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This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.

I mentioned back in June that shimmer inks had been giving me trouble. But I’ve found a new solution! the Pelikan Twist.

I own a few of the cheaper pens that people said worked for them, and the one that had been giving me the least trouble had been the TWSBI Swipe. But even “least trouble” meant that I could use the pen, but it felt like it was getting a shimmer particle stuck somewhere on the regular, so I’d have skipping and low ink flow and the whole thing felt scratchy and annoying to use. You can kind of see it in my journal writing:

A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in teh paper where the pen was giving me trouble. — A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in the paper where the pen was giving me trouble.

Note that this ink *is* shimmery but I couldn’t get an angle of light that showed the paper dents and the shimmer at the same time so you’re not seeing much of it in these writing samples. This is on white Clairfontaine paper in my current journal.

Someone on mastodon (sorry, I forget who but it might have been paradoxmo?) mentioned that they liked Pelikan for shimmer inks, but the ones they used were pretty pricey. But I had a Pelikan Twist I’d bought ages ago. So I wanted to know would the feed take shimmer as well as their more expensive pens? I can’t answer that because I don’t have any of those, but I can tell you that it’s worlds better than the TWSBI Swipe, or any of the other pens I’d gotten in search of the One True Shimmer Pen for my collection.

Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn't working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents. — Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn’t working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents.

I don’t know if the photos convey how different the writing experience is between these two pens. The TWSBI Swipe feels most often like I’m writing with a mechanical pencil: lots of feedback, very scratchy. It also tends to get finicky about angles. It’s not consistent: I think it’s happening when a particle gets stuck somewhere, so it’ll write fine for a word and then just choke. But basically it works beautifully for a day or two and then it feels like it’s running out of ink half the time.

The Pelikan Twist on the other hand, writes like, well, a fountain pen, even with the same shimmer ink. It’s smooth and the ink flows consistently. I can leave the pen for a few days without having to run the nib under the tap to get it going again. It is everything I wanted out of the writing experience but had never been able to achieve when using shimmer inks in any pen.

Pelikan Twist pen in red. It's a pen shaped like a long trianglular "tube" with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3. — Pelikan Twist pen in red. It’s a pen shaped like a long trianglular “tube” with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3.

I’m really pleased, but also confused: lots of people love the TWSBI pens for shimmer, and I have 3 of them all of which eventually did the same half-clog thing. None of my other pens fared better, including the Wing Sung 698 I’d bought especially for this purpose. (To be fair, that one had other problems so I may have just gotten a bad one.) I still don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if I’m just significantly more picky about my writing experience. The former is entirely possible, the latter seems unlikely given how fountain pen users are. I am rolling the pen periodically to keep the shimmer moving as I write, and making sure the ink bottle is shaken so the shimmer is suspended in the ink before I fill the pen.

For all that I now love it, the Pelikan Twist is a weird pen. I think it cost me about $20 and only came in medium (which is fine, I like medium). I had some trouble finding a converter that actually fit it. The internet said it should fit a standard international converter but nothing I had on hand worked; thankfully the fine folk at Jetpens have more precise recommendations so I picked up something from them and it’s great. (I could also hae refilled the cartridge that came with it, but I like converters better.) I will say that the plastic on my Twist is already kind of dinged up (if you look closely in the photos you can see some grey areas), probably from when I carried my pens around in a pencil case that didn’t keep them separated.

Pelikan Twist pen in red with teh cap off to show the triangular grip section, which continues in line with the twisted pen body.

Unfortunately, the reason this pen never made it into regular rotation when I bought it to try many months ago (because it looked weird and was on sale) is that I don’t love the feel of the triangle grip. It’s not unbearable, just slightly off from what I find most comfortable. This got it most often relegated to “to do list pen” for months while I used up the cartridge, then got it forgotten in the pen cup until my shimmer problems made me pull it out.

But even *with* a grip that doesn’t perfectly suit me, it’s worlds better with shimmer ink than any other pen I own, and I’m really happy because this means the Diamine Inkvent inks I’d been struggling to use now have a dedicated pen and will be coming out significantly more often than they would have if I’d had to use a dip pen with them.

Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there's also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page. — Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there’s also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page.

I should note that it’s not *all* shimmer inks that give me these headaches. I’ve been having a delightful time with the KWZ All That Glitters inks in pretty much any pen I try. But my ink collection is very small so it’s pretty dominated by last year’s Inkvent calendar at the moment. Still, the problem was bad enough that I’d been refusing to buy other shimmer inks and had taken the Diamine inkvent 2025 calendar off my plans for this year because I didn’t want to pile up more inks I could barely use.

Anyhow, I’m very happy with discovering that even this cheap Pelikan pen has a feed that takes shimmer better than anything else I own! But I will admit that it made me go look at other Pelikan pens and of course I feel in love with one that’s considerably more expensive and limited edition to boot. I can’t really *blame* companies for making money and no one manufactures exactly the same thing forever, but this hobby can be a bit much with the special editions to keep you buying. Ugh!

Pelikan Twist: my new favourite fountain pen for shimmer ink