Six pens to rule them all?

(Belated) happy fountain pen day!

I've been mostly too busy writing with my pens (well, among other things) to find much time for writing about them but today is an exception.

Like probably a lot of you I have quite a few pens. I always estimated around 50 but a count has shown it's actually closer to 70. I like them all and love most of them and I'm currently trying to trade away or sell those which I don't love and use.

As I've always wanted to use all my pens there were times when 20 or so of them were inked at the same time. Of course most of them dried out before I could use up all their ink - even with pen pals and journalling and drawing I just don't use that much ink! So now I've cut back.

I have this beautiful and immensely handy Visconti 6 pen case which already looks a little bit battered since I've used it every day since the day I bought it. So I've determined I'll have a maximum of six pens inked at the same time.

(When you think about it's not even that easy to find use for 6 different pens. For instance I'd like my journal to be more or less consistent ink wise and I can't write a letter every day (and don't even have enough pen pals to write to that often!).

Anyway, these are my "6 pens to rule them all" for the moment!
(Yes, that's only 5 on that picture. One of them is, for now, a secret!)

And they are:
- a Conway Stewart Churchill in amber acrylic with IB nib. It is currently my journaling pen, filled with Noodler's Cayenne. It belongs to an endangered species now that Conway Stewart is no more. For a look at the whole pen click here.
- a Nakaya Negoro in shiro tame-nuri, portable size with 0.8 italic. Filled with Rohrer & Klingner Blu Mare. For a closer look at the pen click here.
- an Aurora Optima in Perla Nero celluloid. This one doesn't really belong to my collection yet but I'm evaluating whether it should become part of it. I really like that celluloid. It has a factory stub nib.
- a Graf von Faber-Castell Pen of the Year 2004 (amber). That one hasn't left my rotation since I got it last year. Read more about this pen here.
- a Stipula Mercury Francois des Trixhes in stunning grey and blue celluloid with a factory italic nib. I inked this one up yesterday after it had been out of use for quite a while. The nib never really made me happy. I had exchanged its feed for a Montegrappa ebonite feed which seemed to work fine until the ink flow suddenly stopped. Since I really like the pen I inked it up with Diamine Majestic Blue and wrote an extensive letter - no problems at all and really great line variation, it really flatters my handwriting. Hope it stays that way. Read more about this pen here.

There is an exception to the 5 pen rule: Pens that don't fit in the case such as a Danitrio Genkai, Mikado, Nakaya Long Cigar or Delta Roma Imperiale.