EFNIR: Collection Traced Valley Night

[Baggins]

5 hours ago, LizEF said:

I use a Hobonichi Techo planner (which is apparently a 47gsm TR?).

I noticed the 47gsm on last years Hobonichi.(2025). In 2026 and I believe during 2025 they returned to the 52gsm formula. I don’t exactly understand why they moved to 5gsm lighter paper.

You have been showing us different ink brands from China. That is very interesting. It would be interesting to know how these inks stand the test of time on the paper.

The new 3 paper writing test was a really good idea 👍 

🤗

[yazeh]

1 hour ago, Penguincollector said:

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

That must have been lovely. It's funny how a scent, a colour , a sound reminds of these simple moments of grace. Your story reminded of similar coloured objects at my grandparents. Thanks for sharing that. 🙏🙏🙏

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Baggins said:

I noticed the 47gsm on last years Hobonichi.(2025). In 2026 and I believe during 2025 they returned to the 52gsm formula. I don’t exactly understand why they moved to 5gsm lighter paper.

Oh, then I guess my current Hobo is 52gsm TR - I can't keep up!

 

1 hour ago, Baggins said:

You have been showing us different ink brands from China. That is very interesting. It would be interesting to know how these inks stand the test of time on the paper.

Well, I only have about 2mL of each, so they're not going to get extensive testing.  But I keep the review pages, so I suppose I could check back after some months or years to see how they're doing.  I don't know any reason why they wouldn't be fine.  I keep them in a stack in a room with no sunlight and minimal use.

 

1 hour ago, Baggins said:

The new 3 paper writing test was a really good idea 👍 

 Thanks!  Note that this is only for inks that advertise chromashading/multichrome or specify that they change color based on paper.  I don't intend to keep doing it for all inks.

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Penguincollector said:

You tell ‘em, Essri!

 

1 hour ago, Penguincollector said:

Thanks for the review, Liz.

You're most welcome!

 

1 hour ago, Penguincollector said:

This color reminds me of the pottery at my grandmother’s house, delicate and beautiful.

 Yes, This color definitely reminds me of glass and pottery/ceramics.

[Penguincollector]

10 hours ago, yazeh said:

That must have been lovely. It's funny how a scent, a colour , a sound reminds of these simple moments of grace. Your story reminded of similar coloured objects at my grandparents. Thanks for sharing that. 🙏🙏🙏

  You’re so welcome, Yazeh.  Very Proustian. 

[yazeh]

3 hours ago, Penguincollector said:

  You’re so welcome, Yazeh.  Very Proustian. 

Exactly. ☕

[LizEF]

21 hours ago, LizEF said:

(I can say that 32lb Hammermill bleeds and spreads much worse than the 24lb, which doesn't spread much and almost never bleeds.)

Ooops.  It's 28lb Hammermill!

[A Smug Dill]

On 3/4/2026 at 2:36 PM, LizEF said:

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

 

Not surprisingly, the colour depends on how incontinent the pen or brush is being.

 

I haven't colour-corrected the image above. As you probably can see, what should be white (to my eyes, anyway) looks a bit yellowish there, and the ink leans a tiny bit more blue in real life.

[LizEF]

51 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

Not surprisingly, the colour depends on how incontinent the pen or brush is being.

 

I haven't colour-corrected the image above. As you probably can see, what should be white (to my eyes, anyway) looks a bit yellowish there, and the ink leans a tiny bit more blue in real life.

Thanks!  It's very strange.  What I have in the vial is very green and looks nothing like your image, let alone bluer than your image.  I wonder if the journey could have altered it somehow - temperature changes maybe?  You're so meticulous and detail-oriented that it seems unlikely you mis-labeled the vial, and I haven't come across another (yet) that's mismatched (nor one that seems duplicated).  I suppose we have ourselves a chromashading mystery.  

[A Smug Dill]

6 hours ago, LizEF said:

You're so meticulous and detail-oriented that it seems unlikely you mis-labeled the vial,

 

Thanks. It is indeed unlikely I mislabelled the vial.

 

 

Furthermore, I distinctly remember that I only added Xing and Valley Night to the ink samples when I saw the swatch of Bucket List on the CRENA swatch card; I thought it turned out to be more of a sheening ink than a chromatographic shading ink, so I picked two more inks and handled them quite separately (and that is why their swatches were done on a different card), pushing my originally planned 120 samples, to be packed in twelve slabs of ten vials each, up to 122 in total.

 

Maybe Valley Night is a bit like what some folks have written/complained on Reddit about Sailor Manyo Haha, only in reverse. I'm not going to draw another millilitre of it from my bottle to stick in a clear sample vial and leave it exposed to light for a few weeks, though, just to test.  

[yazeh]

The Japanese Rose (Shanchui), to the left of Xing, seems very nice on the promotional pictures. Though I wonder if it only looks that nice on CRENA paper.  

