Zoom in to the pen. This is no ordinary fountain pen. This is a quilt pen. Like the olden times. Natasha had gifted this to me quite some back. It took quite some practice – but I still do not believe I have quite gotten the hang of it.

Remember the notepad that Niki and I had made as a DIY project? Finally, used it to write – not one, not two, but three letters. The paper worked like a charm. In fact, for the last two letters, instead of using my fountain pens, I opened up a calligraphy set Natasha had gifted me long time back.

It was a nice experience of dip-and-write. I was deathly afraid that I would spill the bottle of ink though! Note how Jay Jay wedged himself in the chair too and kept listening to the music!

I have been wanting to get myself a nice personalized notepad to write letters on. The problem is finding a company that will do it for you on fountain pen safe paper. The ones that say they can will charge over $2 per page!

So, Nikita and I did a DIY project. For the first time in my life, we made a personalized, fountain pen safe notepad. After reading up quite a few fountain pen users’ forums, I realized that HP Premium 32 would be the best option for me. To personalize it, I tried Word – but the margins were messy. Finally, Powerpoint turned out to be the best solution.

Niki and I learnt the art of making a notepad from printed paper, back cardboard and binding glue from a few Youtube videos. And a few adaptations here and there – voila! We have a perfect notepad. It cost me less than 6 cents per page!!

on perfect paper. Great way to round out a great outdoor day. One thing I miss is monogrammed paper to write these Thank You letters on. Getting good quality fountain pen paper is difficult. Most of the companies that print letterheads for you do not carry such paper 🙁

Relaxing evening by the pool with fountain pen and a writing pad.

Sitting out in nature on a nice Atlanta evening.
And writing yet another letter with a recently debuted fountain pen…

… a quick letter penned to a special friend of mine…

This time, I tried out an old calligraphic nib…

Penning a two page letter to a dear friend explaining how I went from being a lover of American football to virtually completely avoiding it. How the statistics on violent injuries and how it has affected players’ lives after they are done playing is too mind numbing for me. This is while Super Bowl is going on right now…

Used a new pen that I got a couple of months back from China.

Sat down to write a letter to an old teacher of mine who helped me with Bengali in 1984 (I was not good at it). Made a valiant attempt to write the whole letter in Bengali. Landed up using a couple of English words…But writing with a fountain pen to a Bengali teacher in Bengali – that is as 1984 as it gets for me!!