F is for Fountain Pens

You can find information about the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge here or read the rest of my A to Z posts by following this link.

Today marks the 6th blog post as part of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge and the corresponding letter is the letter F.  The topic for this post is Fountain Pens!

I can remember learning to write in school with a HB pencil and the promise of writing with a “real pen” once our handwriting was good enough.  While most kids in my class just dreamed of becoming one of the big kids and writing with any old pen, I always had ideas of owning my own fountain pen and writing with that.

The idea of having my own fountain pen came from my Dad and Grandad who both had beautiful handwriting and wrote with fountain pens, my Dad still, to this day writes with his trusty Parker pen.  Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that the key to beautiful handwriting was a fountain pen.

I can remember the first fountain pen I owned, my Dad presented it to me on my first day of Secondary School when I was 11.  It was a brushed chrome Parker pen, my Dad had bought a refillable cartridge for it and bottles of Quink Ink in Blue and Black and I felt so grown up.  The pen was a dream to write with and made my handwriting look so neat, I’m sure the belief that I’d had when I was younger was true.

I don’t have that pen anymore but I do have several others in my collection which I love.  The latest addition is a Lamy Safari in Neon Lime which I use on a day-to-day basis for making notes in my planner and when I am at work.  I use the Lamy T10 (Special Edition Petrol Blue) cartridges in it.

My other go to pen is my Parker IM series in Dark Espresso.  This pen reminds me of the one my Dad gave me both in the way it writes and how it feels in my hand, though the look is totally different.  I use Parker Quink cartridges in this, usually the blue/black ink but I have been known to switch to black on occasion.

I know that fountain pens are not the most practical to use every day, they can be leaky, feather, shadow and a whole host of other problems, and I know, for certain tasks, there are other pens that are more worthy of the job, but for me there will always be something very special about writing with a fountain pen.

Do you use a fountain pen?

Just a reminder that there will be no Blogging From A to Z post tomorrow, Sundays are the only day the challenge does not run!  I will be back with the next post on Monday!