EFNIR: Collection Traced Valley Night

[LizEF]

Extra Fine Nib Ink Review: Collection Traced Valley Night

This is review #379 in my series. Here's the YouTube video:

Post-recording notes: This ink from China was gifted to me by a generous FPNer. My apologies for not including the Chinese name of this ink-my database language doesn't support double-byte characters, nor do I know how to write them properly. Please see my inks spreadsheet which now has a tab with both the Chinese and English ink names. This is a chroma-shading ink. Since this attribute can be less stable over time, I'm reviewing all of them out of sequence.

The color is fairly unique: a misty green with hints of blue. I see a greener green outline around parts of the darkest pools on the mini CRENA swatch card swatch. It sort of reminds me of a bronze or copper patina. It's also sort of like the color of old greenish glass Coke bottles. It's bluer when wet, and greener when dry. Once again, the color was too pale and muted so the video camera didn't pick up the color (or not much of it). You'll have to rely on stills for the proper color. (The swatch is a bit too blue in the video.)

Shading seems to depend more on the paper than usual.

Cleaning was ridiculously easy except for a line of dried ink in the converter, which I rubbed away with a swab.

Zoomed in photo (Text is a smidge too blue and too pale.)

Screenshot (A little too dark and desaturated, but the color itself is close.)

Scan of Completed Review (This is almost perfect. It might be a smidge too green, or maybe not. It's hard to tell.)

Absorbent Paper Close-up (top is puzzle paper like thick newsprint, bottom is old 20lb copy paper) (Fairly close.)

Line width (Roughly 316µm. The "I" in "Ink:". Magnification is 100x. The grid is 100x100µm. The scale is 330µm, with eleven divisions of 30µm each. With 379 inks measured, the average line width is 299µm.) (This image makes me think that from a wide, wet nib, you might get a halo effect.)

Swatch card comparison (I think it's a little over-saturated, but colors are quite close to what I see. Valley Night is less blue (also lacking purple and pink) than Jin Chen Lamp Night, and less green that Yunjintang Garden Stroll.)

Alternate Papers (On all, it started bluer than usual and took quite a while to turn green; Iroful stayed bluer than the others, and Triomphe a little more greyed/desaturated. In the image, Triomphe seems a little bluer to me than reality, but the colors are all fairly close.)

Previous Review: Sailor STORiA Night Blue.

Images also available on Instagram: @zilxodarap.

Want to influence the inky sequence? Take the "next ink" poll.

View a list of my inks, complete with review results in a google sheet.

Need to catch up on The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh? Find the whole story here. Or read Part 8: The Ice Fields Adventure.

Hope you enjoy. Comments appreciated!

[Sailor Kenshin]

Etthhri is my hero!  🐍 👏🏻 💝

 

I love this sort of color.  A very apt comparison to Coke bottles.  Would you also call it celadon?  I could live with Valley Night color walls.

 

Snow and ice is apt, too.  Waiting for more snow.  Nooooo…. *faints*

 

@LizEF: You make Tuesdays magical and fun... I always look forward to the review and story, and this was no exception.  

[yazeh]

What a lovely colour and review.

I liked the allusion to old Coke bottles. It reminded me of a time of innocence.

 

The storyline  has a mythic quality to it: The ultimate test either by an evil ice-monster or a wise truth-seeker gaging the purity of the heart of our heroes. 

 

Like @Sailor Kenshin, I would love a wall or even a shirt in this colour.

 

It seems iroful captures more of the blue. I love these comparison papers you've added to your reviews. It makes the review more nuanced. 

 

Thanks for bringing magic on this cold day, where the promise of spring is clouded by the sound of bombs and sufferings. 🙏🙏🙏🕊️

 

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Etthhri is my hero!  🐍 👏🏻 💝

 

1 hour ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

I love this sort of color.  A very apt comparison to Coke bottles.  Would you also call it celadon?  I could live with Valley Night color walls.

 It's a very soothing color - might be nice for walls in a room where you just want to relax.  I did an image search on celadon, and while there are some variations that are similar, more are quite different...  Apparently even named colors have a pretty wide interpretation.

