I've been having fun with samples from Bungubox. Let's take a look at this one.

Let's talk about my planner system!

Let's take a look at the limited edition Pelikan Edelstein Olivine!

I imagine KWZ's golden brown inks are their most famous, right? So let's go in for another one.

I've been enjoying Nagasawa Kobe inks lately. Let's take a look at another sample.

It's about time for my first giveaway. You can win this new PenBBS 309 with a fine nib! Just the pen, though. The notebook is mine and you can pry it out of my inky hands.

All you gotta do is go to my Instagram page, and leave a comment on the corresponding photo. Let me know what your favorite pen and ink combo is at the moment, and that's it! You don't have to follow me if you don't want to, but that sure would be nice.

This giveaway ends 11/24 at 11:59 PM PST, and I'll announce the winner on 11/25. Unfortunately, this giveaway is only open to U.S. residents. Sorry to my international readers and followers. There's a bunch of different laws regarding giveaways in different countries and I am not even close to being a lawyer!

My thanks to Bobby for providing the pen.

Robert Oster Signature inks are pretty great. Let's keep looking at them.

We're looking at another Nagasawa Kobe ink today!

This is my first ink from the Diamine 150th Anniversary line! Unsurprising that I went with the orange-brown, right?

We're looking at a new-to-me ink and brand!

We're taking a look at another Colorverse ink today!

Diamine Teal is an ink I've had for a while! Let's get a gander.

I decided in September 2017 that I wanted to get back into ink reviewing. I'd been doing reviews off and on for a couple of years, but the habit never really stuck. I'm not sure why it worked this time around, but I'm glad it did.

Since September 25th of last year, I've written 44 reviews here on Winter Sharks, and have written for On Fountain Pens and Massdrop. It's been a really exciting year for me, as I finished off my senior year of college, wrote an honors thesis, and started figuring out what I want to do for the rest of my life (scary!). I began a job at a really awesome place this month, and even though I fall asleep at 9:45 pm on weekdays, things are really looking up here.

I want to thank everyone for reading my reviews and sharing in on this passion of mine. I love this community and the camaraderie that comes so quickly to many of you. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to write passionately about this tiny little niche. Thank you to everyone who comments and cheerleads. And thank you to everyone who might be a bit shy to talk, but reads every article out there.

I feel a commitment to sharing my knowledge with people, whether they're new to this niche or have been dedicated members for decades. Thank you again for letting me be a part of this fantastic world.

I'll be taking this week off to relax and reorient—but you should know that there will be plenty of new material coming! I hope you'll stick around for year two of Ink Sharks.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment on this post or send me an email at gpharaonis(at)gmail.com. In particular, I'd love to know what you want to see in future ink reviews. More in-depth water resistant tests? Reactions to sunlight? Performance on "normal" paper? If it's reasonable, I certainly can give it a shot!

See y'all next week!

It was my birthday last week! Why not celebrate it with a sparkly ink?

I've been using the bullet journal system in a Stalogy 365 A6 notebook since July 2017! You can read more about my five month check-up. I thought it was a great system for a college student: I could keep track of everything, and take note of what wasn't done by the end of the day.

We're taking a look at the second of the two Lennon Tool Bar inks I own!

I've had J. Herbin Rouille D'ancre for a while now. Time to give it a gander.

Let's take a look at a new sample!

We're taking a look at this ink today! There it is!

I'm probably a few years late, but we're gonna look at the wildly hyped J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary Emerald of Chivor today!

We're chugging along this week with a look back at an older ink! Taking a look at Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün.

The fountain pen hobby is full of evolutions: people (usually) begin with starter pens, printer paper, blue or black ink. Then, all of a sudden, you're pulling your credit card out even while your eyes water at the price of a gold-nibbed pen. You have a leather pen case with so many pens, too many pens, why do you need this many pens? You don't need another pen. You click buy anyway.

We're looking at an ink from Lennon Tool Bar today!

I dyed my TWSBI. It was super easy and took almost no time at all. I'm here to share instructions for how to do it. Make sure you read this entire post!

Here's an ink I've really enjoyed: Noodler's Air-Corp Blue-Black!

A third Diamine ink in a row!

Ooh, another Diamine ink! This one's Ancient Copper, another favorite (am I showing my hand too early?)

