The Pen Addict 184/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	184
Title:	An Assortment of Weird Pencils
Release Date:	December 7th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 184
Audio File:	Audio Episode 184
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 184
Length:	7676 min <br />1.267 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

RelayFM

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 184. Today's show is brought to you by Harry's, Uni, and Karis Customs. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by the wonderful Mr. Brad Dowdy.

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Brad Dowdy: What's up, wonderful Mr. Myke Hurley? How are you?

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Myke Hurley: I'm very well. It feels like ages since we spoke. Obviously, the listeners wouldn't know. Well, they might know if they were listening to last week's episode, but we haven't spoken for a couple of weeks.

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Brad Dowdy: It's extremely weird when that happens. I feel like the two-week gap from the time that we record, like, this episode is, like, super strange because we didn't talk to each other for two weeks. I mean, we've talked to each other, but you know what I mean? We haven't podcasted together, and we haven't had, we haven't been able to spend this hour together, Michael. And it feels weird. Like, I didn't realise, I mean, I realised there was a podcast today, but, like, getting started, it's, like, awkward. It's, like, this whole first date, and we're gonna do this dance again. It's, like, hey, nice to meet you.

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Myke Hurley: I didn't necessarily see it like that.

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Brad Dowdy: No, I just felt it was, like, uh, I don't know, I guess every week I get into that routine every week, right? Just pumping it out. And, like, thank God you did most of the show notes this week because I was kind of lost a little bit without you. I was lost without you, Myke.

Show Notes

Myke Hurley: Well, I did the majority of the notes this week because I have a ton of stuff I want to talk about.

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Brad Dowdy: This is a huge episode. Do you think we can get it all in?

Membership

Myke Hurley: Probably not. We're gonna try anyway. First, we should start off with just some big administrative news for the show. Obviously, this show is now a part of RelayFM. It's been a part of many things over its history.

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Brad Dowdy: The show that will never die.

Membership

Myke Hurley: Yep. There's nothing you can do about it. Go on forever. It will outlive us all. RelayFM now has membership, and what membership is, in a nutshell, is a way for you, as listeners of the shows, to give money directly to the hosts of your favourite shows. So we're doing this in a couple of different ways. We have three tiers. We have two monthly tiers. The silver tier, which is $5 a month, and the gold tier, which is $10 a month. And we have the annual tier, which is $100 a year. And you can use this money for different things. You can give money to all of the shows at RelayFM. So basically, you can give $5 a month, $10 a month, or $100 a year to, and that will be split up amongst every show. So you go for the All the Great Shows option at Relay.fm slash membership, and every show will get the money. Or you can choose to do individual plans of $5, $10 a month, or $100 a year of any show. So you can say, for example, go to the Pen Addict and give $10 a month to the Pen Addict. And that money goes directly to me and Brad. So if you listen to a bunch of shows, you may want to just pick one or two, or maybe you could do the All the Great Shows option. Now, with this, with a membership at RelayFM, there's a few things that you'll get. You'll get a bonus episode of every show that Relay has during our anniversary week in August. So every year in August, we're going to celebrate our birthday and talk about membership and stuff by offering a bonus show that you won't get anywhere else just as a member. There's a monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter that you're going to get, and 15% off anything in our merchandise store, which includes RelayFM t-shirts and stickers and buttons or badges, depending on where you come from. And we're working on some different perks in the future as the membership grows. We're going to try and add more and more stuff, and we're going to try to kind of scale it up depending on how many members we have, right? Because there'll be more stuff that we'll be able to do. A bunch of you already signed up, which is absolutely fantastic, and thank you to everyone that does. And it's just one thing I want to underscore again. So if you love a couple of shows more than the others, like say you listen to eight shows and you love them all, but there's like one or two that you really love, it would be great if you gave your money to those shows. So if you really love The Pen Addict, then it would be great if you give your money to The Pen Addict. If you really love Material, it would be great if you give your money to Material. Because if you choose one or two specific shows, the hosts of those shows see more of the money, right? That's kind of what we're doing here, which is why RelayFM, the company, isn't taking money from this. So out of the money that you give, we pay for the transaction fees to the credit card processing and to the system that we're using. And that's like, you know, it's between one and two dollars, which is why our lowest tier starts at five dollars, so people can actually see some money from it. But we have a lot of shows here. We have a lot of hosts. So all the great shows you give to everything, it dilutes quite a lot. So everyone sees something. But if you have a show or two that you really love, I urge you and we urge you to give to those shows for the love that you give. And I think that I would like to hope that and I think that The Pen Addict listeners are a little bit more inclined to spend money. So I have an inside bet on this show becoming one of the most supported. We have problems. Yeah, exactly. You can go to relay.fm membership and you can find out more or you can just go to the Pen Addict page, relay.fm pen addict, and you'll see the buttons are right there and you can sign up and you'll get your little email every month and stuff like that. And, you know, we see it as a way to just branch out a little bit. We're still going to be doing sponsorship on the shows. I don't expect that to change for a long time, if ever. But this is another way for us to make some money, you know, first and foremost. It's a way for me to diversify my income a little bit, right? Because currently all of my income comes from one place, which is our sponsorships. And it also gives an avenue for people to give money to us directly, which is something that people have asked for since we began this whole process of this whole company that we got here. So I know that's a lot of information, but there is quite a bit of information to go through. So I wanted to just kind of mention that. And I hope that we see a bunch of you sign up and we would love it. If you can't sign up, don't feel bad. Just listen to the ads.

