Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
Ellen Ashford · October 15, 2026
Three ink problems look alike but have different causes. Learn how to spot feathering, bleeding, and ghosting—and which paper actually fixes each one.
Ellen Ashford · September 1, 2026
Best Blue Fountain Pen Inks: 10 Bottles I Have Used and Ranked Blue is the most crowded shelf in fountain pen ink, and most of the differences that matter are invisible in a swatch. A colour that looks gorgeous painted on Rhodia can feather into a smudge on a photocopier’s paper, take ninety seconds to … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 4, 2026
The Bottle I Almost Threw Away Last winter I pulled a bottle of Diamine Oxblood from the back of my ink cabinet and nearly didn’t recognize it. What had been a fluid, wine-dark red was now a thick paste clinging to the glass walls like old jam. I’d left the cap slightly loose — a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 26, 2026
Right now, on the desk in front of me, sits a Parker 51 I handed over $340 for at an estate sale — the seller’s word was “bargain,” my husband’s word for it was considerably less flattering. Uncap it, ink it, and set the hooded nib against a sheet of Rhodia, and you’ll feel exactly … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 26, 2026
A Locked Drawer Came Down From the Attic With Everything Else The desk itself I was ready for — three pieces wrapped in moving blankets that reeked of cedar and old wool, exactly what you’d expect from an attic in November. What caught me off guard was the shallow center drawer, still locked, with a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 22, 2026
Every January, when I sit down to break in a fresh notebook, I’m reminded of a mistake that cost me an entire page of research notes: I once assumed that any fountain pen ink would simply become waterproof if given enough drying time. That assumption turned out to be badly, expensively wrong. I’d filled a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 19, 2026
Here’s the myth I want to dismantle right away: that a swatch photo tells you anything reliable about how an ink will actually behave in your hand. It doesn’t. A few years into this hobby, I dropped money on a full 50ml bottle of a heavily praised ink purely because the online swatch showed a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 8, 2026
Don’t trust a journal entry until you’ve flipped the page. That shadowy double of yesterday’s handwriting rising up through today’s paper is the single most common complaint I field from other people who write daily with a dip or cartridge pen — and it fooled me for years before I finally sorted out what was … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 27, 2026
Here is the myth I need to bust straight away: shimmer ink is not simply “sheen with sparkle added,” and treating it that way is exactly how you end up scrubbing metallic grit out of a converter on a Saturday you’d rather have spent writing. That deep, shifting purple I once uncapped for the first … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 21, 2026
Nearly every beginner picking up a fountain pen assumes that if a notebook feels sturdy and looks nice, it’ll handle ink just fine — thickness equals quality, or so the logic goes. That assumption cost me $34 and three weeks of ruined journal entries. I’d loaded my TWSBI ECO with Pilot Iroshizuku ink and started … Read more