It’s me, Laura, and today I’m shamelessly copycatting Ana’s post last week and spending a week using my favorite starter pen. My all time favorite when I first got into fountain pens was the Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pops! They were priced slightly differently back then, more at an introductory level (around $15-17 a piece if I remember correctly), and come in all sorts of fun colors. I found that I really liked the weight of a metal pen in my hand!
Technically I have three Metropolitans, though only two appear here. I started with a Purple Ellipse with a F nib and a Green Marble with a M nib. I have a third, the Turquoise Dots with what they used to call the Calligraphy Nib (now Medium Italic). I haven’t loaded that one with ink this week for a few reasons. The first is that I can’t find the converter (or a proprietary cartridge), but the more important reason is that I didn’t take to the Calligraphy nib well. I found it hard to write with. I also found that either the bigger nib or the cap seal meant that the pen dried out fairly quickly and would hard start.
I’m currently “mid-week” in my usage as I write this since I loaded the pens up last Friday with ink and set off on my weeklong adventure. So far I’m enjoying revisiting these old favorites. I admit I have a slight preference for the Green Marble because it has a medium nib and puts down a satisfying amount of ink. I think I’ve spoken about how I gravitated towards finer nibs when I started and I’ve wanted slightly bigger nibs as time has gone on. The Pilot nibs are very nice to write with, but I’m finding the fine a little bit too fine for my liking.
Technically I think this is going to be a 2 week experiment for me, because I’m topping off the ink in these babies and heading out for a work conference where I’m sure to take lots of notes so I’ll be back next week with a final report!
