Whatever my complicated feels are about Advent, I have been delighted to run through these inks. Given what I’ve seen and read of other Diamine calendars in the past, this is the best calendar yet for my tastes.
Out of the whole run of ink there were 16 I’d be happy to receive as a gift, and for which I’m excited to explore.
Six. Teen.
Much of this is due to the ability to write with them and get a sense of their texture, rather than relying on someone else’s swabs, but given how pretty a lot of these are, I’m betting that even if I was only looking at swabs I’d want samples of at least ten of them.
I’m also delighted that my top five inks are more diverse than I’d expect. I’m a purple person so of course I love the purple inks – I anticipated that all top 5 would be purple and blue, and thus ranking my top 5 would be a dull proposition. But no! Here’s my top 5 in order:
A brown ink made the top 5! And not even at number 5!
But I found, as I was taking the time yesterday to retest and rank them all, that Ghost and Memory Lane are SO much more to my taste than all the rest of them that I literally had them in a separate place on the table because I already knew they were the top two. Because of that I thought I’d show you my retests. Here’s Ghost:
It’s hard to see how beautiful these shades are in person and in sunlight, so I upped the saturation a bit on this one:
Hopefully your screen shows off how the ink segues from subtle dark violet-blue to grayish lavender.
Not only is Ghost gorgeous to me, but when I use it in other dip pens, the flow of it makes my writing look lovely.
(Which truly is a miracle.)
Second is Memory Lane:
Wowwwwww. Just wow. This doesn’t gift me magically lovely handwriting, but it doesn’t matter because DAAAAANG is that a beauty. It’s even beautiful when the shimmer falls out of it:
Heart-eyes for days and days. This photo has also had the saturation upped on it, but really it didn’t need it. Those dusty lilac and dark lavender colors are just extraordinary.
I know others will find other colors and textures more to their taste! That’s the joy of all of this. And I’m going to be so happy to share and trade bottles with other ink lovers, when the time comes.
If you had the calendar, or if you’ve been following along, please feel free to share with me what your personal favorites are.
killer puppy tails 