 

1 hour ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Snow and ice is apt, too.  Waiting for more snow.  Nooooo…. *faints*

 We've been getting some much-needed rain in the valley (and snow in the mountains).  I doubt it's enough, but we'll take whatever we can get!   Hope your snowstorm is manageable.

 

1 hour ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

@LizEF: You make Tuesdays magical and fun... I always look forward to the review and story, and this was no exception.  

 Thanks!

[LizEF]

39 minutes ago, yazeh said:

What a lovely colour and review.

I liked the allusion to old Coke bottles. It reminded me of a time of innocence.

 

 

39 minutes ago, yazeh said:

The storyline  has a mythic quality to it: The ultimate test either by an evil ice-monster or a wise truth-seeker gaging the purity of the heart of our heroes.

 

 

40 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Like @Sailor Kenshin, I would love a wall or even a shirt in this colour.

 Ah, yes, it would make a good shirt, too.

 

41 minutes ago, yazeh said:

It seems iroful captures more of the blue. I love these comparison papers you've added to your reviews. It makes the review more nuanced. 

Yes, Iroful seems to "up" the blue, where Life seems to "up" the green, and Triomphe makes things more serious (darker, maybe not as vibrant - it's harder to predict).  As I warned the commenter on YT, I'm only doing the extra papers for these chromashading/multichrome inks (or any other, should I trip over them, that advertise reacting to paper).  It's too much extra work to do for every ink, especially when most inks won't look significantly different.

 

43 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Thanks for bringing magic on this cold day, where the promise of spring is clouded by the sound of bombs and sufferings. 🙏🙏🙏🕊️

 You're most welcome!  I've been away from the news for a while. Sorry to hear about more conflict (though not surprised). Guess I'll have to go catch up on what's happening. 

[yazeh]

43 minutes ago, LizEF said:

It's too much extra work to do for every ink, especially when most inks won't look significantly different.

You're telling me? 😃

43 minutes ago, LizEF said:

 

 You're most welcome!  I've been away from the news for a while. Sorry to hear about more conflict (though not surprised). Guess I'll have to go catch up on what's happening. 

You're better off not knowing.  

 

[inkstainedruth]

@LizEF -- Not a ink for me at all (too pale, and I'm also not keen on the color in general).  But thanks as usual for the review.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

31 minutes ago, yazeh said:

You're telling me? 😃

 

31 minutes ago, yazeh said:

You're better off not knowing.  

Yeah, that's kind of why I go through cycles of checking what's going on in the world and remaining blissfully oblivious.  It's the same things over and over.

[LizEF]

26 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

@LizEF -- Not a ink for me at all (too pale, and I'm also not keen on the color in general).  But thanks as usual for the review.

You're most welcome!  Your wallet is breathing a sigh of relief! 

[inkstainedruth]

And also cringing because of B/W coming up and I'm actually driving out tomorrow and stopping someplace en route for the night, rather than getting up at the crack of dawn on Thursday.  

(Which is, of course, in itself not a bad plan, because I slept in until 10 AM this morning.... ). And have to still do a lot of packing and get a pen flushed out and dried to be (hopefully) worked on at the show, and have a bunch of other pens that need to be worked on as well -- including the recently acquired 51 Signet, because the nib/feed section is now stuck in the cap and when I tried to pull it out, all I did was pull the press bar sleeve off the sac  .  So that's Yet Another™ pen to have worked on at the show, and I'm still trying to figure out what I did with the little Peter Pan ringtop I bought from the same vendor at the antiques show.  And of course that's NOT counting pens I want to have with me to use (signing credit card receipts and doing journal entries and such).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

13 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

And also cringing because of B/W coming up...

 Have fun!  Hope you're able to get your pens worked on.

[knarflj]

Another lovely colour.  I'm kind of glad these are not easy to get in the US.  And another enjoyable instalment of the story.  Thanks for both.  Sometimes I wish Tuesdays weren't so far apart.  

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, knarflj said:

Another lovely colour.  I'm kind of glad these are not easy to get in the US. 

 

1 hour ago, knarflj said:

And another enjoyable instalment of the story.  Thanks for both. 

 You're most welcome!

 

1 hour ago, knarflj said:

Sometimes I wish Tuesdays weren't so far apart.  

