The Pen Addict 281/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	281
Title:	Supercaligraphicexpialidocious
Release Date:	November 1st, 2017
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 281
Audio File:	Audio Episode 281
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 281
Length:	6565 min <br />1.083 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 281. Today's show is brought to you by Harry's and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined, as always, by the wonderful Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, Myke Hurley. I'm feeling wonderful. Are you feeling wonderful today? I am feeling wonderful today. Good, good. It's a wonderful day in the neighbourhood, because we have new artwork to share. It's always a wonderful day when our listeners create artwork for us. And we don't just have one new piece of artwork. We have two. So why don't you take the first one?

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?

Podcast Roundups

Brad Dowdy: So good friend and country slash city mate of yours, Priya, from the London Parchment, sent a tweet over on Tuesday, included both of us in the tweet, said, hey guys, did you see this? This is kind of a big deal. Says, did you see the pen addict made the observer podcast section on Sunday? It's only a national newspaper. So there was apparently, I'm going to call it, I guess, an insert in the paper.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they did a year of podcast, like a 2017 year of podcast roundup. And they had a bunch of articles about a bunch of different shows. And then in the back, they had this kind of like, kind of wrap up semi joke type dealio of like a flow chart. Yeah. Right? To find yourself the podcast for you. And the pen addict is in there.

Brad Dowdy: The pen addict was in there. So like Priya says, you know, our flow chart goes geeky to specific geeky to not into wrestling to pens to pen addict. So it's really cool. And the bone I have to pick with you was, yeah, Myke says, yeah, I did see this and I was able to grab a copy. And what you left out is, and I didn't tell Brad about it.

Myke Hurley: All right. So here's, here's something. All right. Here's something. Yeah. I have one copy because it was the only copy that they had in the newsagents that I could find that day. So I have one. What day was that? What day was that? This was on Sunday.

Brad Dowdy: Ah. And when did Priya tweet at us?

Myke Hurley: No, there was a tweet before this though, that you replied to. I didn't buy the newspaper until after you'd already seen it. Priya wasn't the first person to send it to us.

Tweets

Brad Dowdy: Oh, well, I didn't see any other tweets except Priya's. Well, I thought that you'd seen it.

Myke Hurley: I apologize. I was out. We were at a wedding show. It was a big day. And like, I was running around East London trying to find news agents to get a copy and take a picture of it. I apologize, Brad. But next time anything happens, day or night, I'm going to call you on the phone.

Brad Dowdy: Well, you at least had Monday.

Myke Hurley: You could have told me Monday. Nope. I'm going to text and tweet until Tuesday. I'm going to call you.

Brad Dowdy: I thought you'd seen it because somebody sent it to both of us. Well, now I need to go back through my tweets. Sometimes I do miss tweets. I am guilty of that.

Myke Hurley: Because you're so fancy. That's the problem.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. You're just too fancy these days. Apparently, I'm not as fancy as an iPhone 10 reviewer.

Myke Hurley: I don't have a product to review. It's not mine. It's not mine.

Brad Dowdy: I know.

Myke Hurley: At least you didn't complain about it. Well, I don't want to get into this right now.

Brad Dowdy: This is not the time, no place. But it's fun. All right. So, yeah. This was pretty cool. This is like a big deal. I mean, that's a big paper. That's kind of the Sunday paper. I mean, it's from The Guardian, right? I mean, that's the...

Myke Hurley: Yeah. The Guardian's weekend paper is called The Observer. I was very happy about this. It's one of those things where this stuff happens to this show a lot because this show can be really easily used as a punchline to a joke. Which is fine because we make the joke. Which is fine, totally. Right? Remember our first t-shirt for episode 100 was a podcast about pens. Right? So, this is a thing, right? Like, we are used as a joke in this way. But I'm happy because we end up in these places. Like, we've been in mental floss and BuzzFeed and stuff like that before because it's wild that there's a podcast about pens.

Brad Dowdy: We make good punchlines. Yep. And I approve. I approve of that. So, yeah. I mean, we have fun doing this, right? You bet. That's why we don't get angsty about whether we get iPhone units to review. Jeez, people. All right. So, on the non-angst front, big day.

Myke Hurley: Well, maybe you would get angsty, you know. Maybe there's like a big pen release or whatever and like they don't send it. I am. How dare you? Brad Dowdy. I'm Fancy Dowdy over here. Where's my new pen? You know.

Brad Dowdy: You know I've never cared about that.

Myke Hurley: It just, well, because it just always, it never happens to you because you always get it, right? Like, you always get the stuff.

Brad Dowdy: That is super not true. No, no, no, no.

Myke Hurley: Because you're so fancy. Mr. Fancy Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That is so not true. I do get all the stuff, but I have no care about being first. Notice, like, one of the good example of that was my lovely friends at Execlair sent all the bloggers the new purple sparkly ink, the, I even forget the name, the new J.R. bomb, you know, purple. And it was embargoed for like a month. And so, I knew when the embargo lift, everyone's going to post their reviews. Like, why do I need to post a review? I don't care. I don't need to be first. I don't have to do it on the day of. You know, we'll get to it when we get to it. And so, we haven't even posted that review yet. So, like, I don't care about those things. Like, sometimes it's nice, but it doesn't drive me. You know, like, the being first is not a driver for me.

Myke Hurley: Well, especially it doesn't help when you have an ever-growing pile of stuff on your desk, right? There's no way you can be first because you have no idea it's even in there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Now, I do jump things, you know, like, all the time. Like, these tactile turn pins, it's kind of timely. Like, Will doesn't ask me to do anything, right? I don't do what other people want me to do, right? And no one asks. Like, Will sent me, he said, hey, I want to send you these pins to check out. That's the extent of our conversation, right? And then I do whatever I want with them. Like, I don't try to... Like, I did it as a favor to Will to post them out there on the same day he launched his Kickstarter. I didn't have to do that. He didn't care if I do that. He didn't ask me to do that, you know?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, try to keep it, you know... I just got to do me, you know? I don't worry about that stuff too much, you know? I'll do whatever feels right and go with it from there. So, the next point I'm trying to get to, big day on Friday, Myke. Fountain Pen Day this year. It seems bigger and better than ever, which, you know, Carrie does a great job promoting it all year round. And now it's like a huge, huge thing worldwide, blowing up. Every year, I think every year we say this, right? Like, it's just growing and growing just immensely. So, you've been seeing lots of, you know, stores doing giveaways and discounts. So, if you're looking for anything, shopping for anything, you know, hit up fountainpenday.org and you can see all the supporting sponsors of the event. And it's just a really cool thing. You'll see lots of activity in the pen blogosphere, you know, around Fountain Pen Day. And a lot of good giveaways, like our good friends at Pen Chalet have a big-time giveaway going on right now. You can go enter. I'll have a pen or two to give away. I'll have something interesting to give away at Nock that no one's seen yet. So, you know, it's a good day for the community, good day for the industry, and that Carrie has continued to do all this. It's pretty, pretty amazing. So, she's a busy man these days, right?

Myke Hurley: Like, he's got a real big fancy job. So, it's amazing. And I'm very happy that he continues to put all this stuff together because I can't even imagine how much work it is.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. And Big Fancy Carrie was up in Toronto for Scriptus, the pen show, last weekend. It looked amazing. They're going to have to, I'm telling you, make that show two days. They, like, blew it out the whole first day and everyone had a great time. That place is packed. I see two days in their future. They can do it. They can do it. Oh, man.

Myke Hurley: That's at the top of the list. I've got to say, that could be a future. I'd like to go to Toronto. I've never been. I'd like a reason. So, step it up for two days and we'll come do a show. How about that? There you go.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we'll come do a show. We'll do a live in-store at Wonderpens and then we'll go to the show. Oh, dang. Done. Oh, dang. Done.

Myke Hurley: Because as well, I'm just saying, just saying for the sake of it, that might be a nice time maybe in a year or two. You never know. Oh, yeah. October. Next year, this would be great for me. I would like to do one late in the year. So, come on.

Brad Dowdy: Get on it. Let's listen to Brad and Myke discuss next year's Kickstarter live. Yep. On the podcast. We have not discussed this. We have not. This is the first I've heard of it. Now I am writing down a note to talk about this further.

Myke Hurley: There we go.

Pin Shows

Brad Dowdy: All right. So, speaking of pin shows, back at the Colorado show, a new company launched called Pinwell. Pinwell Co.

Brad Dowdy: So, Dan, the owner, maker, manufacturer of the Pinwell, I had to go back and look in my email. I think he first started emailing me this project about three years ago. So, he's taken a long time to get it right. And he said, I'm going to take a while to do this. I want to get it right. And I have all these prototypes sitting on a shelf in my house. Like, all like these iterations of the Pinwell. And he is so excited to finally have these up for sale at pinwellco.com. And I know from the feedback that everyone got at Denver, at the pin show, everyone really, really was happy with what they saw from Pinwell. And what this is, it's basically, you can tell by the name, it's basically fashioned off an old time dip pin well where, you know, you would sit at your desk. You'd have your pin. And it didn't have ink or a cartridge or any kind of filling system in. And you'd have a pot of ink. And you'd dip your pin in and take it back out. Then write. And you'd write it dry, dip it back in. Well, what this is, is basically a pin holder for nowadays. We don't need a proper pin well. Well, it's a holder for your desk that attaches to your desk. It has, you know, like a sticky pad where it sits on your desk, stays flush, and then has this insert to where you put the cap of your pin in there. And it holds it tight. So when you're writing with a fountain pen at your desk, you can place your pin in the pin well, unscrew it. It keeps the cap in the pin well so you don't have to hold it in your hand, set it on your desk, post it on your pin. Then you write, and then you place it back into the cap, screw it back in, and then your pin sits there. So it's a really cool writing desk accessory. And I think you would like something like this, Myke, for your desk. So Dan has actually sent me a couple. I have one for you.

Myke Hurley: Oh, great, because I was just going through the order process. So now I don't need to do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so hold off on that. He sent me three of them. So he sent one for me, one for you, and one to give away. So thank you, Dan, for doing that. So I'll be doing that soon.

Myke Hurley: I didn't know how much I needed this until right now.

Brad Dowdy: It's really, it's legit cool. Like when he first sent me this. This is a great idea. He worked forever to refine how this was going to work. Like, is this going to work? Would this be a thing? And he kept asking me questions and asking what I thought. And I liked the idea so much. All I could do was just support him and just, you know, keep him going and say, hey, you got something here. Keep it going. And he finally did. And it's been met with really good reviews. And listen to this real quick. I don't know if you'll be able to hear this or not. Oh, could you hear that? Serious. He sent me the brass one. Wow. This thing is serious business. So I have a wall in my book for you.

Myke Hurley: I'm worried about a hole in your desk. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I might have to weigh this brass one. It's not on the site yet. I mean, this thing has to be, what, well over 10, 12, 16 ounces. This thing is legit heavy. But it looks great on the desk. And it's just kind of perfect. So, yeah, you'll be seeing more from Pinwell. And, yeah, I really like this product. And I think it'll be a hot one for our upcoming gift guide issue, which I should probably talk to Anna about. We only have about a month away for the special Pin Addict gift guide episode. Oh, wow.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. We've got to get to work on that. I will say, do you know what this reminds me of? Do you know who this reminds me of, the Pinwell? Who do you think? Who do you think I'm thinking of? Like, who does this remind me of?

Myke Hurley: Like, this kind of product, the way they're doing it, presentation.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I know it reminds me of the candle. The way it presented it reminds me of making light.

Myke Hurley: I'll tell you what I'm thinking. That's a good one. I'm thinking of Myke Dudek.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: This feels like Dudek. Like, you know, not like in the way that this is being presented, the professionalism and the great idea and the fact that I really need this. Like, this reminds me of when we first came across Dudek Modern Goods.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, look out for that. Sorry. I have all the pinwells on my desk and they're little tins. Yeah, exactly. It reminds me a lot of Myke. And the pinwell Instagram is pretty funny. They're like Photoshopping pinwells into like old images. It's kind of cute, kind of funny. So, yeah, this is a very good call with the Dudek. So, yeah, perfect timing for the upcoming holiday season. Very much enjoy the pinwell. Yep, most definitely. So, thank you, Dan, for sending these over. Appreciate it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I can't wait. Can't wait to get one.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I can't wait for my Hipponodo, but I have a little longer wait than you do. You already have yours, right? Yeah, you still haven't got it? No, because after the show, we discussed them offline last week. I'm on a different paper than you. You ordered the cream paper. I've ordered the ivory paper. And the ivory was the second batch to produce and ship. So, anyone on ivory has not shipped yet. So, that's why you have yours and I don't have mine. What do you think?

Hipponodo Notebook

Myke Hurley: I really like it. The presentation is wonderful. The box that it comes in is fantastic. The hippo and the way it's like... What language is this on the front? Do you know? So, it's like there's a hippo and then there are some characters.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I'm sure it's Japanese, katakana, but I'm not positive.

Myke Hurley: I don't want to say a name in case I get it wrong. You know, like... But yeah, it's some flavor of Japanese writing, I guess, which is like... I guess it's saying noto. I think it's noto, yes. Yeah. And then there's a cute little hippo on it, which is lovely. I've got the black one with the blue. Mm-hmm. It's got like the blue elastic and a blue and black bookmark in them. Mm-hmm. So, the presentation is wonderful. The book feels so great. It's got like that soft cover. It's pink on the inside, right? Like the kind of the first page. And then it breaks out into the cream pages is what I got. Mm-hmm. Which is why you're waiting. It's got a great pocket in the back, all that goodness. I found to me the paper itself. I don't know if this is because of the color that I got or whatever. It is not as smooth feeling as the Crossfield notebook. It's a little bit rougher. Like there's more tooth to it when I'm writing. You know, like there's more feedback. Of course. Right. Because it is, to my way, it is fantastic. Right? Like the paper is wonderful. But I do overall prefer the paper in the Crossfield. Mm-hmm. To this version, to this variant.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, it's a weight difference in the paper. Okay. So, this is the thicker version of the Tomoe 68 GSM, I think. And the standard's 52. So, you get a little bit of thickness difference. So, I'm wondering if that's just playing into the feel of it. It still, it has a different feel, but maybe not like completely glassy, like you're used to in the Crossfield or something like that. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: The problem with the Crossfield is that like it takes six years for the ink to dry. Right? Like, you know. Yeah. Where it's better in the Hipponuto. Yeah. So, obviously, one of the big selling points of this book is the thickness of the book. Right? Like the amount of paper you get.

Brad Dowdy: 500 pages.

Myke Hurley: 500 pages is a wild amount. It makes the book feel substantial. Like it's a real thing. Like I'm waving it around now like it's a Bible. Right? Like it is a big kind of like it is. It's a serious thing. Right? Like and that is nice. It feels nice to hold because of that. Like you feel like you have something in your hand that is means a thing. Right? If that makes sense. And I think people that use this for journals, they're going to really love that because this is a book that feels more than your average Leuchtturm or Moleskine or bullet journal. Like it's got a thing to it. Right? But there is a problem in that is like the early pages. If I'm writing on the left hand side, it's not the best. Right?

Brad Dowdy: Like you're up in the air.

Myke Hurley: You're up in the air. Bouncing around. Or you're like pulling the page down and then the book's flipping around and hitting you on the knuckles. Like it's like with any book. Right? The first few pages or the last few pages when you're writing on the thin side, it's tough. But the thin side lasts way longer in this book because it's so big. Yeah. Now I will say for me personally, I am mostly infrequently write on the left page. But I do do it. Right? But it's not always. I'm less frequent to write on that page. And I've tried it and it works. It totally works. But it's not perfectly ideal. Right? Like but there's no way you can do it if that's what you want. And I think for me, I'm willing to take that to get the thickness and the amount of paper in the notebook. Like I'm willing to take the loss. Like if I really don't like it, I'll just never use the left page. And I still have, you know, 500 pages. Right. So, you know, I just wanted to say that. Right? Because I think that is the downside of the upside. Right? That there is a double-edged sword with the, I think, kind of one of the main selling points of this book. You just need to be aware that like you can work it out on your own. It's logic. But it's there. Right? And, you know, and the thing is like the lay flatness. Yeah, that happens. But nothing can lay flat, completely flat all the time. Always. Unless you're going spiral bound. Right? That's the only way it works. With this type of binding, there isn't like the lay flat comes in inverted commas. Do you agree with what I'm saying? Like, there is an element of lay flatness, but it's not for 100% of the book. Yeah. Because it's 500 pages. It's impossible to do, right? Yeah, sure. But that's what I'm saying. Like, I, you know, I don't want to focus on that too much. But like, it's the only downside to this book, which I think is wonderful. And I'm so happy to have it. Like, I'm actually thinking now that once the Crossfield is done, I'm going to work through this before I order another Crossfield. Because my original plan was to order another one of those. But I don't think I need it now. Like, I have a really lovely book here. Other than that, I maybe want to try and find a use for this that I don't have. Like, I use my Crossfield for kind of like doodling when I'm recording some shows. And also to like take notes of whenever I do like a mic at the movies or whatever, I'm watching a TV show or I'm watching a movie for a show. That's where I take my notes. I take them by hand and I take them in my Crossfield book. And I've done that with my Hippo Noto over the last week. So I could get a bit more of a feel for it. And I'm either going to transfer those notes over to here like as a use case when I'm out of my Crossfield, which is very soon. Or maybe try and find a good use for the Hippo Noto. I've pointed my eye towards bullet journaling a little bit in recent times. And I don't want to make any promises. But like I've read about the system. I've made notes about the system. I think I have a decent understanding of it now. But I've yet to do anything more than just read about it. But this feels like a great book for that. So big thumbs up. Yeah, I think that'd be perfect for that.

Brad Dowdy: And I mean, I've just been a committed non left side of the page user for my entire life. Just because almost no notebook gives you a wonderful experience doing that. So I don't like to see the ink through both sides. It makes it harder to read the pages. It's more uncomfortable to write with. So yeah, I'm good with only using half the pages in all of the notebooks that I use. Because I only write on one side. No big deal. So I can't wait to get mine. I definitely want to try it out. And we'll talk more about this bullet journaling thing. I'm sure as the calendar changes and the new notebooks get put into use. New planners and things like that. My Hipponodo's not in. But I do have another notebook on the way, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Oh yeah?

Brad Dowdy: I bought a Moleskine.

Myke Hurley: That's the end of this. So we're off. I don't really know what's going on anymore. What's going on? What are you doing? Why did you do that?

Brad Dowdy: I've been tempted to try one of the newer models just to see if anything's changed. Okay. And I think, you know, as someone who reviews things and talks about things, you need to, you know, revisit things that maybe you have not cared for in the past. See if anything's changed. And there's been enough talk around new-ish Moleskine products that something's a little bit different in the paper. And I think it's worth exploring. So actually buying the Moleskine was an enormous challenge.

Myke Hurley: Huh.

Brad Dowdy: Aren't they available everywhere? How can that be a problem? So this is exactly right. So they're available everywhere. I didn't want to buy one in a store because I wanted to buy the most current issue, if you will, of the notebook. So I know Amazon does basically publishing dates, release dates. So I went to Moleskine on Amazon to their brand, pulled up essentially all of their products and then sorted them by publication date. So they have things out, you know, to 2018, 2019, all these planners. So it took me pages and pages to get to the current stuff. So then I'm starting to flip through the current stuff and it's like all planners. And if it's not a planner, it's a ruled notebook. And I'm not going to buy a ruled notebook if this is something I want to try. I hate ruled notebooks. So give me something in graph or grid.

Brad Dowdy: 29 pages later on the Amazon site of 12 items each on a page. It took me till the 29th page to actually find the most current Moleskine notebook that I would purchase. And it turns out to be the most basic black one with a dot grid with a release date of 2016. It was kind of frustrating that I couldn't find something better, cooler, newer. But I think they just have so much stock of the same things. It just doesn't... The standards don't really recycle like the planners do. And all the special releases like the Star Wars ones looked amazing. But they're all ruled or blank. Most of them are ruled. And I'm just not going to buy one for the cover. I want to buy it for the paper too, like the format. It was just... It was kind of annoying.

Brad Dowdy: So I was already turned off by that. But, you know, we'll see when I get the notebook.

Myke Hurley: I think hardcover was a mistake though. Honestly, like from my history with them, their softcover notebooks are their best notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: Well, the hardcover is kind of the standard. I agree with your statement from everyone, you know, everyone's comments on the notebooks themselves. But the little black book is the standard, right? Like the 5-ish by 8-ish black Moleskine is the standard. So that's kind of the one I wanted to test too. So that was in my mind. I would have bought something different if I could have come up with a recently published version of... You know, they had some cool orange covers and yellow covers. But they weren't... They were either blank or lined. And I could never find a grid or graph. And, you know, anyway, this is a... It's an experiment, you know. And we'll see how it goes. The shopping process was more of a pain in the butt. But that was just for me being particular. Trying to get the most recently made notebook. You can't... I can't just walk into Barnes & Noble and get one off the shelf. I don't think knowing, you know, it could be, you know, 2014, 2015. I got at least one from 2016. Whether that's even really the case, what I'm going to get, who knows. Whether you can really tell, who knows. But we'll know pretty quickly whether it's changed or not. I think I have one of my old ones that I used to use at my old job when I traveled. I'll have to see if I can dig that up and do some comparisons. But, yeah. This is the great Moleskine experiment. And, you know, this will put me off them for another decade. If, you know, if it's still the same old Moleskine paper. So, we'll see how it goes.

Myke Hurley: We all are happy that you're taking this bullet for us. I'm not 100% sure what else to say.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I definitely feel traitorous. It feels weird.

Myke Hurley: Again, it's good to make fun. But, like, they're better than nothing. And they're better than so many other books. Right? Exactly. But, like, they're so much worse than so many others, even at the same price. You know, like, move to Leuchtturm, move to Rodier, and you can get the same format with much better paper. But I'm happy that Moleskine exists because it's pushed people like me further into the world that I'm in now. Like, I'm happy that they're there as an entrance point. But that's kind of all they should be for a lot of people.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. But they're the biggest. So let's see what we have these days. Who knows?

Squarespace Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: We'll find out soon enough. Today's episode is also brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. Use the offer code INK at checkout, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. They let you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain name, award-winning templates, and more. You can build a blog. You can build a portfolio. You can build a site for your business, a site for your band. It doesn't matter what you want to build. Or you can build a store as well. And both Brad uses Squarespace for the Nock store, and we use it for the RelayFM store. And we're currently selling some pre-order items there. You should go check out for some stickers and a T-shirt, which our lovely friend Brad and Jeff will be mailing out to the world sometime in December. So thank you for that, guys, as always. You're amazing. But we use Squarespace for that because why on earth would we try and build our own? Why would we do that? When Squarespace has it all there, we feel this way for our blog and for our store. Squarespace is fantastic for all this stuff. They have 24-7 support. There's nothing to install. No patches. No upgrades you have to worry about. They've got all that stuff covered. It's an all-in-one platform. Why would we try and build it on our own? When Squarespace have all of the amazing tools that we want to take advantage of. Their plans start at just $12 a month. You can sign up for a trial with no credit card required. Just go to squarespace.com. Then use the offer code INK when you sign up for a plan and you'll get 10% of your first purchase to show your support as well for this show. We really appreciate it when you use those codes. Thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of the Pen Addict and RelayFM. Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website.

Brad Dowdy: Two quick things. They release a lot of new features, especially on the commerce platform recently. We just integrated two of the latest updates at Nock. One, they allow customer accounts now. You can actually log in and have a record. That's great. Your purchases and things like that. That's really great. That's really great. It's nothing necessarily for us. It's just something for you to make your checkout process easier for the future.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I guess people can check their orders and stuff like that a lot easier than going to the original email.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. So they instituted that and I implemented that like two weekends ago. If you all saw me messing around with the site one Saturday or Sunday morning, I had to do a bunch of DNS updates because to get the security certificates corrected on the site. But that was all easy stuff and it worked seamlessly. And then just yesterday, I implemented the gift card feature, which they also recently launched in here in the past couple of weeks. So you can now order NotCo gift cards. So all that's by Squarespace. I just go click a couple of buttons. All that stuff's implemented for me. So that's why I like them so much. Easy stuff.

Myke Hurley: How do people get to the gift cards? Oh, it's on Cases right there on the Cases page.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I figured that's the most appropriate page for that. So yeah. So it might move around. We might adjust that a little bit. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah, that's where it's at for now. We'll just throw that out there. It's great for the holidays. Good for the holiday season. Yeah. Perfect. Good idea. All right. So let's wrap this up as we always do on some Ask TPA. And I got all of these out of the Slack room yesterday. So I get a lot of invites and requests for the Pen Addict Slack. Just shoot me an email. Hello at PenAddict.com. I'll send you over the invite link to join the Slack. It's a great, fun conversation place where you can spend time during your work day and not do work and talk about pens. So we all know that that's what its perfect use case is. So let's not fool ourselves. It's the best place to avoid work on the internet. So Oscar was avoiding work and asked, Out of all the scripts, Copperplate, Spenserian, Gothic, Unical, and Grocer's Architect print, Myke's Awesome Handwriting, Chicken Scratch, etc. Which is your favorite? Which is your least favorite? So I asked this question. I wanted to ask this question, not knowing what all of these things were. And I don't have a favorite because it's really Chicken Scratch or Myke's Awesome Handwriting or whatever you use. I'm never going to learn to do this as just like the flourishes. That hasn't really been my style. So if I had to pick one, it would be the most traditional of the bunch, not something Gothic. I print sort of like an architect. I worked on that a little bit this weekend. But it's definitely whatever you have. And if you want to learn something, I think probably the most materials out there are for Copperplate and Spenserian. I've just never been a real script kind of person because I want to use it in my regular writing. And my regular writing is print. So I tend to lean towards the architect stuff. But if you wanted to learn one, I would certainly choose Copperplate or Spenserian just because they seem to be the most regularly taught or materials available. So, and least favorite, anything that leans towards like the super calligraphic.

Brad Dowdy: Expialidocious. Yeah. Gothic style. Come on, that was great.

Myke Hurley: Super calligraphic, expialidocious. Give it to me. Come on. Come on.

Brad Dowdy: I like it. I like it. And I didn't even think of that. So that was all you. So good, good, good job there. So, you know, and I'm asking this second question from our good friend Jim, who was not working in the Slack the other day because he had time to ask, what are some good things to write about in the opening salvo of a mail correspondence chain?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. See, that's why I asked both of these questions. I don't write letters. It's like, you know, I wanted to bring this in there because I thought it was funny. It was like, I don't know, four score and seven years ago. I think that's what I'd write or like, hey, how's it going?

Myke Hurley: Like, I am not. What you're asking for, Jim, is like icebreakers. I'm not a very thoughtful person. Like, you want some icebreakers from us? Like, some small talk. How's the weather?

Myke Hurley: Oh, well, isn't this fancy?

Myke Hurley: Toodaloo to you, dear sir. How doth you? Like, I don't know. I have no idea what you would write. Like, outside of just like, hope you're well, right? Like, you know, like, I don't really, I don't really have any good suggestions for it. Like, honestly, I would suggest that you look for icebreakers, right?

Letter Writing

Brad Dowdy: So, Jim just put in the chat room, how was the weather five days ago? Exactly, right? Because this is the problem. That is perfect.

Myke Hurley: But like, honestly, I think look for icebreakers. Like, just kind of the standard icebreakers that you would find in some kind of like, corporate thing. Because it's going to give you small talk openings. Because that's kind of what this is, right? Like, what is the small talk openings that you would use in general conversation? You need to, I think starting with some of those is a good idea. I don't know. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: So, this goes to the bigger picture of why I have a hard time writing letters. Yes. Because it's pressure. What do you do?

Brad Dowdy: It's a pressure thing, right? It's not the physical part. It's the mental pressure of what words do I put on the page. And the best letter writers don't have to think about it, right? The people who are best at what they do don't have to think about what they're doing. That's why they're good at it. And that's why I'm not a good letter writer. Because I have to think about what I'm doing. And it's a challenge. It's a very, very huge challenge. So, this is why I want to talk about this all the time. And we always talk about it in February. When InkoWriMo comes up, it's just like, I don't feel built for it. Like, it's a challenge for me that I would just have to like, force myself to do. And do I want to do that to myself? But I'm always going to talk about it because I think it's such an amazing thing to do, especially in this day and age. So, give us your best opening salvos of your handwritten correspondence. You know, tweet them. Tweet them at us. Email me. Handwrite them to me. You have my address. You know, I'd love to see it because I don't bring up these questions necessarily to joke because they're fun. I bring it up because I am a failure at a lot of these things. And I want to know how other people do it. So, it's really, really cool. So, keep these up. And I'm keeping the theme alive, Myke, with Alexander. Are either of you considering to attempt NaNoWriMo? Hell no. Are you drunk? NaNoWriMo.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, NaNo. I can't even write the opening salvo of a letter in Spencerian. I'm sure as heck not going to write a novel. I can't even tell you to write a sentence. But again, this is an amazing event, right? I mean, like, I'm fascinated by NaNoWriMo. I love Vito, our friend Vito from Swordsupply tweeted this morning. I love that so much. Already failed. I was like, I feel you. And Vito's a writer. Vito is the poet laureate of York, Pensylvania.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my God.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I forgot that. So, it's like, I'm fascinated by all these things. Our good friend Jason Snell is on the board of NaNoWriMo. Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: This is a big event, and I support everyone who does it, and I love seeing everything about NaNoWriMo. I love seeing people's word counts, who I follow every day. I am so impressed by all of this. But, like, I can't do it. Like, it's one of those things, you either have it or you don't. Like, I am a writer in that I write words, but I don't write stories. Like, I can't put together a novel. It's a different muscle. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely. Definitely. So, whew. Man. This is good stuff, though. So, all right, I think that's all of the things that I don't know about that I still love and why we do this. So, let's talk about one that I do know more about, but there's still no answer to this question. So, Clip Boy says, Is there a particular make and or model of pen which you consider to be a sure thing in terms of quality out of the box and long-term reliability?

Brad Dowdy: What a hard question to answer. So, if we have noticed in the past week or so, you know, there's been a lot of talk, like, in the Pen Addict Slack and, you know, the podcast. I'm blanking on the podcast. Our friends at Fountain Pens Oceana, their podcast, was talking about quality control issues with, like, Visconti and Nakaya and things like that. So, we were trying to come to a conclusion. Can you get to a point where you say, you buy this pen and it will be fine? And there's just not a fountain pen. Do you mean the nib section podcast? Yeah, the nib section. Yeah. So, it's like, do you have an answer for that that's always 100% right? And the answer is no. No. I mean, there's no such animal in fountain pens. And if you're looking for that experience with fountain pens, that's what kept me from getting into it for so many years, right? I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with what a fountain pen could offer, like, on the downside of things. I don't want to deal with the negative aspects of owning a fountain pen. I agree with the argument that, well, I'm spending X amount of dollars. I expect perfection. I have no problem with that argument. I think that's a very fair argument.

Brad Dowdy: But there is some give and take in the fountain pen world. Unfortunately, fortunately, I don't know. I don't know where you want to classify that, right? If I spend $600 on a Pelican, I expect it to be perfect.

Brad Dowdy: There's a 5% chance it's not. That's probably a larger chance than would normally be expected, I'm guessing. I don't know. I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air. There's always a possibility.

Brad Dowdy: From one person's point of view, they have every right to be ticked off if that nib is messed up. And, you know, especially if they don't have a lot of experience, it's going to be a bad buying experience for them. And that's completely fair. On the other hand, if I get that, I'll go, well, this sucks. I know how to get it fixed.

Brad Dowdy: And that's extra work, extra time, extra money for me. But then I know it'll be perfect. And is it fair to me just to just accept that and say, just deal with it? I, not really. But I guess I'm used to it by now. It's kind of like part of the deal with fountain pens, unfortunately. You know, it's sometimes not going to be a perfect experience because everyone writes differently, uses different paper, uses different ink. You know, you and I buy the same exact pen on the same exact day from the same exact vendor. We can have a different experience. So, to circle back to the original question, if I was forced to pick the company I have the most success with straight out of the box nearly every time, it's Pilot.

Myke Hurley: I was going to go Lamy, but I would also agree with Pilot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, see, I don't have great experience with Lamy. And I'm not even talking about the 2000. Sometimes, I have a pretty wide variance in their extra fine nibs. Which is a little bit weird. But see, we all have different experiences. Like, Kaweco and Twisby are two well-known kind of brands that have issues. I have almost no issues ever with Twisby. And I've only had, like, maybe one bum Kaweco nib. So, it just depends, right?

Brad Dowdy: You know, it's a tough question. Like, no matter if I say I never have problems with these pens, lots of people have an opposite experience that's just as valid as the good experience that I had, right? So, it's hard to say. You know, just buy from major brands. It's going to be the best way to go. All the big Japanese brands. All the big German brands.

Myke Hurley: I think there's another part to this conversation, though. Which is, like, the reason that I think that me and you have gone with Pilot and Lamy. Where, like, people are saying in the chat, like, Sailor, like, Franklin Kristoff. Like, the thing is that, like, what I feel like in this question, like, what's not being said is what pens am I safe with? And I am more inclined to say pens that have, like, companies that have a more wide price point range for this answer. Because Sailors might be fine every time, but you're dropping for three figures every time, right? If you want to go, you know, I know they have some lower stuff. But you kind of get where I'm going. Like, Franklin Kristoff, like Visconti, right? These are, Omas, like, these are really expensive. And even if they're perfect every time, that one in a million chance, that's a problem. But if you're going with something like Lamy or Pilot, they have way more in the lower end. Where if there's a problem, it's not so much of an issue financially. That's kind of why I was thinking Lamy. Like, I know that the 2000 can have some problems, but that's one pen in their entire lineup. And their entire lineup tends to be under $100 for most of it, right? So that was kind of where I was going with that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and, you know, this type of thing has kept me away from Visconti. Specifically, right? Because they have so many nib issues. I've wanted a Homo sapiens for years, but I'm certainly not going to buy a new one. If I ever buy one, it'll be secondhand that I know someone's, you know, looked at the nib and they can tell me about it. But, you know, a lot of people have had perfect Viscontis, right? So is it fair for me to, like, say that about Visconti? You know, I've seen some really, really bad Visconti nibs. Other people don't have that experience. So, you know, this is a tough question. I don't know that there's a really great answer to it. You know, we all have our brands that we have favorites of because they seem to work best for us. So you'll just have to see what works best for you. You know, you might have some not so great experiences along the way and it's going to happen. So it's a tough thing to give this a 100% guarantee answer because in the fountain pen world, it's just kind of not, you know, is that fair or not? I don't know.

Myke Hurley: It's tricky.

Brad Dowdy: It is tricky. It's tricky.

Myke Hurley: Because it's always a problem for me and you, I think, when given a question like that because you kind of feel a pressure that it has to be okay. You know, like, when you're kind of given an answer like, oh, buy this, it's always good. It has to be good because otherwise we told someone, go and buy this type of pen, but then the pen's bust. You know what I mean? Like, it's a risk sometimes. Well, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, my Optima's the perfect example.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Like, I can't stand it. I can't go near it. And I'm sure there's many people that are like me, right? Like, I used it and it was terrible. They're just terrible for me because I'm left-handed, right? Like, it's, you know. And mine literally broke in half. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's even a better reason, right?

Brad Dowdy: If your pen spontaneously combusts, you've bought the wrong pen. But I still love that pen.

Brad Dowdy: Like, it's one of my favorite pens. Like, I don't, it's hard to quantify that on an individual basis, right? I was like, you know, if someone asked me for a roar recommendation, I'm going to give it, like, high praise. But by the way, at one point, my pen, like, broke in half. Like, so, yeah. FYI.

Myke Hurley: It's something to look out for.

Brad Dowdy: And I'm not the only one. So, like, it's a thing. So, like, what do I do? Like, I still love the pen. I don't know. It's tough. Tough, tough, tough. So, Pilot. Just stick with Pilot. I don't know what the answer is. All right. Last one.

Guest Mention

Brad Dowdy: Elaine from Owl Inc. Slash Jetpens, who, shout out to the Erasable Podcast. She was on their last episode, which I guess is the most currently downloaded episode. They recorded one Monday night, which I'm anxious to listen to, but it's not dropped yet. But Elaine was on their previous episode. She just gave us a little bit of feedback about the question we had for resume writing. Doug Beal asked us, would you ever handwrite a resume? And Elaine said, I submitted a handwritten cover letter to Jetpens, but I wouldn't dare try that with anyone else. And that's pretty much what we got at, too, right? You got to know what you're doing. But that's a great one.

Myke Hurley: That's a great one to do. And also, she said cover letter as well, right? Like, I'm assuming the CV, the resume, was typed, but the cover letter is written. And we kind of agreed with that, that that's a good thing. But in the right circumstances, and applying for a job at Jetpens, it's a Google show in your credit, right? Like, that's, you know, it makes sense. But I was so happy that Elaine wrote in with that, because she is the perfect person to answer that question. So, yep.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So, that was good. All right.

Myke Hurley: If you want to send in your questions for us, just tweet with the hashtag AskTPA, or you can send them to Brad in the Slack. And we pull those in every week, and we can finish the show with them. So, thank you for your continued involvement in that. And also, for anybody who is still over on stationery.wiki, thank you for your continued work over there. It just continues to be just a beautiful beast of wonderful information. There you go. You can take that quote and put it somewhere. I've said it now, so it can go into the wiki. We've got the, it's a beautiful beast of wonderful pen creation. Love it. It's absolutely fantastic. Thank you to everyone who does that. If you want to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 281. We have a bunch of links in there to a ton of stuff that I'm sure you're going to love. If you want to find Brad online, he's over at knock.co and penaddict.com. Any knock news for the listeners?

Brad Dowdy: You will see an awesome new colorway on our Fountain Pen Day giveaway on Friday. They're not for sale yet, but they have started to arrive in the shop. You will see them in the retailer soon. So, the giveaway is the first of a new one.

Myke Hurley: Interesting. Have I seen this new color? Or did you tell me about this new color?

Brad Dowdy: I mentioned it on the show last week, but you haven't seen pictures of what it really looks like, which is what you need to do with this one.

Myke Hurley: All right. You have to send me one of these. I want to see what this is. I want to get a peek at this thing. So, keep a look at where can people find information about that when it comes out?

Myke Hurley: Blog at knock.co. Excellent. So, it's knock.co slash blog. Yep. Excellent. So, you can go check that out. And Brad is on Instagram. He's penaddict. He's dowdyism on Twitter. I'm imike. I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks again to Harry's and Squarespace for the support of this week's show. Thanks most of all to you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.