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Brad Dowdy: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And let me say one thing. I appreciate you, Myke, and Stephen putting this together. You know, this is something you're doing for your host. I mean, it's greatly appreciated and it's not gone unnoticed. And you've put a lot of effort into getting this up and running. Yeah. You know, I've seen, you know, everything you guys are going through to work on this. And it's been months of work to get this up and running. And I just wanted to thank you for getting this set up and taking care of us hosts and everyone like that. And I appreciate it.

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Myke Hurley: Yes, it's been a difficult thing to do because of the way that our company is set up and how many people we have. But we're hoping that we may have got a system that works pretty well once we've got all the kinks signed out. So I hope that people go ahead and sign up. We'd really appreciate it. And I did want to mention just a couple of little things that are kind of slightly connected to this. So one, this is a membership, a donation, a subscription, however you'd want to call it, for the Pen Addict podcast. This is not the Pen Addict as a whole big brand. So this money goes to me and Brad. So if Brad ever decides to do anything like this of his own at some point, which many, many websites are doing now, which is why we're doing it. It's becoming a thing that people are doing more and more. This isn't tied to that. I just wanted to mention that. And also, we are planning on doing another Kickstarter this year for the Atlanta Pen Show. I would really love it if people would still consider that. And we are working on something that I think will make it worth your money as opposed to just the video. So we're going to be hoping to do another video podcast again. We're hoping to maybe have an audience this year, fingers crossed. We're going to try and work that out. But also, we're working on a Kickstarter exclusive thing, again, like we did last time with the lovely case that we had made. So we're hoping on doing something like that again. And you should maybe expect to see a bit more from that in the next few weeks, I think.

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Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. We'll be ramping up talk of that very, very soon. As soon as the date gets finalized, which will hopefully be in the next week. And we'll start planning for that.

Video Production

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's expensive for me to get out to the States for the reason we did it the first time. And we really loved doing the video. There's no way we could do the video without the Kickstarter support because that's another expensive process. So we're going to give that another go this year, and I hope that you guys will consider that when it comes around. Yep. So that's all the administration out of the way. Let's talk about Field Notes.

Stock Packs

Myke Hurley: Right into it. There was another little announcement last week. This is really interesting. It's what appears to be a new just stock pack with a real twist on it. So this is a collaboration between Field Notes and Tested.com. Adam Savage is one of the owners of Tested.com. And you may remember quite some time ago that Mr. Savage did a video and he showed that he carried Field Notes. And it seems that that plus another video that he did about his quadcopter gear. There's a real link in the show notes to the Field Notes post where they have links to this stuff. And he modified his own Field Notes notebook to take information about the drone flights that he was doing. So never to miss a trick, the Field Notes guys and girls contacted Tested.com and have collaborated on them to create the Field Notes Tested.com flight log edition. It's pretty cool, right?