 I'll speak to Quin - maybe he can hit the Librarian up for a temporal enchantment.  

[A Smug Dill]

As always, thank you for the review!

 

Official marketing image(s) for this ink:

 

looking rather different from my swatch on the CRENA swatch card. I might have to test the ink from my bottle again later.

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

As always, thank you for the review!

You're very welcome!

 

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Official marketing image(s) for this ink:

[pic]

looking rather different from my swatch on the CRENA swatch card. I might have to test the ink from my bottle again later.

Whoa! Completely different from what I see.  Would be interested to learn what the ink in your bottle looks like.

[USG]

14 hours ago, LizEF said:

It's also sort of like the color of old greenish glass Coke bottles.

 

Haha, good analogy !  😀👍

 

Btw, I wanted to ask you, what's your 'go to' paper for personal use? 

[LizEF]

9 hours ago, USG said:

Haha, good analogy !  😀👍

 Thanks!

 

9 hours ago, USG said:

Btw, I wanted to ask you, what's your 'go to' paper for personal use? 

I use hardcover Rhodiarama notebooks for journaling (same as their Webnotebook, just different cover colors). The paper is "Papier Vélin Velouté 90g/m² fabriqué in France par Clairefontaine".^a  I use a Hobonichi Techo planner (which is apparently a 47gsm TR?).  I use Rhodia dot grids as scratch paper.  I use Clairefontaine Triomphe, Life Writing Paper Bank Paper, original 52gsm TR, and Iroful for writing letters (and sometimes just random stationery without brands).  I also have some original TR 68gsm notebooks I use sometimes for scribbling notes or doodling.  And I sometimes use Maruman Mnemosyne for taking notes away from home (they have wonderfully thick and stiff backboards).  Finally, I use HP Premium 24lb printer paper for my daily puzzles.  (It's still the best printer paper I've found for FP ink.)

 

If ever I decide to improve my handwriting (as opposed to wishing I had better handwriting  ), I'll use my Clairefontaine French rule notebooks (2) for that.  (I dislike the paper in them, but it takes FP ink well.)

 

^aWhen I quit doing ink reviews, and finish all the Rhodiaramas, I'll switch to my 68gsm TR Endless Recorders and my one GLP The Author notebook. But for consistency's sake, I'll keep using Rhodiaramas since it's the primary place where I decide on how well an ink lubricates.

[USG]

Wow Liz, that's so much more than I asked for, thank you. 😀👍

What a nice selection of paper.  I see you're a Rhodia/Clairefontaine fan.

Is Life Writing Paper Bank Paper white or cream?

I have HP 24lb is it better than HP 32lb?

 

[LizEF]

13 minutes ago, USG said:

Wow Liz, that's so much more than I asked for, thank you. 😀👍

 You're most welcome!

 

13 minutes ago, USG said:

What a nice selection of paper. 

Variety keeps life interesting.  I also have some Kokuyo and Apica, one Cosmo (can't remember if it's Air or Snow), Midori MD, Black n' Red, Paperblanks, etc.  

 

14 minutes ago, USG said:

I see you're a Rhodia/Clairefontaine fan.

Unless it's their heavy-weight white paper used in ordinary notebooks like the French rule - I hate that stuff.  But Triomphe is wonderful and the Rhodiarama's pretty good.  Dot pads are just inexpensive, convenient, and commonly known, so they make a good review paper.

 

16 minutes ago, USG said:

Is Life Writing Paper Bank Paper white or cream?

I would call it more Ivory.  It's less yellow than the Rhodiaramas or Midori MD.  Close to the color of Iroful.  Maybe slightly yellower than 68gsm TR.

 

17 minutes ago, USG said:

I have HP 24lb is it better than HP 32lb?

I've never used the 32lb HP because I don't use triple extra super broad firehose nibs.   The 24lb was cheaper and works well with my "up to a Pelikan fine nib" nibs and stubs.   (I can say that 32lb Hammermill bleeds and spreads much worse than the 24lb, which doesn't spread much and almost never bleeds.)

[Penguincollector]

 You tell ‘em, Essri!
 Thanks for the review, Liz. This color reminds me of the pottery at my grandmother’s house, delicate and beautiful.