This isn't suspicious

[LizEF]

Holy above and beyond, Batman!  You are an ink hero, @A Smug Dill!  Seriously.  (And I have never understood the appeal of "swatching" as an activity either. I swatch the first time I put the ink in a pen, and on the rare occasion when I want to compare the ink to others without having inked it first. No way am I going to sit down and just swatch ink after ink.)

[Bo Bo Olson]

When in doubt, dazzle them with ...  ink???

[A Smug Dill]

15 hours ago, LizEF said:

You are an ink hero, @A Smug Dill!  Seriously.

 

Thank you for saying so! But you're the real hero, still keeping up with producing ink reviews and serving the (dare I emphasise, global) hobbyist community, when people like me have long thrown in the towel and quit reviewing.

[LizEF]

3 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

Thank you for saying so! But you're the real hero, still keeping up with producing ink reviews and serving the (dare I emphasise, global) hobbyist community, when people like me have long thrown in the towel and quit reviewing.

You're most welcome!  And thanks.   It's possible I'm a little obsessive.  It's absolutely certain everyone can thank Quin, Makhabesh, Essri, and Vika - I never could let go of a good story.  

[LizEF]

Holy Ink Brick, Batman!  Roughly 10 x 4 x 3 vials in dimension!  With lovely little business-card-size swatch cards so I can preview.  My brain is a bit overloaded - how the devil do you process a brick of inks?  Since I just got done with 1.5 hours of weed whacking and my arms are still vibrating to the beat of the trimmer, I think these will have to wait a while before I even start to think about what to do next. 

 

Whether you love ink reviews or Quin, Makhabesh, Essri, and Vika, we all owe @A Smug Dill a giant-sized thank you!  

 

[AmandaW]

Mission Suspicious was successful then. Good to hear. 

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, LizEF said:

we all owe @A Smug Dill a giant-sized thank you!  

 

Indeed yes!

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, LizEF said:

how the devil do you process a brick of inks?

 

One Sample At A Time, obvs!

 

Then again - should one arrange the inks alphabetically; by colour-family; by manufacturer; or just pile them all up in one drawer and then pluck-out samples at-random? 🤔
 

D'oh!

[LizEF]

24 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

Mission Suspicious was successful then. Good to hear. 

 Yep, very successful!  (I've never received one of those flat-rate boxes that was so heavy.  Dill's packing filled it to the brim and packed it densely!)

[LizEF]

Just now, Mercian said:

 

One Sample At A Time, obvs!

 

Then again - should one arrange the inks alphabetically; by colour-family; by manufacturer; or just pile them all up in one drawer and then pluck-out samples at-random? 🤔
 

D'oh!

Well, I intend to leave them in their vacuum-sealed pouches (each group of ~10 appears to be packaged separately inside a second package holding them all), so that they don't suffer from evaporation, since it's going to take a really long time to review all these - though my brain is now pondering whether I can review them faster and still function in my life otherwise...

 

I figure I'll open a pouch, and then review all of the inks from that pouch before opening the next.  And I'll have to mix them in with my other un-reviewed inks.  I may write a script to randomize sequencing of inks for review (but with that rule of doing all the ones from a pouch before any from another pouch).  I love writing randomization code - I used to have a website with a Random Decision Maker - put in the options you have to choose from and it decides for you.   Some guys who were using it to decide where to go to lunch each workday were quite upset when I had to take that site down.  Thankfully, I was able to point them to random.org.  

[Mercian]

@LizEF: however you work your way through the Ink Brick, I (for one) am 🤞 that it contains some inks that claim to be black.

 

Because I (for one) needs to see more comparison pics of such inks against The Void

[InkyProf]

Fabulous! Congrats @LizEF and bravo @A Smug Dill.

 

[LizEF]

52 minutes ago, Mercian said:

@LizEF: however you work your way through the Ink Brick, I (for one) am 🤞 that it contains some inks that claim to be black.

 

Because I (for one) needs to see more comparison pics of such inks against The Void

  There are 8 unreviewed blacks even without those from Dill.  I actually don't have the colors of the inks he sent - just their brand and name and whether they're pigmented, shimmer, and/or chromashading.  And from the swatches, there appear to be 6 more in the inks Dill sent.  So, you shall see The Void at least 14 more times.  

[LizEF]

58 minutes ago, InkyProf said:

Fabulous! Congrats @LizEF and bravo @A Smug Dill.

 

 Thanks!  And seconded!

[inkstainedruth]

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

One Sample At A Time, obvs!

 

Then again - should one arrange the inks alphabetically; by colour-family; by manufacturer; or just pile them all up in one drawer and then pluck-out samples at-random? 🤔
 

D'oh!

Ummmm... yes? 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

7 hours ago, LizEF said:

Roughly 10 x 4 x 3 vials in dimension!

 

6 hours ago, LizEF said:

Dill's packing filled it to the brim and packed it densely!)

 

Yes, … kinda. I can now confirm I could fit a ‘brick’ containing (at least) 128 ink sample vials — in four parallel slices of three tessellated layers of (11+10+11) vials, tightly packed in alternating North-South orientation on a plane for each of the 12 ‘strips’ — of that type in a USPS Small Flat Rate Priority Mail box, as expected from its published internal dimensions and my packing ‘solution’ in view of such; but I only sent 122 ink samples this time, in 2×(10+11+10)+2×(10+10+10) formation.

 

I was going to trim the excess plastic of each vacuum-sealed bags/pack, but then figured they could serve inherently as void fill to limit movement and dissipate the forces of external impact.

 

6 hours ago, LizEF said:

I actually don't have the colors of the inks he sent - just their brand and name and whether they're pigmented, shimmer, and/or chromashading.

 

Um, the 122 swatches accompanying the vials are the colours of the inks, represented visually 🧐 without lossy conversion to human language (e.g. American English) vocabulary, or the shortcomings of my perception and attribution of each to a colour family/group. 🤣

 

7 hours ago, Mercian said:

I (for one) am 🤞 that it contains some inks that claim to be black.

 

Should I be jealous that the inks won't speak and assert to me how they each identify? To be fair, I don't ever ask them individually what is their preferred colour when admitting them into my ‘collection’.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Organization is half the war, and that battle has been won.

[LizEF]

6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Um, the 122 swatches accompanying the vials are the colours of the inks, represented visually 🧐 without lossy conversion to human language (e.g. American English) vocabulary, or the shortcomings of my perception and attribution of each to a colour family/group. 🤣

  I meant "...in my database" which requires that lossy conversion to database field value in human language.  

 

6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Should I be jealous that the inks won't speak and assert to me how they each identify? To be fair, I don't ever ask them individually what is their preferred colour when admitting them into my ‘collection’.

[LizEF]

3 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Organization is half the war, and that battle has been won.

Indeed - they're perfectly organized as of this moment.  

[Mercian]

On 10/19/2025 at 7:35 AM, A Smug Dill said:

Should I be jealous that the inks won't speak and assert to me how they each identify? To be fair, I don't ever ask them individually what is their preferred colour when admitting them into my ‘collection’.

 

I dunno about 'jealous' - my Psychiatrist simply insists that I should not pay any attention to what I hear 'my' inks saying.
Especially not to their meaner comments... 🤪