We have a Winner ( Said in my best carnie voice)

To keep things fair I went with a real randomizer. And......
Speedmaster over at Amateur Economist is the winner! Congrats on being randomly selected. The pens are yours! I don't know why it made me laugh, but the mental image of Sam's cats smoking was hysterical to me. Shoot me your details and I have some ink or some pens to get out to you as well.

Thanks for everyone that commented. These are great fun and have a good long weekend. I will be back Tuesday with some fresh pen posts!

Seth

Noodler's Ink "Luxury Blue" and a new cause

I just wanted to drop a quick post because I am in love (like...circle one, "yes, no, or maybe" kind of love) with this ink. The Office Supply Geek was awesome enough to send a bottle over in a trade and I am glad he did. It's a fairly muted color, here is is compared to Private Reserve American Blue on the bottom. Subtle yet awesome. I have heard it referred to as "denim." But if loving denim is wrong I don't want to be right. I will get a proper review out in a little bit but for now, I have been loading this in every pen I can find.

I know this has nothing to do with pens, so bear with me.. I raced bicycles for a very long time in my life and bicycling remains a constant love. A few months ago I came across a great organization that is getting bikes in the hands of people that need them... to live. I have always rode my bike because I wanted to, I never realized that people in the world need to ride a bike to get medicine, or to get food for their family. So I have decided for the rest of the year (and maybe forever) 100% of my adsense revenue from this site will get dropped in a check to The World Bicycle Relief. You can read more about the organization here. Thanks.

It's Giveaway Time! 19 New pens!

One big grand prize.
I will also throw in two of the Frixions from earlier this week. (not pictured if you were counting pens) and the ink goes along as well!

Here are the silly rules, the contest ends 8:00 am Eastern on Friday. My legal team is dreaming up my own (funnier) version of the randomizer and I will announce the winner after the holiday. All you have to do is leave any comment on this post and as usual, there will be a special separate prize sent out to the person who comes closest to making me laugh so hard I fall out of my chair and break a hip.
We can catch up with email after the contest to sort out which you like. That's it. Have a great day. Oh, and International readers...feel free to join in the fun. -Seth

Pelikan Pelikano Junior

As always, click for bigger pictures...The great people over at Gold Spot Pens (Twitter here) kind enough to do a giveaway and give a few bloggers some Pelikans to test drive. Mine showed up on my doorstop yesterday, I quickly threw in the included cartridge and didn't put this pen down all day. I have owned a few Pelikan piston fillers in the past, but I had forgotten how fun they were to write with and how smooth they are.

Everyone knows there a sheet inside the pen box to write your name on right? This one says "Good pens" and it is mine now so you cannot have it back. Cool feature! So when you close the pen there is a little window that displays your info. You could write "Popsicle" if you wanted.

This pen does not have a clip, but that works for me. I rarely put a pen in my shirt pocket and the raised lettering seems to keep the pen from rolling around anyway. The cool thing is that they are available in 4 colors and nib versions for lefties as well! I love the emails that I get from people saying that "they used that fountain pen in school" or "when they were young." Maintaining fountain pens takes a little discipline and I am happy Pelikan is trying to bring that idea of fountain pens for kids back a little bit.

I was surprised how wet this writes, to me that is a good thing. It lays down a nice fat line of ink that I gladly welcome. The steel nib feels like it could take some abuse without complaining at all when the school kids start using this pen as darts. Saying all that, every fountain pen user should keep one of these in their pen cup and these seem bulletproof. (but I wont be doing any testing of that, these are staying safely on my desk.)

What did she bring me #4 Pilot Frixion

What Did She Bring Me? usually involves asking my wife to go out and "pick up a pen." No questions asked and at this point now she just rolls her eyes and throws a new pen on my desk in a day or two. I think with this one, she was kind of messing with me.

You lefties will appreciate the way these pens are facing. In fact, this might be a first, I usually face my pen points to the left. In this case, it would have made the writing on the cap upside down. (odd) The tribal graphics seem a little out of place to me, but apparently the marketing works, because she bought them.

When I first opened these I didn't notice the little nub here. But I am a smart(ish) guy and I quickly realized that's the eraser (palm to forehead.) Oh... cool, these are eraserable. I should have read the packaging. I had my doubts.

So I took the three pens and started writing "This is a mistake" and then began erasing words. I was pretty impressed with how well the ink just disappeared. I erased these about 10 seconds after writing and yes, that pink is pink...like bubblegum pink. My kingdom for some blue ink. It's rare that something in the new pen world impresses me...but this actually worked.

My favorite eraser chewed through this ink with no problem as well. I am not sure if and or where these will fit into my daily pen world. I might actually go back and buy some blue and black to have because these colors are a little strong (by strong I mean horribly bright) for me, but overall, I am glad these showed up on my desk.