pink — Blog — The Purl Bug

I have been excited to try this ink for quite a while. Depending on the batch you get, Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses can be a near twin for Yama-Budo. And, since my bottle of BSiAR did not manage to make the trip with us to Virginia, this sample (courtesy of my friend Paul, thank you sir) is the only immediate access I have to such a lovely color.

I have mostly been using Yama-Budo for grading over the past week, which means lots of writing on cheap copy paper and in various grades of composition books. Overall, it's very well behaved and only shows a bit of line fuzziness on the worst of papers. I actually might like it a bit better on cheaper stock, as more ink gets soaked into the page and results in a more saturated color that leans towards purple. It's hard to see in the scan above (which was done on Tomoe River), but the ink seemed a bit dull once it dried.

Overall, I have a hard time saying anything bad about Yama-Budo. At the same time, I won't be purchasing a full bottle any time soon. Yes, I like the color, but obviously I did not like it enough to bring my bottle of BSiAR with me because I just don't reach for it that much. It's not very professional, but I do think it can find a happy place on an ink shelf if you are looking for a fun ink to use for correspondence or you want an ink to grade in that isn't red.

Since this is day 1, I figured it would be prudent to offer a bit of explanation as to what I'm doing here. As you may remember from a recent post, I will be moving at the end of this month and that will be creating a fair amount of hassle and chaos in my life. In an effort to make sure that a month or more does not pass without any new content appearing, I will be following in the steps of Christine and posting one ink swab a day for the next 36 days. Each swab will be accompanied only by a star rating (and perhaps a link to a review, if I have done one). These ratings are not based on the performance of the ink, but just a gut reaction to the color. This is approximately how they break down:

One star = eww, yuck, I can't think of a reason to ever try this ink
Two stars = I don't like it, but it's not hate at first sight
Three stars = meh, I would use this if I didn't have anything better
Four stars = this is nice, I would happily ink this up to play
Five stars = this would make a good desert island ink and I would be happy using it longterm

Again, those are just gut reactions, so don't take it personally if I give your favorite ink a poor rating. Also, I hope this is not the only content being posted for July, but I make no promises - moving across the country is a bit of work!

PS, nitty gritty details: these swabs were done on Tomoe River Paper, and the names were written with a glass dip pen. They were scanned in my usual way and not color corrected, so they may appear different on your monitor than they do in real life.