Editing The Pen Addict 490/transcript (section)

== Mid-Show Break ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' We still got more to come. But let's take our first break of this episode and thank Canalea Pen Co. for their support of this show. Canalea Pen Co. makes stunningly beautiful pens inspired by images of Hawaii. Canalea's founders, Hugh and Carol, believe that these locations can help recharge our spirit and help us connect with nature. And while the story behind these pens is wonderful, the execution is what truly sets them apart. Because every single Canalea pen is handmade in a process that means no two pens will ever look alike. Today we want to share a bit of news that Canalea is expanding the availability of their MyLeLe Anniversary Band. So this was the band that was first used in the Holokalani collection earlier this year. Followed by the Manta collection as well. This will now be available on the Aolani, the Kona Cherry and the Kona Snow fountain pens. As well as on future designs from Canalea too. MyLe is a sacred Hawaiian plant with fragrant dark green leaves. And a MyLeLe is used to celebrate important life events or given as a sign of friendship. I think this makes a MyLeLe featured pen from Canalea, I think, kind of a wonderful gift for somebody special in your life for this reason. Or maybe to celebrate a big occasion. This was the thing that Canalea created for their fifth anniversary on Anaglai. So they put it there. And that's the one that I have and love. I have it in the first usage of it. The wide Argentium silver band is what it is made of. It's adorned with a lay of MyLe leaves, which expresses the love woven into all Canalea pens and the aloha that founders and creators, Hugh and Carol, feel for the pen community as a whole. Canalea fountain pens feature Yowoh No. 6 nibs. And you can buy steel or 18 karat gold nibs directly from Canalea. They offer sizes from extra fine to 1.1 mm stub. And Hugh will smooth and tune every single nib before it leaves the shop so that your Canalea pen is going to write fantastically and perfectly. Straight out of their lovely black walnut keepsake box. Canalea also wanted us to share something new that they've been working on. It's a really fun little project called the Pua Necklace. Also made of Argentium silver, this pendant is crafted in the US and adorned with an ethically sourced lab created diamond. Pua is the Hawaiian word for flower, blossom, and hibiscus flower, which symbolizes beauty and joy. It's also what Canalea use for their logo. Though each fragile hibiscus blossom lasts only for a day, the new Pua Necklace captures the delicate fleeting beauty of the hibiscus so it can be enjoyed for years to come. This wonderful pendant is available right now on Canalea's website as well. So go and see these wonderful products for yourself at CanaleaPenco.com. That is CanaleaPenco.com to choose your aloha today. Our thanks to Canalea Penco for the support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know we did our gift guide episode last week, but if you wanted to win the holidays, you pop that Kona cherry under the tree with the My Le Le Band on there. Ooh, yeah, that's going to be the way to go. That is kind of like the perfect holiday gift surprise, big surprise right there. I would love to see that under the tree.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, two things. I love that they're bringing the My Le Le Le to more. I think it's really special, and I think it really does take the pen to the next level. I adore mine. I really, really do love it. I feel like this is not going to be the last Canalea Pen I have with that band. Really, it just adds another level to the pen. Yeah, it's a completely different pen. And also, I love the necklace that they're working on Lab Created Diamonds. It's something that I think is really cool and was taught about a few years ago. And there are a couple of different ways of doing it, but I think it's just a great way to get that effect and also not participate in an industry that can otherwise be pretty tricky.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Pretty tricky. Yep, for sure. For sure. All right, speaking of tricky, Myke, this is why I do kind of my own personal previews that I happen to be sharing on the podcast this week. I usually just kind of keep all this stuff to myself. This is the Pen BBS 456 is their vacuum filling fountain pen. This is one of those pens that I would never buy for myself without doing research about it first. But I'm in a position to where, hey, I can just take a chance on getting a few of these products in and seeing how they work as opposed to just blindly buying stuff online, which is why I like to do this, which is why I do the Pen I blog, to be able to share this information and how this stuff works. What are the pros and cons of buying a pen brand you may have never heard of or experienced like a Pen BBS? A lot of people know Pen BBS for their inks, so they make pens now. Myke, this is a heckin' good pen. I am shocked at how much I am enjoying this pen. It's a vacuum filler, so it has the long vacuum mechanism, you know, like the Twisby Vac 700 or the Pilot 823. The thing about it, Myke, is it's only $56, right? So it has this mechanism in here. It works really well. It filled up the barrel very well on like on the first fill. Yeah. The material I