More Diamine! We're working through inks that I've had before I started this blog.

More SKB! Let's take a look.

Listen, I'm running out of ways to start off these blog posts. So here you go.

I talked about Diamine Tyrian Purple last week, so I might as well talk about a similar ink here!

We're taking a look at another ink that's been on the market for a while!

Hey, hello, one of my favorite inks! Let's go ahead and take a look at it.

Taking a look at yet another blue from Pilot Iroshizuku. Hey, that rhymes.

Here's another guest post I wrote for On Fountain Pens! This is on KWZ Cappuccino. Head on over to the site and give it a read!

Taking a look at a Taiwanese ink today! I've scattered the Taiwan-exclusive inks over the next few months, and we'll start here with SKB.

Here's another blue ink for your consideration!

Another pen review! I wanted to get this one up pretty quickly so that you can pick up a relatively new brand of pen.

Here's another review for On Fountain Pens! This time on De Atramentis Virgo. Take a look!

Every year, Pelikan develops an ink based off of a mineral or gem for a special, limited edition release known as the Edelstein Ink of the Year. Since 2015, there has also been a demonstrator tinted to match the ink. In 2016, this pen and ink combo was Aquamarine: a blue-green that's more dark than light.

We're taking a look at an ink that you can only find at one store: Ty Lee (小品雅集), located in Taipei, Taiwan.

There are a couple of brands and releases that are exclusive to stores or to the island, and I wanted to talk about that briefly in advance of my first Taiwan-exclusive ink review. This is going to be a relatively quick rundown, but I hope that if you happen to be there you'll be able to take a look around and find some relatively rare inks.

Ooh, bottle in sunlight!

I promised a while ago that I would talk about the new Sailor inks, and here I am talking about them a couple of months late! I promise I was on time with getting the ink itself. Just, you know, the rest of it got a bit delayed.

Yet another Pilot Iroshizuku ink! I've got six of these, you know.

Here's another Pilot Iroshizuku ink review! We're still looking at blues and blue greens today, so you know I'm a big fan of these tones.

Jumping back to Japan today with a review of another Pilot Iroshizuku ink. (Three more to go!)

Here's my second review for On Fountain Pens, the first of my two on the De Atramentis astrology inks. This is De Atramentis Pisces!

Adzukiiro is a new release from TAG in their Kyo no Oto line, along with the blue-gray Hisoku. I don't believe it's limited edition. Let's go straight in!

I'm happy to announce that I wrote my first guest post at On Fountain Pens! I'll be doing reviews there from time to time. My first is on NAGASAWA PenStyle-Den KobeINK物語 #8 Arima Amber. Please go ahead and give the site a visit!

Ooh, we're jumping around quite a bit! Back to the pre-Taipei trip collection.

It felt right to talk about Fuyu-syogun right after I talked about its sibling ink, Kiri-same. They're like two sides to the same coin, I guess!

We're going gray for two weeks! I'm taking a look at Pilot Iroshizuku's sibling grays.

Here's the third of the three Sailor Jentle inks I own!

I have a couple of changes that are coming to the way that I do my reviews. This is mostly a post to keep myself accountable, so feel free to skip this entirely if you're here for the ink reviews!

I do have to add that some of my reviews have been completed in advance, so these changes may not appear in all of them. However, I will implement these changes where possible, especially where an additional picture or two is all that is necessary.

I'm shuffling around the reviews I have prepared for the coming months, and I thought I would talk about the Sailor Jentle inks I have first. As you may know, Sailor is moving their Jentle line to smaller bottles for the same price, which is silly and makes them more expensive than Pilot Iroshizuku inks. Cost aside, I wanted to review these inks while you can still find the original bottles before they disappear entirely. I'm not sure if this change will be occurring outside of Japan, but better safe than sorry, right?

Happy new year, everybody! Okay, seems a bit strange to say this two weeks into the new year, and after I posted last week, but you know how it is. I took a quick break to spend time with my family over my holiday break, and I'm ready to jump into 2018 with a post thinking about the old year—strange, I know. But I own about thirty inks, give or take, which is pretty much too many inks for one person to use in a sensible period of time. You know... they're just so tempting. I figured it's been a while since I really took a look at my collection and thought about my favorites, the inks I want to use every time I fill a pen.