I have wanted a green fountain pen or a pen with green accents since I don’t have much green in my current stash of pens. I saw the Sailor Pro Gear Slim in Christmas Pudding on one of the fountain pen sites or forums back in the fall, which I was drawn to because it has brown and green. The cap of the Pro Gear Slim Christmas Pudding is a dark green with very fine gold glitter. My pictures here don’t do the pen justice. I like brown pens, and brown with green seemed like a winner to me. Plus I don’t own a Pro Gear Slim, so I wanted to see how it compared to the regular Pro Gear, which I do have. In November, I ordered the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Christmas Pudding pen from the fabulous Yoseka Stationery online store. I held off on opening the package for a few days until I found an ink that I wanted to use. I ended up selecting Graf von Faber-Castell Moss Green ink. I inked up the Pro Gear Slim and thought to myself, “This is a lovely holiday season pen.”

I wrote with the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Christmas Pudding pen for a few weeks and seemed pleased with my purchase, and then I misplaced the pen in my home. I was pretty sure that it was in my home because I had been using this pen at my home work station. Or did I take the Christmas Pudding pen out and lose it somewhere? For about two weeks, I was waiting for the pen to turn up in my pile of stuff (stuff mostly being random work notes and tidy piles of stuff that I needed to organize for taxes and accounting). So while the Sailor Pen was gone, I was lamenting how I didn’t have another green pen that seemed to work with the Graf von Faber-Castell Moss Green ink. I’m one of those people who likes to match the ink to the pen, as long as it’s in the same color family. I tend to stick with the same color family in most pens just to keep things easier for me, but I do have some exceptions.

For some time, I have wanted an Aurora Optima. I tried one at a pen show some years ago and loved how it wrote, but I wasn’t in a position to buy one at the time. After doing some searching, I found the Emerald Green Auroloide Aurora Optima on Peyton Street Pens. It was in near new condition, and the price was decent. So I ordered it, thinking that my Sailor Pro Gear Slim Christmas Pudding was gone for good or at least not reappearing any time soon.

I ended up loving the Aurora Optima. This might be the pen that checks all the boxes for me. I love how it feels in my hand, the nib, the ink flow, the pen design. I also like how it’s not a heavy pen, and the grip section is perfect for me, not slippery and just wide enough that my hand won’t get tried from longer writer sessions. So while I was enjoying the Optima, the Pro Gear Slim did reappear in another part of the house. Someone had put away my fountain pen in a pen cup that normally holds pencils and random ballpoint pens. My lovely Sailor Pro Gear Slim in Christmas Pudding, which should have been stored away in one of my Rickshaw bags pen sleeves was just tossed into a random pen cup near one of the phones.

The upshot is I now have two pens with green tones, and they are different enough in that they provide distinct writing experiences. The nib on the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Christmas Pudding is drier and more fine, even though it’s a medium. The nib on the Aurora Optima is juicier and wider. The same ink even looks different in both pens.

Now that I have an Aurora Optima, I can see why this pen is usually on the favorite list for a lot of fountain pen folks. It’s a comfortable pen to hold, and the classic design is attractive without being over the top. Out of these two pens, if I had to get rid of one, I would definitely keep the Optima, but I still like the Pro Gear Slim. But I don’t think I would get additional Sailor Pro Gear Slim pens because I think the regular sized Pro Gear is a bit more comfortable in my hand.