Noodler’s X-Feather meets angst.

I am fascinated by the Noodler’s line of inks because I never thought the bottled ink market could be segmented even further, small as it already is. Within the line, there are inks that highlight, appear only under black light, and prevent forgery.

Noodler’s X-Feather is for those who write on cheap paper – where ink normally feathers and spreads itself into unintelligibility. It’s ideal for the confident crossword puzzle solver and the restaurant napkin idea doodler. It has a very long drying time, and low paper penetration (meaning most of it sits atop the fibers).

The very properties that make X-Feather potentially irritating in normal use (a longer drying time means more chances of smudging, for example) do make it one hell of a drawing ink. I discovered this while in the throes of work-related angst.

A spatter stays a spatter, hairlines don’t drift, fills seep to the edge of a line and stay there. I use a glass-nibbed fountain pen, a crescent filler; in the middle of a stroke I press the crescent to release more ink. The longer drying time means I can still blow on a blot to make it spread, even minutes after the ink hits paper.