(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, Root Rot, is now available for pre-order!)
I don't know how I can still be so delightfully surprised by ink colors when it feels like we've got to have run out of ink colors by now, but here I am, with a new favorite color from Diamine.
Celadon Cat was a collaboration between Diamine and a Reddit fountain pen community, and while I'm not on Reddit, I send them my thanks, because this ink is fantastic.
The color is a light blue-green-jade with a huge variety in its character depending on the paper saturation, nib, and even the light level in the room. It's impossible to really capture it in photographs. It's a little bit spring storm clouds, a little bit ocean water, a little bit frost on spruce needles in the blue light of morning. It's a very peaceful color. Chromatography shows an interesting blend of a dusty rose with moss green and cyan. Clearly this was made with some kind of alchemy.
It is on the pale side for writing, especially with a fine nib. It pools to a perfectly readable shade, and it shades like mad, so this would be exceptional with a wet nib. On the downside, that wet nib is going to lay down lines that will take ages to dry. Even a fine nib line took 35 seconds to stop smudging. It's okay for me, as I always use blotting paper, but left-handed writers might find this dry time to be frustratingly slow.
There is no water resistance to this ink, and it fully washed away where water was dripped. And despite its excellent shading, there is no trace of a sheen.
My ink came in the plastic 30ml bottle, which sells for a remarkably inexpensive $8 on JetPens. While that's a great deal on a wonderful ink, the bottle itself is almost impossible to fill from, as it has a very narrow opening. Fortunately, there is an 80ml glass bottle for $17, which is a good way to stock up on a color I'd be happy to use forever.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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