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: It's very cool. I actually like the video where they go through the pre-flight checklist. So the checklist looks like the normal inside back cover, you know, with all the details and specifications and practical applications. It's just like the checklist going through, you know, all the pre-flight stuff. I didn't realize you had to check off so much stuff before you had a drone. Remind me to never buy my son or daughter a drone.

Drones

Myke Hurley: Well, if we bring a drone to Atlanta again, which we probably won't. But if we did, then we can get one of these and take it all off.

Drones

Brad Dowdy: That's true. We did have a drone. We did have a drone.

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: We did have a drone.

Snowblind

Brad Dowdy: We'll have to take more advantage of it this year if it comes. But, okay, so the real question is, are you going to purchase any?

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Snowblind

Brad Dowdy: Are you?

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I have some on the way. I mean, it's, you know, it's an addition. It's, you know, probably not. I guess it will be limited to an amount, maybe. It looked pretty cool. I like Tested.com. Yeah. You know.

Adam Savage

Brad Dowdy: I like Adam Savage. I like the whole thing about it.

Color Subscription

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I needed to renew my color subscription, so I just did those both at the same time.

Stationery

Brad Dowdy: That makes sense. That makes sense. I didn't order any. I probably won't. I just don't need more stuff, you know.

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: Oh, for sure, I don't need more stuff. Did I tell you how many Snowblind I got? No. So, I bought another two packs. I have four.

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Myke Hurley: So, you know.

Snowblind

Brad Dowdy: So, how much do you like them? Do you want to go ahead and talk about that?

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: Snowblind?

Snowblind

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Snowblind

Myke Hurley: I like them a lot, man.

Snowblind

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: I haven't really had the opportunity to see them in blue because it's not been very bright here. Shocking. So, I've taken them outside and I've gotten them to change color a little bit, right? But just as a white, I love them.

Staples

Brad Dowdy: Well, the white staples are my favorite thing. I always fawn over the staples on the field notes. I don't know why that catches my eye ever since they did the black staples way back in the day. I like it when they do a little something different with the staples and something as simple as a white staple really appeals to me.

Paper

Myke Hurley: But, like, you know, there's nothing wrong with these. You know, it's not like the previous white edition had the weird paper inside them. This is the regular great paper that they use. And I love the texture of the cover.

Cover Texture

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Cover feels nice.

Ink Reactions

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's got a real interesting texture to it, obviously, because they put this ink or whatever it is that they've done. This specific paper that reacts to the color. Yeah. I really I'm a big fan of this edition. So it's a new favorite edition because I always I loved Northerly. I loved the way that they looked, but they were just a nightmare to write in.

Shenandoah Edition

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I like this edition a lot. I mean, I like Shenandoah better than it. I don't know how much I'll use these. I think it's cool that they do this, though. You know, it's certainly a good looking edition. But like I said, my favorite things are the staples and the yellow belly band. I thought the yellow belly band looked really good.

Sunlight

Myke Hurley: And it says view in direct sunlight, which is fun.

Blue Print

Brad Dowdy: And the blue print on the backside. I almost wish the cover had that blue print on the front for the field notes. But I know it's there for a reason. So it shows up white when the cover turns blue out in the sunlight. So it's all done for a reason, which field notes always does everything for a reason, it seems like. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a good it's a good edition all around.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I'm a big fan. And I have a lot of them.

Unboxing Video

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And we will put in the show notes our friend Andy Wellfleet and TJ Cosgrove put together their unboxing video. It's up and available on YouTube. So we'll have that link in there. And Andy shows the cover turning into blue like quite quickly when he has it in the sunlight. And it does from the ones I've done outside. They definitely do turn pretty quick. And hopefully one day you will see the sun over there in England.

Sunlight

Myke Hurley: So I only got mine like a day or two ago. So I'm hoping I'm going to get a sunny day here in the next couple of days because it does get it is sunny here in the winter. You know, like if it's not raining, the sun will come out. Yeah. So I'm waiting for that to happen. But it's been a bit overcast the last couple of days.

