Two of the four new Sailor LE inks arrived in my mailbox today - Waka-Uguisu and Sakura Mori. You can see below how Waka-Uguisu compares to a couple of other yellow-green inks in my collection (click to enlarge):
I have inked up my Sailor 'Snow White' LE with this ink, and I must say that they make a very pretty pair. :)
(I believe Uguisu translates to "olive green", and is often associated with the colour of the Japanese bush warbler or nightingale.)
Well, after a dry spell ink-wise, I have two nice Sailor Spring Limited Edition inks on their way to me:
Today a wonderful Sailor Professional Gear arrived!
Behold the full-size Sailor & Bunzo Stationery 2009 "Smoke Green" LE - only twenty-five pens were produced.
This limited edition pen was accompanied by a bottle of Sailor green ink, specifically blended to match the colour of the pen. It's a beautiful deep green ink that looks perfect coming out of the EF nib.
Gorgeous, gorgeous GREEN!
Been swamped with work lately, so this will be brief - just a quick look at some of the pens I have received lately...
Sailor Professional Gear LE - White with Pink/Rose Gold. (Shown with my Snow White Mini and Ivory Sapporo.)
Sailor-Ujuku Professional Gear LE - Mandarin Yellow. (Shown with my Yellow Sapporo Mini and my Dandelion LE.)
This week I also received some rather lovely Indian pens, made by Guider Pen Works. I'll post more on these later, but for now, a quick group shot:
Here is a 1911 you won't see too often...
More details have been posted on FPN. :)
Two very beautiful Sailor Professional Gear Slim pens joined my collection this week: a Hougado Brown and a Hougado Green.
Today my tenth Sailor Professional Gear arrived! This is a full-size LE called the Sailor-Mitsukoshi "Dandelion" - only fifty pens were produced.
This LE was accompanied by a bottle of Sailor yellow-green ink, specifically blended to match the colour of the pen.
The whole combination is rather sexy, IMO! :)
Soon I'll add the beautiful Sailor "KAN" LE to my collection - I have lusted after this full-size Pro Gear for awhile, and when a friend in Japan offered to help ship one over to me, I just couldn't refuse.
The KAN:
It's late (10PM), which is never a good time to be shooting photos of anything, let alone nicely detailed photos of my beloved Sapporo pens. However, this blog has been a bit neglected of late, and I guess a couple of bad photos are better than no photos at all. So without further ado, I present my three latest Sailor Sapporo (Pro Gear Slim) acquisitions:
From the bottom: Dark Metallic Green, 14K F; Spring Orange, 14K F; Spring White (Ivory), 14K F; Snow White LE Mini.
There is a considerable difference between the Ivory and pure white Snow White LE - the Ivory could be better called Beige Putty, but I suppose Ivory sounds more appealing. ;)
Even though you cannot see one hint of green in the above photo, hopefully the next photo shows the colour of my Dark Metallic Green Sapporo a bit better (please excuse the appalling flash):
I have chosen to ink my beauties as follows:
A brief update for today, but hopefully some photos will follow tomorrow. A few interesting pens have joined the collection these last few weeks... some fine sterling silver Sailor pens, a silver Pilot Elite and two less commonly seen inexpensive Japanese pens from the 70s featuring pretty gold sparkles... ooh.
A nice metallic Dark Green Sapporo arrived last week, followed by my Spring White Sapporo a few days later. Both have great 14K Fine nibs. The Spring Orange Sapporo should arrive this week. :)
The Spring White and Spring Orange pens were purchased from MelPens. Mel's service was excellent and the entire transaction has been a pleasure. Highly recommended!
More later. :)
This is only my eleventh post for 2008 (slack of me, I know), but it is my fifth post for the year about Sailor fountain pens... I can assure you that this bias is unintentional. :P
Anyway, I am expecting the following Sailor pens to join my collection soon...
My Snow White arrived today! It is soooooooo pretty. :)
You can read more about it here.
