Review: some weird inks from Seattle

womp wooooooomp

Hello! I just got back from spending two weeks in Seattle. I stayed in Ballard, and my original plan was to trek to downtown and check out the Kinokuniya and other stuff in that central area for stationery. Then I found out an Uber to downtown was $50 each way so hard pass.

Fortunately, Ballard was great. It’s like Portland ten years ago, when it was at peak Portlandia, minus the sugar trash donuts. I’ll put a list of cool stuff the end of the post if you find yourself there, but we’re gonna focus on Push/Pull on Market Street.

This is an art supply store. And also a shop for local art. And also a shop for underground comix, which are like regular comic books but instead of being about a superhero they’re about evangelical masculinity in two specific horror films from the 1980’s. (If that one calls to you the same way it did to me, it was still in stock last week.)

They also do classes. Honestly, you walk into this place and will either be totally bewildered or be like “oh yeah, this kind of place; I bet they put on shows for Food Not Bombs in the back, by the vegan snacks,” depending on your life experiences.

For our purposes, they make and sell their own fountain pen and drawing ink.

A lot of it.

The vast majority of inks come in these 20 ml vials, which they sell for $8 each.

Some are water resistant, some are waterproof, some are vegan. The vegan thing surprised me because I guess I thought all inks were made of plant or mineral stuff. Now I’m curious which of my other inks are made of horse meat.

Anyway, I bought five of them to try out: Shadow, Magpie, Witching Hour, Rook, and Ennui.

Technically I bought two of them to try out and then came back and bought another three because I thought the packaging was cool and I just kind of assumed they’d perform well.

Here’s how that turned out:

Whoops. That one is Magpie and it’s the worst. Witching Hour and Ennui are not much better.

Shadow spreads but doesn’t feather too badly. Rook works more often than not, but takes a very long time to dry without smudging. Those are the two I am most likely to try to use again.

Look, as someone who feels a nearly compulsive need to be different, I wanted these to work SO BAD. I loved the packaging and colors and the idea of having a reasonably-priced niche brand that I could use as my go-to ink was a big plus for me. I literally went back to buy more before I even tried the first two!

Initially I thought maybe they were just really wet inks and I was using the Pineider we talked about last time, which is the wettest-writing pen I’ve ever owned. So I used my Krusac Dragonslayer (very over-the-top review here if you’re new), an incredibly reliable pen, to test out Magpie and Witching Hour and Ennui. Same problem. I then put Diplomat/Sailor inks in the two pens I used as a control, just to make sure there wasn’t anything weird with the pens; no issues.

Still thinking maybe I was doing something wrong, I went to go look if anyone else had reviewed these. Yes: Mike from Inkdependence did, LAST MONTH, and had the same problem with two different inks than the five I tried.

On the site it’s literally his most recent post, which was frustrating but at least confirmed it wasn’t me.

Verdict: WOMP WOOOOOOOOOMP

My wife did buy a cool sticker from that store though, so not a total loss. The comics and art they have are weird in a polarizing way that you’ll either hate or will make you want to spend hours in the store. So I think it’s still worth checking out if you’re in Ballard, or online if you want to see if Mike and I both got bad batches.

OTHER STUFF

THANKS: Thanks to everyone who already checked out Great Leader Detective Agency! Reminder that it is on Kindle Unlimited! Special thanks to the person from the UK who borrowed it from Kindle Unlimited and then read the entire thing in one day! That made my day, whoever you are.

NEXT POST TBD: By the time you’re reading this I’ll likely be in the OR for hand surgery. I’ve got a gnarly carpal boss (bonus bone growth) and ganglion (squishy lump from tendon injury) that have decided to team up and form one big ol’ mass on the back of my hand that, though benign, is causing me some functional issues and also looks very very gross. My next post will probably be about trying to write with my non-dominant hand while I heal.

INK FOR THE INK GOD: Are any of you guys into Warhammer? There was a Warhammer speakeasy in Ballard, basically a place to play Warhammer 40000 that has a bar. I walked by it like twenty times and then went in and asked the guys at the bar “hey so can you explain Warhammer to me.” An hour later I walked out with my first Warhammer model and a reading list.

spooky

I’m pretty excited about it. Anyone else?

AS PROMISED, A Truncated List of Other Cool Places in Ballard

• Lucca: Gift shop with a bunch of unusual stuff, including some stationery/writing utensils. I got a pocketknife that looks like a fish. My wife got an embroidered patch of a shark with a bloody hand that dangles from its mouth.

• Waystone Wargaming Speakeasy: Aforementioned Warhammer place. Cool concept and really welcoming people.

• Barnacle: An amaro bar that is largely used as a staging area for a connected restaurant, which is criminal. It has the largest selection of amaro I have ever seen, anywhere, period. They had more fernets than most bars in Italy have amari.

• Ballard Health Club: Extremely reasonable short-term passes, very well-equipped with many racks and platforms, diverse range of ages all lifting weights without anyone filming themselves and making it weird. Feels like a throwback to lifting culture in the early 2000’s.