chose. So not only did I choose this pen, which is an outlier for me, I chose a material which would be an outlier for me. If you look at like the four colors that are available, like I got this from JetPens, like this would be like probably like the last color I chose, like if I was at like a pen show and picking something off a table, right, as opposed to like the blue and the blue and purple and the galaxy and stuff. I bought this Moon River one because it's such a different kind of material. Like it's like a cracked ice looking green and pearlescent white. It's even better in person than the pictures. I kind of adore this material. I'll spend a lot of time with this pen testing it out. The only thing I don't love so far is the nib. Like it's good, right? There's no problem with the nib, but it is one of those nibs that I find to be overly smooth, right? It's like overly polished to where it's almost like sticky on the page. If that makes sense, right? There's no like texture. It's a little bit more grabby on the page. It writes well, but the difference between this nib being a fine and the Fabric Castell being a medium and wider, writing a wider line, the edges of the Fabric Castell lines are much cleaner and sharper to where the edges of this pen BBS nib are rounder and a little bit more uneven. Now, that affects me because of my writing style. If you write in cursive, you would probably love this, right? So like you got to take these thoughts into like what I'm discussing. Like I try to pose this as, hey, this is how I'm testing it because this is how I write. And while it may not be perfect for me, it actually might work extremely well for you. But the nib is so polished, it feels different on the page. So that's definitely a thing. But overall, this is a really comfortable pen. Like I am actually surprised at how much I'm enjoying writing with this pen. Even with the nib, like the nib's perfectly fine. Like no quality issues. But as far as like that's a preference issue, right? There's not a pen issue with the nib. It's a preference issue. So I ink this up with the Kala Island sweet potato balls, Myke. We put some sweet potato balls in this pen. I dislike this ink. I thought it was going to be great. I want to scream sweet potato balls from the top, from the mountaintop. But it's, it is too light. It's, it's not working for me on the page. When it's dry, it looks pretty good. It's one of those things that goes on so light, it's hard to read as you're writing. But when you're done writing with it, it looks fine. But it's still, it's, it's too light for me. So like I'll even, like I may not even review this ink, right? Because I would just be kind of frustrated reviewing it. The bottle's great. The design's great. The name's great. The idea is great. The ink is good. It's just not, like we have a lot of ink choices these days. And like, if, if you're going to make sweet potato balls, it's got to be a little bit, a little bit better than this. And like, I want to like this ink so much, but I, it's the least favorite ink I tested in this whole batch that I'm reviewing here. And that's the thing is I try, like this was the most, this was the easiest ink to choose. This is the most, the ink that would be most like the things that I like, as opposed to the Dominant Industry Lake or the Birmingham Penco Shortleaf Pine, or we're talking a minute about TWSBI Crimson. Like those, I chose those specifically because they're not something I would normally use, right? The Sweet Potato Balls is kind of an orange ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sorry. It just, it just flows. It's an orange ink, which should be like right up my alley. It's, I guess, cause I can compare it to like 20 other orange inks. It's just, it doesn't rank. Like it's, it's a little bit too light for me. So we'll, we'll talk more about, about that later. But yeah. Um, overall I'm very pleased with the PenBBS. This is my first PenBBS. Um, it's, it's enjoyable. I, I want something different on the nib and that's something maybe I can, I can deal with on my own. But, um, the ink was, was, was not impressive. The Sweet Potato Balls were not impressive, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm sorry. I mean, that's, that's just what it's called and that's the way it's going to go. And now it's a Saturday Night Live sketch.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. I don't really have anything to add to this one, Brad. I'm not going to lie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have a few more things I'm testing. This one is a little bit, this one's a little bit self-serving and these won't, these next ones won't be as long as the, these other ones. But I built a, a spoke icon for myself, another one. So I've been using the British racing green with the brass parts, right? The brass, brass sleeve, and then a brass grooved grip. Just because like, I need to test these things out, see how they wear, see how they do. I've been loving that one. So I wanted to test out one of the titanium grips. And so I built one with the cobalt blue barrel, which is really, really sharp, bright blue. Like it's a, it's a dark ish blue, but it's like a kind of got this brightness to it. So I put the titanium parts in there. So the, the sleeve is not titanium, but it's silver to kind of match the, the, it's a similar aluminum to kind of match the