[LizEF]

Thanks for the additional details, @A Smug Dill - I did notice that the swatch was separate from the rest of pack 1.

 

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Maybe Valley Night is a bit like what some folks have written/complained on Reddit about Sailor Manyo Haha, only in reverse.

Ah, very interesting.  It does seem that these inks actually rely on a bit of chemical instability (so to speak), so this could easily be the case.

 

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

I'm not going to draw another millilitre of it from my bottle to stick in a clear sample vial and leave it exposed to light for a few weeks, though, just to test.  

 It could be a waste of time anyway - to reproduce the ink's journey to me would be impossible in every respect (e.g. temperature changes and agitation). Time in the vial alone might not be enough to do it - though perhaps a bit of air exposure either between sampling and sealing or after I opened the sealed pack might also contribute.  Anywho, I think there's no point in further investigation.  A bit of mystery now and then is good for us.  

[yazeh]

@LizEF for what is worth, this is an AI analysis: 

 

Chromo-shading inks are usually blends of several dyes rather than a single colourant. A teal or blue-green ink, for example, is often made from a blue dye combined with a yellow dye, sometimes with a trace of magenta. Small differences in how the ink dries can change which dye appears more dominant. If the line is thin and dries quickly, the dyes remain more mixed and the yellow component can make the colour look greener. If the ink sits a little wetter on the page, the blue dye tends to dominate, giving a bluer teal.

Even when two people use the same paper (like Rhodia) and the same nominal nib size (EF), small differences in pen flow, writing pressure, paper batch, lighting, or photography can change how long the ink stays wet and therefore which dye becomes visually stronger.

Another possible factor is mixing before sampling. If a bottle has been sitting for a while and isn’t gently inverted before filling vials, tiny differences in dye concentration can occur, especially with multi-dye inks. That doesn’t mean the ink has degraded — only that the mixture might not have been perfectly homogenized when the sample was taken.

Temperature changes during shipping are very unlikely to alter a fountain pen ink chemically unless it freezes solid or is exposed to extreme heat for a long time. Dye-based inks are generally quite stable in the bottle.

So what you’re seeing is most likely just the normal behaviour of a multi-dye chromo-shading formulation, where small variations in flow or drying conditions can make the colour lean a little more blue or a little more green — not a sign that the ink itself has become unstable.

[LizEF]

58 minutes ago, yazeh said:

@LizEF for what is worth, this is an AI analysis: 

Thanks!

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, yazeh said:

So what you’re seeing is most likely just the normal behaviour of a multi-dye chromo-shading formulation, where small variations in flow or drying conditions can make the colour lean a little more blue or a little more green — not a sign that the ink itself has become unstable.

 

I'm not sure I agree. I think certain dyes are more susceptible to (irreversible) fading, including while being dissolved in liquid and held in a container, without being spread on a substrate, when exposed to light — as opposed to oxygen, or due only to ‘age’ as if there is a half-life even in a dark vacuum environment — and it may be that some such dye is present in Collection Traced Valley Night, Sailor Manyo Haha, etc.

 

An alternative hypothesis would be that the dyes themselves are not so susceptible to fading, but somehow light catalyses reaction between the blue or green dye with something else in the chromatographic shading ink that is not normally present in blue/green/turquoise/violet inks.

 

I've encountered inks in which brown dyes turned green, for example Robert Oster Earth, and even my bottle of Platinum Classic Ink Khaki Black which I've only just discovered a week ago has become all green (but I yet to get around to doing a writing sample or a write-up about it). That is more of an aging thing, though, since Robert Oster Earth turned green inside a converter in a pen that isn't a demonstrator and doesn't otherwise have a see-through barrel, and my bottle of Khaki Black has been mostly kept out of direct light but it is after all about eight years since I first opened it. 

[LizEF]

53 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

I'm not sure I agree. I think certain dyes are more susceptible to (irreversible) fading, including while being dissolved in liquid and held in a container, without being spread on a substrate, when exposed to light — as opposed to oxygen, or due only to ‘age’ as if there is a half-life even in a dark vacuum environment — and it may be that some such dye is present in Collection Traced Valley Night, Sailor Manyo Haha, etc.

 

An alternative hypothesis would be that the dyes themselves are not so susceptible to fading, but somehow light catalyses reaction between the blue or green dye with something else in the chromatographic shading ink that is not normally present in blue/green/turquoise/violet inks.

 

I've encountered inks in which brown dyes turned green, for example Robert Oster Earth, and even my bottle of Platinum Classic Ink Khaki Black which I've only just discovered a week ago has become all green (but I yet to get around to doing a writing sample or a write-up about it). That is more of an aging thing, though, since Robert Oster Earth turned green inside a converter in a pen that isn't a demonstrator and doesn't otherwise have a see-through barrel, and my bottle of Khaki Black has been mostly kept out of direct light but it is after all about eight years since I first opened it. 

I tend to agree with this.  But I'm not going to spend the rest of my savings proving it.