The Well-Appointed Desk

Anyone who knows me (or who has followed this blog for any amount of time) knows I have a thing for the color green, particularly in the yellow-green hues but any green is better than the finest red or purple or blue in my world. So I, of course, will buy any green pen that crosses my path. Some I like, some I love, some not-so-much. Here’s the most recent array.

From the top:

1. Zebra Sarasa 0.4 Light Green
2. Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 (no longer available in green. red and black only)
3. Marvy Le Pen Olive Green
4. Uniball Signo DX 0.28
5. Pentel Slicci 0.4
6. Muji 0.38
7. Muji 0.5
8. Uniball Signo 0.38 Lime Green
9. Pilot Hi Tec C 0.4 Apple Green
10. Stabilo 88 0.4 Apple Green

The Muji pens are described as “gel ballpoint” on the website but I’m fairly convinced they are what most would consider a liquid rollerball ink. The line widths are considerably thicker than comparably sized gel ink pens. The 0.38 was almost more of an aqua blue and the 0.5 is a deep forest green.  I’m not a fan of either color in my search for “the perfect green” but both pens write smoothly and are priced so that I leave them on my desk for visitors to use as I wouldn’t be devasted if either of them walked away. I’d be curious to see what some of the other colors in the Muji line look like though.

There are two felt-tip pens in the running, the Marvy Le Pen in Olive Green and the Stabilo 88 in Apple Green. The Le Pen is quite a dark green but considerably less blue than the 0.5 Muji which is closest in color. I love the simplicity of the overall look of the LePens — they have not changed in 30 years but I prefer some of the other colors in the line over the green, The Stabilo 88 is a lovely shade of green but it behaves so much like a felt tip pen as to be a challenge to use very often (it has a tendency to feather and bleed). The Stabilo pen itself is really long too, almost unwielding, even with the cap unposted. But I am quite taken with the color!

The rest of the pens in the running are of the gel ink variety. The Signo Bit 0.18 (no longer available in green) is so pale and micro that it basically disappears on the page. The other Signo models write nicely and the color of the 0.38 in Lime Green is quite fetching. The color of the Uniball DX is a bit to emerald for my liking. The last three are my go-to gel pen brands: Pilot Hi-Tec-C, Zebra Sarasa and Pentel Slicci. The Zebra Saras color is a tiny bit too light but its one of the more comfortable disposable pens and I get a twisted satisfaction clicking the retractable point. I own several of these and they can be found on just about every working surface. Maybe I need to get a Zebra Sarasa multi-pen?

The Pilot Hi-Tec-C is a lovely color and fits into a lovely lime green mulit-pen body. Replaceable ink cartridges mean that if or when my fascination switches to purple or blue or some other color combination, I can still use the same pen body.

I always want to like the Pentel Slicci — they really are slick-y when I write with them, but for some reason I just find them a bit too insubstantial in my hands. I think they have a narrower barrel than a LePen, if you can believe it.

My final tally:

1. Uniball Signo 0.38 in Lime Green
2. Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.4 in Apple Green
3. Zebra Sarasa 0.4 in Light Green

Does anyone else have a favorite color pen? Have you found the one true blue to rule them all? Or purple? Or red?