Editing The Pen Addict 281/transcript (section)

== Kate Matthews Artwork ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So this is the wonderful Kate Matthews, who is at RHL underscore underscore on Twitter. She puts together every now and then just these wonderful pieces, which are usually related to a show. I think mostly Bonanza tends to inspire her creative flow. But she sent this in to us. She'd been teasing that this was going to happen. She took us kind of a still, I guess, from either an image or from the video of our episode with the Field Notes crew. And she drew it. She made a representation of it. And it's wonderful. Just absolutely wonderful. All the little details. It is just superb. And of course, it will be in the show notes so people can go and see it. And you really should go and see it. And honestly, while you're there, you should follow Kate on Twitter as well, because she just does the most amazing real AFM artwork. She is just superb.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this is fantastic. The pictures from that event, everything about that event came off really well. I was a little concerned, honestly, about the space. You know, it's kind of large and open. And there was a little echoey and train stuff. But the visuals it allowed for were amazing. And these pictures came out great. And then Kate just took that to another level. So thank you for doing this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So there'll be a link to the tweet that Kate posted in the show notes. You can go and take a look at it yourself. And then I guess we go from amazing artwork to horrifying, just creepy Halloween-style artwork that was tagged in on Instagram today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is fantastic. So our friend Sarah, she's an ATLian, so I get to see her from time to time in town. And she's been to the Atlanta Pen Show. So she did this wonderful coloring sheet from our other good friend Michael's image that popped up from last week's show title. Right? So it was, I want Jim to tell me bedtime stories. And, you know, we thought that was an amazing title. And then not a few hours later, we start getting these photoshopped images of Jim telling Myke and I bedtime stories, which is awesome enough. And then, as our listeners are wont to do, they turn that into a whole thing. So now we have the coloring sheet of Jim telling Myke and Brad bedtime stories. And it is absolutely terrifying in all the best ways. It's perfect, right? You're terrifying.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, you look like you're going to eat someone. Like, it's real terrifying. It's unsettling. Yeah. I mean, you've seen some of the artwork of me before, though, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, this fits perfectly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Somehow this always happens to you. I'm not 100% sure why.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think Sarah just took the teeth from that old image and just used them for this. You know what? You're probably right. Which is pretty amazing. We need that continuity of ugliness, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And it seems like that this may be going into the Pen Addict coloring book at some point, the website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I'm sure it will. I'm sure that is not the last of what we'll see of this image. But I'm all for it. So thank you, Sarah, for doing this. Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just appreciate that I look like a regular human and you look like a zombie human. So I'm totally happy with being a regular human. I mean, it's an accurate portrayal. Yeah. Snarling Brad. That tends to be the way that I know you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I didn't snarl on this next article, though. It was a good tame picture on this next article. I had a blog post go up on CW Pencil Enterprise for Pencil, according to Brad Dowdy. This was... We started working on all these things a few months ago. You know, the blog post and the pen, the pencil set for CW Pencil. So it's all just getting up to speed right now and getting published because they've had a few other things that they were working on, like getting their shop back open. Yeah. It's just open this week. Yeah. Congratulations to the CW Pencil crew. Congratulations. 15 Orchard Street, I believe, is the new address in New York City. And our friends, the gentleman stationer Joe and Dan Don and Thomas Hall have all already paid them a visit. And I've seen the pictures. And Joe's got some good pictures in an article he did on his blog. So we'll link that into the show notes if you want to see pictures of the new shop. But they're back open, back in business. And my blog post went up, my chat with Caroline Weaver. We just did an email interview and talked about, you know, how I got started and, you know, my pencil memories and favorites. And we had a little pen talk in there. So I just wanted to share that. Plus, it's a much more normal picture of me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm also just going to say, I loved it because I got called the lovely Myke Hurley. Yes. Which I will appreciate forever from Caroline. So thank you. I like being called the lovely. Yeah, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I didn't get to approve that part of the article. You're like, what are you doing? I quit.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I can't wait to go back to New York so I can go and see the new space. Because it looks fantastic. It looks bigger. It looks just as wonderful as the last one. But it looks like they have much more room to breathe in there now. You know, because naturally they expanded a lot. And they have a sticker emporium. And I just want to go and take a basket and buy all of it. Like, just all of it. Just all in one. Yeah, I'm really, really excited to go back there. And the best of luck to CW on their continued success.