titanium of the grip. So I have a shiny titanium grooved grip in here and it's great. Like that's just, now it's my second one that I've, I've, I've stolen from the inventory recently just because I wanted to have this different build in this different grip test. So I've been working on that. Like that may not be a review thing, but that's a testing thing for me, right? Like I have to use this stuff and make sure everything's, everything's going well. I also hadn't used one of our new nibs, even though they're the same Yovo nibs. Um, this, the ones with the new patterns, right? They removed the scroll work Yovo did. So we got some new, uh, nib sizes with just the, like the line work and I haven't tried one of those. So it looks good. And I ink that up with the TWSBI 1791 crimson, which I am not a red ink person whatsoever. This thing's pretty good, right? It's, it's maybe a shade or two darker than what I'd consider just like a standard basic red ink, right? Like if you look at a red gel ink, those are very bright. This has a little bit of darkness in there. I guess maybe that's why it's called crimson. Um, I'm surprised as, as much as I wanted to like sweet potato balls and I don't, I didn't think I was going to like crimson and I do, right? This is why I have to test all this stuff out to get these preconceived notions out of my head and into like actually the, the facts of what I really think about them, right? Like if you would ask me to review your sweet potato balls, Myke, just out of the blue, I said, Oh, this is going to be great. Like it was the mindset I had going into it and it's not. And then TWSBI crimson, I was like, well, I really don't want to review a red ink because I don't really care for red inks, but this one's good. Like that's why I do these types of things and write all these notes out. So it's fun. All right. Last couple of things are not fountain pens. One is the new black wing volume 651, the Bruce Lee version. Have you seen these?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is one of the coolest. It's dope. It's really good. It's so simple, but so effective.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly right. So I didn't, I missed this announcement. Like I didn't even see this at all until I was just looking online at like some new arrivals and stuff. And I was like, is this really like the next volumes edition? Like I didn't, is this like, I couldn't decide if it was like a one-off or a volumes, but it's a volumes edition. And it's just, you know, a black and yellow stripe pencil, but executed really well in normal black wing fashion. Like it represents kind of like one of the last, like one of the last famous outfits that Bruce Lee wore in his movies. And then that was, we, you know, our modern age, you know, related to Uma Thurman's outfit and Kill Bill movies, because that's her outfit was designed on the Bruce Lee outfit, right? So it's like this whole thread of importance of the design of this outfit. And it was just a very bold, striking design. And that's was executed in this pencil. So I had to buy a box of those and they're great. And they have the X, honestly, if they didn't have the extra firm core, I probably would have skipped it. But this is the first batch I bought in the last two or three, I think. But I like them. I already have it in use. Really like it. And then Myke, my friends at Morimon sent me a big care package of a new notebook they're releasing. The Simple Note Basic lineup has already been around for a while. It's kind of their student notebook. You know how a lot of the Japanese brands have their premium notebooks and they have their student notebooks like Kikuyo Campus, right? They have just complete lines of more, you know, price conscious, still high quality products. And that's what the basic is. And they didn't have a dot grid design before. They had them available in blank, lined, and graph. But they're going to launch the dot grid in the U.S. market only, it looks like for now. In A4, A5, and B5 sizes, they sent me a sample of all these. I think they're going to be ready out in January. That's what I did all this fountain pen ink testing in. This paper is awesome. Like this is going to be like my, it's a spiral bound, you know, kind of craft paper cover. Really built to be like a student notebook. But it handles fountain pen inks and all other inks so well. Like this is going to live on my desk. When these come out for a wider release in the U.S., like you're going to hear me raving about these. You can already get them now in blank, lined, or graph with the same paper quality. Like I've missed these in the past that the paper is this good. But the dot grid, when they come out here in the U.S., you'll hear me raving about them and recommending for people to pick them up. But you can pick them up now in the standard, the other standard formats. And you will be impressed, impressed with the paper quality. I know I was.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They look really cool. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like I put the paper quality right up there with the, like with the top tier of the Japanese papers that I love. Like it's, it's in the same category as like Midori and Life and Travelers and all the premium. Who made the Kroki? Morimon. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So is it similar to that?