This is the second pen my lovely friend Jim has acquired for me - I'm so lucky. :)
I was browsing the Ujuku Shop yesterday, noting the updated inventory, when I saw that the Morita Original was available for purchase! This is a 2007 Sailor Special Edition which was commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth.
The pen is a pale turquoise colour, just like that of the domed roof of the Salzburg Cathedral (Dom St. Rupert), where Mozart was baptised and would later serve as organist.
The Morita Original is a variant of the Sailor Professional Gear series, and is available in three sizes: Professional Gear, Professional Gear Slim (aka Sapporo) and Professional Gear Slim Mini (aka Sapporo Mini).
I have ordered my Morita Original in the Slim Mini size.
My gorgeous YELLOW Sailor Pro Gear / Sapporo Mini arrived on Saturday - and I love it!
The Yellow just pops!
It has a sensational 14K EF nib - maybe my best Sailor EF so far. A huge thank you goes to Jim for arranging the purchase for me. :D
A couple of days ago I received my Sailor Kiwagura ink, and so I eagerly loaded it into my Sailor "Manga/Comics" desk pen (which has a fantastic EF steel nib) and tested it. I put samples from all three of my black waterproof inks (Sailor Kiwagura, Pilot Security and Platinum Carbon) down on some Arches 185gsm Watercolour paper and also some cheap office paper, and let the ink dry for 10 minutes. Disappointingly, the Sailor Kiwagura samples released a small puff of black ink upon contact with water, while as usual the Pilot and Platinum inks did not.
Further testing is required... maybe a longer drying time is also needed for the Kiwagura ink. Any update information will be posted here.
03/03/2008 Update:
I sampled the Kiwagura further on my watercolour papers, and have discovered that paper makes a bit of a difference here (which is unusual in my experience with this kind of ink). After allowing the ink to dry for two hours or so, I soaked the paper for twenty minutes, and this time the the Kiwagura was fine, with only a barely-visible swirl of black released by the Kiwagura on the Arches 185gsm Medium. On Fabriano 300gsm and Art Spectrum 210gsm Medium papers no black was released.
I am very pleased to report that the waterproof black inks I recently purchased have given me no trouble at all in my fountain pens! When I use watercolour paints or water-soluble pencils on sketches drawn with these inks, no black ink is released by the water and brush.
Pilot Security Black is marginally darker than Platinum Carbon Black - although this is only apparent when the inks are carefully compared side by side. I'm using Security ink in a regular DPP-100 Pilot Desk Pen, and the Carbon ink in a Platinum Carbon Pen. Sometimes the Pilot won't start on the first stroke, but that's the only thing I've noticed. Neither ink appears to settle or do anything unwanted inside the pen.
Ujuku were out of Sailor Kiwagura stock, so I should get that ink in a couple of weeks, but so far I'm thrilled - these inks have worked out perfectly!
In my last post I mentioned my latest Sailor - a Professional Gear Special Edition produced for the Japanese market.
The white trim is perfect, even though I am normally a fan of gold trim, and the nib is very attractive. PR Fiesta Red has turned out to be the perfect colour for this pen, and now I can't think of inking it with anything else. This is really a very striking pen, and I'm so pleased that I paid a little extra to acquire it. :)
Happy, happy, happy!
November has been a fruitful month for Japanese pens. In a very short period I have acquired several pens I have wanted for some time now! Most of these are stainless steel Sailor pens which are not too common.
The most magnificent pen of them all is the Sailor Egyptian Hieroglyphs model. 
I was very lucky to be able to add the Hieroglyphs pen to my collection, and once again, such a thing was made possible by the wonderful Stan Klemanowicz, who has provided me with some of my best-loved Japanese pens.
Another interesting pen heading my way is a Limited Edition Sailor Professional Gear - in a Red Metallic lacquer finish!
More about the Sailor LE later... ;)
Life in pendom has been quiet of late, but I have a couple of small pen and ink notes to report:
