Editing The Pen Addict 245/transcript (section)

== Pen Size ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it came out last year. Um, it's one I wanted to try for the size and I've always wanted the gray anodization one. So I got a gray one with a black section and then I've always wanted one of their turquoise, uh, models that they do in different. It's a hand painted model, um, that they do in different styles. So I got a retract and a two tone silver and turquoise and retracts my favorite, like standard ink cartridge pen that they do. Um, so I kind of went all out on Friday and I was pretty happy with that. Um, I spent, I think it's because it'd been like six months since I've been to a pen show. I kind of went stupid on what I was buying and, um, you know, I spent probably more than I anticipated, but that's okay. But it was, I justified it. Right. Like we all do. I was like, gosh, it's been, I hadn't been to a show since August.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You got it built up, right? What are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah. I needed all this stuff. I needed all this stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, and then, so I was happy with everything I bought. I didn't need to buy any more pens and I knew I would buy some ink by the end of the weekend. But when it gets slow at pen shows, you tend to walk around more. And of course, uh, my good friend Sarge who lives over there in the UK with you. Um, he always has, he's probably one of the best just dealers, pen dealers on the planet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Some amazing stuff at the London show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The quality and quantity of goods that he carries. And I'm always, there's always like 10 things I want to buy from him, but you know, they're all like $2,000 each and you know, I can't quite afford that even though I spent, uh, an astronomical amount already. Um, but, uh, as I, I spend a lot of time at his table cause there's always something new. And I happened to notice some Kawekos he had, which he normally doesn't have, which I hadn't seen his, um, stock in a while. And they were smaller, you know, the pocket size Kawekos, not, you know, full length Kawekos. Um, one was a sport Kawekos sport from the 1930s and it's a piston filler in the small size with like the, um, the chased, you know, engraved black pattern. And I haven't taken pictures of these yet cause I wanted to get them home. I haven't inked them. It's practically brand new. Um, it has a fine nib. It's got some really beautiful designs, some cool stamping on there. It's got a great looking nib. Um, and then I bought another sport, which is actually a slimmer model from that one, which is from the sixties. It's also a piston filler. One's got a green ink window. This one has a blue ink window there. I've been wanting this type of pen for years. Um, I've never seen any in person except that other people already owned, um, that they were showing me. I've never seen any available to buy or any that looked as nice as this, I guess. So Sarge's pens are always pristine. Um, uh, admittedly you pay a premium for them and Sarge knows it and he can get it. So, because he, I mean, he has the goods, right? You trust him. Um, and Sarge, we trust. So they're beautiful. I've got them, uh, ready to be inked up. I haven't decided what inks I'm going to put in them yet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, so I haven't seen pictures of these things, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know I've been holding, I've been holding out because I want to do them justice. Also, I want to get their specifications down, right? I want to be able to say this is exactly what this pen is. And like Sarge tells me, well, like Sarge tells me and we discuss it, but I don't have that written down to be able to re-communicate that. So the interesting one about the 1960s one, it has an oblique nib. It's an OB. So I don't think that's a very common thing. And, um, they're, when you see pictures of them, you're going to be very pleased with them, I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I guess, uh, follow your Instagram, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So those will be coming up soon. So I, that was six pen. I bought six pens on this trip, which is stupid. Um, you know, I usually, I tend to, I mean, I'll buy nothing if I don't see anything that, um, you know, floats my boat. Um, like in Chicago last year, I bought one pen that I was very happy with. Um, I'll buy zero pens if that's the case, but I think it'd been so long since I'd been to a pen show. I kind of went a little crazy, a little overboard because then I still had to buy inks. Right. So the new Akramon Dutch masters, I don't need 120 milliliter bottle of ink, but I'm going to buy one anyway. So I bought a number, the color is number five. It's the sea blue. Um, it's really, really pretty. I have that inked up in my sailor 105th anniversary pen. I bought one of the Kyoto inks. It's this black ink called Nureba Iro. I'm going to do some pictures of that because it's kind of a unique, sheeny black. It's kind of hard to imagine, uh, what it looks like because it's not like a traditional black. It's got a little something extra in it. Um, and then I bought two brown bung box inks. One was tortoiseshell brown and one is, I just call it eel because I can't really pronounce the rest of the name. It's Kabayaki Hamanako eel. Um, they're both shades of brown. I like that you tried anyway though, right? Yeah. One dark and one light. So I've been enjoying my brown inks recently. And then I ended up with a bottle of Aurora blue black because that was from the Aurora giveaway, um, from the, from the party. They, they gave everyone, um, some bottles of ink. So it's super cool. Um, it's, uh, I, I just haven't caught up on taking pictures and sharing all the stuff that I got yet. Just haven't had the time yet. So, um, but there's some great pictures on my Instagram. I've shared some pictures, um, you know, from, uh, from the event, you know, hadn't had quite too many. And then, um, you know, I got to do some other cool things like, um, interview, uh, Linda from Aurora, who's their export manager, who was traveling with the Kenro guys. So I sat down, you know, for like a half an hour with her and we went through a bunch of questions. Um, I do have some links to, uh, my friend Franz, who's in the, in the, uh, chat room right now. Franz has the best pictures of the show as a whole. If you go follow his feed, um, we'll link