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, they do such a great job. I mean, everything is perfect. So I'm just so impressed. Just one of the things if you go to their shop, you will probably see on their shelves is this book I got from a publisher just showed up in my mailbox this week. It's called The Seek. Oh, just a book just shows up for me from a publishing house. Yeah, I don't think I got like an email. It's like, hey, do you want to check this out? I'm pretty sure it just showed up. But I could be wrong. I get too many emails. But I was surprised when this book showed up. It's called The Secret Life of the Pencil. And what this is, is more of a photograph slash inspiration type book as opposed to Caroline's Pencil Perfect, which is more the history of the pencil and how things came to be and wonderful stories. So if you're looking for that type of book to really learn about pencil and history, Caroline's book is one of the best books I've read in a long time. This book is more of a coffee table book, but in a small size. It's more like a gift book, right? It's a hardcover $15 book. So that kind of tells you the price point, what they're working with. And it's mostly pictures and quotes. So it gets artists and designers and musicians and everyone under the sun to take a picture of the tools that they use, in this case being pencil. And that's about 100 pages of the book is, you know, a pencil picture and like who used them. And you get to see some of the pencils. That's nice though, right? These famous people. Oh, it's really nice.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a coffee table book type dealio.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. So I started looking through it and I was actually surprised to see some of the pencils in use. Um, Philip Stark, the designer uses the Pentel smash, which is one of my favorite mechanical pencils. I was like shocked to see this in the book that the Pentel smash was in here. And then you turn the page and Sir James Dyson, uh, the famous inventor. What would you guess is his pencil?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Rotring.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Rotring 600 in silver. So then, then, you know, like his pages, two pages of the, the rotring. And he has a quote, it says drawing is still the best way to communicate ideas quickly. So that's kind of what this book is. What a great quote that is. Yeah. Yeah. It's perfect. So that's 75% of the book, right? Which is just kind of a pencil picture porn. And then you get to like the last 30 pages of the book. It has a few short interviews with some of the people who submitted the pencil pictures and things like that. So it's very cool, uh, very affordable, very well done. So nice job with the, uh, the secret life of the pencil. So very cool. That wasn't the only thing that I got in the mail. Um, sometimes my, the, the post office, uh, gets a little confused at the things that ship to me. And if I don't make visits often enough, I get little notes in my, in my PO box. So I went to the post office and I didn't have like the key to go. So you like, I have a little small letter box. And then if you get a larger package, you'll get the key to go into the larger box and grab those. I just had a note in mind, basically like come to the principal's office, Brad, because I had this. Yeah. I had this book. I had something we're going to talk about later in the show. And then I had this package from tactile turn. Will Hodges sent me the latest mover and shakers that he's put up on Kickstarter. It's aluminum barreled machine pen is what he started out. And there's brass, titanium, copper, all the, the usual suspects and really cool. Um, anodizing. And I've always been a fan of Will's work. I think he does a really good job. He has a really good aesthetic, really good quality. And what he did this time was built his own knock mechanism on the pens. So, so that's it. And he basically designed it from scratch, which I don't know how you go about doing. You know, those are people who are smarter than me do these kinds of things. Right. So, and he made it out of titanium. So it's lightweight. You know, it looks like the traditional Schmidt knock refill that you see in a lot of machine pens, but this is actually custom built by Will in the shop made out of titanium. So it's a lighter weight. The whole weight of this pen is lighter than the previous versions, which I very much enjoy. Anyway, the older versions, while I don't think they were too heavy, they benefit from this lightness. I think any all metal body pen, you have to, you know, watch the weight of them. Aluminums, generally the lightest and titanium's around there too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Copper, brass, all the stainless are different animals, but the base, basic aluminum ones, you have to watch the weight on those pens because they get uncomfortable to write with after a while. This one's, I won't call it light, but it's definitely got an airy feel to it. And I confirmed with Will that they're definitely lighter than the previous version. They feel great. The anodization looks cool. The, uh, I like the grip texture he puts on the barrels, like the rings all the way around the barrels. Like it's very subtle, but it provides a really good grip. The aesthetically, the new knock is longer in design. So it shows a little bit more on the pen and I think it looks pretty cool. Like it doesn't throw me off from an aesthetics point of view. And I asked Will about it and he's covered it in his videos. It allows the tip to actually travel more when you retract it. So that keeps the tip from