pens and paper, ever since I was a little girl.  In the last couple of years, I've re-entered the world of fine stationary and planners, and fountain pens, and it's become a little bit of a hobby around here.  I have a small number of "entry level" affordable fountain pens. There are many many bloggers out there that make a living (or at least a little income) by reviewing pens, so while I may share some thoughts here, I'm only going to write about interesting/unique/not common purchases.  This is one of those:

This was a random impulse purchase for myself on Zulily while I was Christmas shopping. It is not really a "brand name" fountain pen, but rather, I think, a generic fountain pen branded by a designer.  Like when you buy sunglasses from Coach and really they are made in the same place as the ones you can buy from Ralph Lauren.  The designers may design the aesthetic of them, but really not the functionality or quality.  In this case I was sucked in on the pretty factor, and the price was cheap, and I had already made a purchase that day, so I had free shipping....

The brand/designer is Ines de la Fressange and my googling found little about her or these pens. She's french, mostly known for clothes. She's doing a collaboration with Uniqlo.  There's a website to buy clothes, but I couldn't find the pens there, although they are available on Amazon (FYI as of today the prices is  more than 4 times what I paid).  This is the "Turquoise Balcony Fountain Pen". Not a very original name, but it does describe the pen.

It's a metal body and takes international cartridges. As far as I know, it has no converter. It came with one cartridge in black, which I ignored and put in a Pelikan Pink short cartridge to start. I gave it a "little" squeeze to get it going as you can see from the blot on the test page of my notebook.

The body is tapered and comfortable for my small hands un-posted.  If you are a poster, which I tend to be, this is a nightmare.  That pretty swoopy cap is heavy and falls off.  I actually had an incident where it flew off and landed in my tea.  So I would definitely avoid posting if you don't want accidental projectiles during your writing sessions. 

So, what do I think?  Is it a fine writing experience?  So far, not really.  As a fountain pen, it doesn't make my heart sing.  Although to be fair, I felt this way about the Kaweco Sport at first too, but now I love it, we just needed to get to know one another, so I haven't discounted it entirely..  My Pilot Prera on the other hand, was definitely a "fountain pens really are better" moment right out of the box. (also it has this completely useless tiny clip)

* it was bad pictures or no pictures, so in the interest of actually getting a blog post up I chose the former.