Fountain Pens and Ink

I've become interested in foundation pens. Years ago, as a kid, I used a foundation pen, and I played around with calligraphy using a foundation pen with a calligraphy nib.  So this is a renewed interest.

My current pens are:

1. Pilot Metropolitan, violet leopard with a fine nib.  This is a great pen. It was inexpensive, and yet it writes very smoothly - flows across the paper. It comes with a converter and a cartridge so that you can choose which method of adding ink you prefer. I started with a cartridge and then switched to a converter to use bottled ink.
2. Platinum Plaisir, green with a fine nib. I like this pen, too. It doesn't write as smoothly as the Metropolitan, but it still does a good job.  When I purchased it, I also purchased a converter (which doesn't come with this pen.
3. Parker Vector 88. This isn't my pen. It belonged to my husband's grandmother. He bought it for her as a gift, and when she died, it was returned to him. When he saw my interest in these pens, he dug it out for me to use. It still had the cartridge in it that she had used, although it was empty of ink (or dried up). I worried that the dried ink would have ruined the feed or the nib, but cleaning it was rather easy, and it was restored. No one has used it for about 20 years, and now it's working just great. I purchased a Parker converter for it.

Inks I've tried:

1. Blue-Black Pilot cartridge - this worked as expected, but I wanted to try something a little bit brighter.
2. Diamine emerald - It's a nice green ink, but it leans more toward yellow green than bluer green.
3. Noodler's Green Marine - I like this one better than the Diamine Emerald because it is a bluer green. Personal preference.
4. Diamine Blue Velvet - Great blue ink. I like it
5. Pilot Iroshizuku Ku-jaku - a deep teal blue-green ink - peacock. This is the ink I put in the Parker 88.

You'll see that for most of the inks above I've linked to samples from The Goulet Pen Company. They have a nice option that offers small samples of bottled ink to try. Great idea - and it has allowed me to try several before I buy a whole bottle.  The Iroshizuku link listed above was a "surprise" ink. It's another option they offer - you can purchase a randomly selected sample of ink.  Fun idea!

For those interested in finding more out above fountain pens, I recommend The Goulet Pen company Youtube page. It's what drew me into to exploring this world again.

FYI - the notebook above is a Leuchtturm 1917 journal that I use for Bullet Journaling.