getting near the opening when it's retracted and, you know, getting on your shirt and things like that. You know how if you retract a pen and then you look in the nose cone and you can kind of see the tip of the pen in there. Like you can, I don't even know that I can see this one in there. So it gets back in there really good. So overall, I really like it. I'm going to review one. I have two that I'm giving away. Um, a purple mover and a stainless steel shaker that I'm giving away that Will sent me to give away. Then I'm, I'm keeping the orange one for me. Of course you like. Um, I'm going to review that one and then I went ahead and backed the project because I want to get another color besides orange. Some of the bright blue anodizing looks really cool. So I like, uh, I like how they look. I like how they feel most importantly and they fit the pilot G2 refill. So that means I'll be the mover does very, yeah, the mover. Sorry. Yes. The mover fits the G2. So I'll very shortly be adding a pilot juice refill to that because the G2 is not my favorite refill. Even the 0.38, he ships them with the 0.38, which I think is a great idea. But for those in the know and in the shopping know, go get you a pilot juice in lots of different colors, lots of different tip sizes. It performs better than the G2 refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And the shaker takes the best refill of all time. Um, the PA 126. It does. Well, they've said saying it does. There's a, there's a refill list, which goes out to a page on his website and it includes it's for the shaker. So that one, it comes with the easy flow 900, which for me, I think is a mistake. Um, but it does take the PA 126 and 127.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm okay with the, the 9,000 because it's the traditional Parker style refill. So that's why that's used, but you can swap in. You know what I mean, man? If it isn't every fill, then I don't want it, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I'm totally biased to it. But I will thoroughly endorse Will's work. I love my gist. It's one of the most interesting feeling pens that I own. Mm-hmm. And it looks like he's doing the same, right? The, with the aluminum, with that lovely texture that kind of rings like a wool around the pen. Um, I'm very tempted by this. I haven't backed it yet, but, uh, I'm very tempted by it just because I know honestly how good his work is. So, um, I think if this is something you want, you'll be happy and he's already met his goals. So, you know, you're going to get it and their price pretty well. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, exactly. That's the other thing. He's able to do all this himself and he actually brought down the price on these pens, which is crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So he has the machine now, right? Yep. I've seen that helps a lot. So congrats. Congrats, Will. Good luck.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Congrats, Will. And congrats to me for shaving this morning, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, you did, did you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I totally shaved this morning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How perfect. Cause we're about to talk about Harry's. They're sponsoring this week's show. Harry's are all about giving you a great shave at a fair price. And that's why over 3 million people switched to Harry's. Harry's decided that they, you know, the guys behind Harry's, Jeff and Andy, they didn't want to keep paying crazy prices to get razors and razor blades. So they went ahead and bought their own factory in Germany. It has over a hundred years of blade making experience. And they did this because they wanted to make sure that they could have the highest quality available for their blades. And the way they do that is by owning a factory. They can tune it and make it just the way that they want. And this is why they're able to sell a five blade razor at half the price directly to you over the internet. It's half the price of what you're going to find from competing brands. And all of Harry's products are backed up a 100% quality guarantee. Harry's is so confident that you're going to love their blades. You're going to love their products. They want to give you a free trial set. You just need to cover the shipping for it. This set includes a weighted ergonomic razor handle, five precision engineered blades of a lubricating strip and trimmer blade. They're rich lathering shave gel and a travel blade cover as well. This is free for you, except just pay the shipping. And it's a $13 value. So you can go in and sign up and get yourself one of these free trial sets. And then you'll be able to shave with Harry's like Brad does.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I'm typing in the chat room right now that I'm growing out my beard, you know, for the winter. I always like to do the winter beard, but it doesn't matter. I have to shave. You got to keep it trim.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You got to keep it trim. And that's what this stuff is great for, especially the little trimmer blade.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like I'm not a neck beard. Like I don't do the neck beard thing that drives me insane. And Harry's just keeps me nice and tidy. Love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's the difference between having like a purposeful beard and an accidental one. Right? Yeah, exactly. You got to keep it in check. Go and check it out right now. Go to harrys.com slash pen addict and get started and claim your free trial set. All you need to do is cover that shipping cost. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and Relay FM as harrys.com slash pen addict. I have a bone to pick with you. Oh, what do I do now?