Editing The Pen Addict 653/transcript (section)

== Vendor Feedback and Event Highlights ==

* The vendors all felt like, you know, Friday was good and Saturday was just banging. You know, I haven't really talked to anyone from Sunday. But, on Sunday specifically. But they said it was actually pretty busy. I did take that back. I did talk to, like, Jonathan Brooks and others. Said it, like, it started off slow. Then I actually kind of picked up Sunday afternoon. Which Sundays can be quiet at a show. So, that was great. Given the mall area, you know, we just walked over there to dinner after the show ended at 5. Walked over to dinner about 5.30, 6 o'clock. And had dinner and came back Friday night. And I wanted to go to... Lisa Van Ness had a meetup. That was supposed to be, like, the mixer concept. I don't think you ever did this. But we've done this before. Where we'd get a room with, like, six tables. And each table would have a captain, essentially. I've done this at other conferences. But I've never done it at a pen show. Yeah. So, where that captain or whatever table lead would have their one specialty. Right? Various specialties. And then people, you know, every 10 minutes or so, 15 minutes, would move and learn from the person sitting at the table. The person holding the table. Well, this room wasn't laid out that way. So, we all just sat in the room. And Lisa actually just brought people up front. So, you know, Anna Reinert and Kimberly, who all the hobbies and writes for the pen addict. And Cheryl, who works for Rickshaw Bags. And they each talked about their topic. And Lisa as well. And it actually worked out pretty well. It was just like a little, you know, like a lunch and learn type of thing. Basically, where you stayed at your location. And they just brought the speakers up to the front. And then after they were done, we just, you know, all just kind of stayed in the room and hung out. Like our own little meetup afterwards. It ended up being like a two or three hour thing that was supposed to be an hour. Because we were all just having a good time. Hanging out with friends. Sharing inks. We were, you know, passing around nibs and inks. So, if you have like these kind of free events in the evenings, like go to them. They're like a really good hang. Had a lot of new people in there that were, you know, interested to like learn about nib grinds. Or learn about fountain pen inks. And there were a lot of experienced people that were bringing like handouts. Like tons of like ink samples. Where you could just get some ink samples that you wanted to try. So, it was just an awesome, really, really good vibe. And it was actually a good way to end the day. Because it was a pretty long day. And, you know, like by 9, 30, 10 o'clock, I was just done. And went up to the room. And it was a pretty good hang. So, Saturdays are anything I didn't get to on Friday days. And this Saturday, there wasn't anything specific I needed. So, went to breakfast with some friends. So, shout out Diane and Kim who took me to King's Hawaiian. Their bakery restaurant. Are you familiar with King's Hawaiian? The Rolls people. But they have a full bakery and restaurant. Probably not even 10 minutes from the hotel. And holy cow. It was so good. That place was amazing. You know, I saw that on your, I think you posted it on Instagram. Like it looked like a French toast thing. And it looked real good. It's ridiculous. It was ridiculously good. I was like, yep, this is going to happen. So, Saturday, since I didn't have like a full personal schedule of, oh, I have to do this. And I have to nib grind that. And I have to see this person and that person.
* I only had a class at 11.30, which I'll get to in a second. I didn't get into the show until probably like 10, 10.30 on Saturday morning. And it was interesting. I got into the show and I was like, hmm, it's kind of quiet. This is kind of like an early Friday on a Saturday. What's going on? And I didn't realize it. Even a lot of the vendors didn't realize it. That the public time wasn't until 11, which is completely fine. Like they had from 11 to 5 or 6. I forget when it closed. So, like, you know, you go out and peek around the corners. Like, oh, yeah, there's a huge line. And from like 11 o'clock on, it was just packed. Like zoo packed the entire day. Which was great. Great for vendors. You know, if you only have two hours to kill at a pin show or your availability is only like two hours at a pin show. And you show up at, you know, one o'clock on Saturday afternoon. You're going to have a tough time. Like, I'm just going to admit that. Like, you may not. If you're trying to be quick and fast and see everything you want to see. It's going to be a little crowded. And, you know, you got to have to have a good game plan if you have a short period of time. But for someone like myself and a lot of people who were there for like either a full day or multiple days, you can take it a little bit easier. Again, that's why I get things done on Friday. And then just pick up anything that I needed to on Saturday, which was honestly very little for me. So that's why I booked a class at 1130. And this is my thing now. I at least want one class per show. Maybe two. I don't know. For me, that starts eating away at time like pretty significantly. If I was there for three days, I would take more classes. But by the time I got to the show on Saturday late-ish after a wonderful breakfast, going to class from 1130 to 1 didn't really put me back in a show until like 130. So, but again, I was good. I had, you know, everything done on Friday. But I took Anna Reinhart's sigils class, Myke. And people may not, people of, you know, were wondering what this is and asked about it. So I'll put a link in the show notes we'll have to the zine that she gives out during the class to help explain this. Now, this is something you could pick up and learn from yourself. But the value I got from Anna, like walking us through these processes, it's basically like an intention exercise, right? Like what intention do you have or what intention do you want to make like with your life or your personal life, your professional life? And then you narrow it down into like a statement. And then you turn this statement basically into a design. And then that design, your sigil ends up, you know, you end up putting that out into the world. And that is your like your, you know, it's like your theme, right? It's like your guiding symbol. You can write this symbol down. And that is, you know, making, you know, an intentional statement about, you know, what you're trying to accomplish. So it was really cool. Highly recommend that class.
* I'm going to share my sigil this week once I get it, get it redone and reworked. But it was funny just sitting in class. You think, you know, I can't do this. I can't do this. And then you just like work through the process. And Anna said in the beginning, like you'll just work through it, you know, just making all these notes and drawings and sketches. And you don't have to be, it's not an artistic thing necessarily. And you make all these doodles and you'll just know when you found something, when you find something meaningful based on all this, you know, prep work and all these things that you've done. And I've like after, I don't know, dozens and dozens of doodles, I hit one and then I just put my pen down. Like I, that was it. And I couldn't, I didn't touch the paper again. Like once I found the one that I, that meant something to me. So it was pretty cool. So I enjoyed that. We'll be talking about that more for sure.