Sunday evenings are a good time for cleaning some fountain pens. Here, my pen cup occupancy had gradually risen to 18 currently inked. Cleaning a few is a quick and easy way of bringing the numbers down but usually at the cost of jettisoning some good ink.

“Deciding who goes and who stays” sounds like a line from Strictly Come Dancing when the judges are introduced. However in this case the decision is down to me. I selected four pens: a Lamy 2000 and an Italix Captain’s Commission, both inked with Onoto’s Mediterranean Blue which were ready for a change. Then there were the Diplomat Excellence and a Cleo Skribent, both of which I had two of on the go, and both with Waterman Serenity Blue.

I noticed that my Moonman S5 eyedropper pen was low on ink, last inked with Serenity Blue with a little Robert Oster Fire & Ice, which had produced a nice silky-smooth rich blue. This gave a pleasing effect on the page, from the smooth, oblique broad nib. Sometimes with luck an experimental mixing of inks produces an attractive blend, which is greater than the sum of the parts.

It occurred to me that rather than dump the remaining ink from my four candidates for cleaning, I would instead empty it into the Moonman. This has the happy consequence of (a) topping up the Moonman for a good few months of use, (b) producing a new and unique colour blend, (c) allowing four pens to be cleaned and (d) making space in the pen cups and (e) not wasting ink.

For this exercise, I usually stand the Moonman in an old Aurora ink bottle. The pen has a flat end to the barrel and so will stand up on a flat surface on its own, but could easily be knocked over.

Of course there is always a risk that the mixed inks will not play together nicely and instead form a goo. I have not had this occur so far but if the worst comes to the worst, you just clean the pen and start again.

I love Waterman’s Serenity Blue: a well behaved, easy to clean, royal blue. If I had to be limited to only one ink, that would probably be my choice. I do sometimes have the urge to ink up a pen with a turquoise ink but for some reason, I soon tire of it and find myself not using the pen very much, until eventually I cave in and flush. Perhaps we all have this tendency with certain colours.

I had nothing against the Serenity Blue in my Diplomat Excellence, but fancied a change to a blue black. Same with the Cleo Skribent.

Having told myself recently that I would not buy any more pens for a while, I recently found myself ordering an Online Bachelor calligraphy pen, when I saw that the supplied nib is the excellent 0.8mm stub. The pen is a clear demonstrator, cartridge-converter pen, rather like the Online College pens and comes with a converter. It is due to arrive in a few days and so I needed to make some space in the pen cup for the new arrival. Fingers crossed it will be a successful addition.