to it in the show notes. You can see all the cool stuff that happened. So he took a party picture of us, which was really kind of the after party party picture. That was about 11 or 1130 at night where we're just all hanging around the table, just, uh, relaxing after a nice day on Friday. So that's the cool stuff about the, uh, the show. And I did a post yesterday, just, you know, just saying, Hey, I'm back and we'll start get back to normal here in a minute. And, you know, I had another post of one of the tables that was at our little after party there. So it's fun. It's fun. So, uh, I, it was, I mean, essentially a perfect show just because everything went off. Well, it was no drama. Um, it was, which not that there's a lot of drama, but I'm just saying we didn't have to think about things other than why we're there and the people we're hanging out with. So that's, that's what makes a great show to me. And, uh, the people is people are the best, you know, like every night we'd hang out at the bar and just relax and chat and share pens and tell stories.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And April can't come soon enough.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You're jealous.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I am. I love the pen shows. Um, and I'm very excited to do two this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that should be cool. That should be cool. So, um, the, uh, the next show I'm at is in little rock, which is a new one for me. And I'm actually doing something really different this year. I'm kind of working for the show itself. So I'm not, I'm just going, yeah, I'm going as the hype man. I'm just going as me and I'm going to be sharing a bunch of doing a bunch of the promo stuff for the show. You know, while we're there sharing a bunch of pictures, I'll probably take over their Instagram feed, stuff like that. And we're getting a lot of good feedback. A lot of people are coming to the little rock show. So if you're in that area or within a good driving distance, and there's not a lot of other shows in that area besides Dallas, um, that's one you should think about going to because, um, there's going to be some cool stuff happening there and I'm really, really looking forward to it. So that's a month from now. And then another month after that is our time, man. Uh, back in, back in the ATL.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Home base.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Home base. So LA was awesome. Thank you to everyone who came out and said hi and took pictures and selfies. I was doing, uh, I was on Snapchat saying, Hey, to people who were fans who couldn't make it to the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it was, it's a true celebrity, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Lisa gets the biggest kick out of it. She just taunts me the whole time about, uh, people wanting to come up and say hi, but I love it. And because I just like talking to people and, you know, ensuring that they're having a good time. So I just want to make everyone happy. Dowdy in the building. Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's just so nice to have Anna's husband make all these trips.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, I know. Right. I like, I did, I did get that once, um, you know, one of the listeners came up and she saw me and she was like, Oh, I am so glad Anna's husband made it to the show this year. I was like, you are amazing and I love you. And thank you. It was good.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and memo to pen show promoters. Let Squarespace help you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, what a great...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you... We had this conversation. This is what happens at the bar at night. I could redo about 10 pen show websites with Squarespace in a month's time and get everyone on the same page of normalcy. Make it better looking. Make it have better information. And Squarespace allows you to do that. So memo to pen show promoters. Look into this, please.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, because you can have maps. You can have all that information, contact information. And just a generally good looking website that's hosted well and it's going to stay up. Right? Like, yeah, do it. Yeah. All right. Last time we promised a Knock Co. Lanier update. So the Kickstarter campaign that you had for the bag that you're making. Yeah. Kind of what's going on. How are things?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I didn't want to answer during the show because I had just gotten some information and I wanted to process this. I'd either gotten it the night before the show or before the morning of the recording. So in my head, I received this information. I was like, okay, I need to put out a backer update for this, but I just need to, you know, chew on it, get it ready, figure out how I'm going to say these things. And at that time, I was thinking we might be delayed. Okay. Like, not an extreme amount of time, but even if we're going, like our due date is April. Like, even if we're into May, I'm going to tell people, right? So I sat on that information for like a couple days or like a day, not knowing exactly how I wanted to phrase it. Then you asked me during the show, I was like, yeah, I need to put in an update. And then I didn't. I just got sidetracked. Just got, I was packing for LA, leaving the next morning. So I actually got a call Friday with the manufacturer and got an update and they were kind of conflicting what they said before that maybe we're not going to be delayed. So that happened. So then Monday, I had saved all my emails and, and, um, follow up for Monday. Like when I go to the airport, like I get a bunch of work done Monday morning. So I called them Monday morning and now I think we're actually on time for April delivery. So that's why I didn't want to say anything last week. Cause I was, I didn't want to have to go back on it. Um, so I actually talked to them, got up to speed where we're at with production. Cause this is the same company that does our production cases, right? Our retail cases. So they're super busy for us right now. And the, um, the feedback I got was that we're shockingly ahead of schedule, which we're only ahead of schedule because I knew ahead of time to, to build in behind schedule. So we're, we're actually normal schedule. We're not ahead or behind anything.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I can't follow this timeline anymore.