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Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Miracles happen, buddy. Hang in there.

Daniel

Myke Hurley: Talking about miracles.

Daniel

Brad Dowdy: This is the most random thing ever. So a friend of the friend of the show and the blog, Daniel lives out in Portland, and he said he was swinging by the DDC pop-up shop and want to know if he wanted me to if he wanted if I was interested in him getting me some of the DDC deadprint books that we've all seen like on Instagram and the Field Notes page. And, you know, the ones with the chopped up posters, like the leftover poster remnants.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah, like the most exciting Field Notes edition that's ever been created that everybody desperately wants.

Draplin Edition

Brad Dowdy: Like essentially Draplin made it from scrap and it's been the most popular edition ever kind of thing. Yeah, that one. So Daniel just grabbed me. I told him to grab me three packs and I paid him for them. And he just grabbed three packs, you know, just indiscriminately, didn't pay attention to them at all, didn't do it with anything, any purpose. And I got them in the mail and I'm looking at the front covers and, you know, I'm all, they all look good. I love these colors. I mean, I've seen all the pictures on online and they all look fantastic. And then I flipped over to the back and on the back of them is the Georgia State map with a huge Waffle House logo right in the smack in the middle of it. And I was like, yes, that's awesome. So I emailed Daniel. I said, hey, do you do this on purpose? Like, because this is you could not have picked out a better one for me. He's like, no, I had no idea it was even on there. It was on the back cover. And, you know, he didn't even didn't even know. So it was perfect. And, you know, I'll bring it when we when we go to Atlanta and we'll have it at the Waffle House, you know, when we're there every night, late night after the after the pin show.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: You need to crack all these open and take more detailed pictures, my friend.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: I will. So I have three packs. So I'll be I'll open them all up this week and set them all so you can see all nine front covers and all nine back covers because each one's different depending on which part of the poster they're coming from. So that's why that's kind of what got people all in a tizzy. Like I have a different one that's got the little field notes brown book on the cover of one. Oh, and it's like right smack in the middle of the front the front cover. So people have been all over me for that one. And so I need to open them up and take some better pictures of them because they're really cool. You know, it's just one of those things. Everything drapling touches turns to gold these days. And of course, it caused more consternation in the field nuts group. And, you know, as it does. And I've covered that topic, so I'm not going to get into it again. But SSDD pretty much. And, you know, that's that. But I was pretty I still smile when I see this Waffle House logo field nuts. It's kind of crazy. Field notes.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Daniel hooked me up with two sets. They haven't come yet, but they're on the way.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Nice. I think you'll really, really like these. Yeah. I know you.

None

Myke Hurley: I'm super excited about it.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So more photos to come. I just haven't had time to open them all up yet, but I but I will.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I'm really excited for mine coming in. I will take bunches of pictures as well. I'll follow those.

NYC Trip

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So you took a bunch of pictures this weekend on your trip to NYC. So we're going to hear about that, right?

NYC Trip

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. I've got a ton of stuff to talk about on that.

None

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Can't wait.

Harry's

Myke Hurley: But before we do that, we should take a moment to thank our friends over at Harry's. Yeah. Cool. So we've got something a little bit special this week's and this week's Harry's ad. So, you know, Harry's, they make fantastic shaving products. And it's important to know if you didn't already, the holiday season is a polis, which means that it's time to start thinking about all the great gift ideas that you're going to need for family members, friends, co-workers. Maybe you need a wicked cool secret Santa gift to impress somebody at the office. Right. This is all of the stuff that Harry's can sort you out with. We've got you covered. Just go to harrys.com to find some awesome gifts for the important people in your life. Harry's has a fantastic range of shaving sets and you're going to be impressing whoever is lucky enough to unwrap that gift this holiday season. And don't forget, you can always treat yourself too. So you can feel the awesomeness of Harry's and all the love that their razors will give your body. And you can feel that in your life too. Harry's has a whole bunch of great sets this holiday season with prices starting at $15. And Brad, I believe that you received a Harry's holiday set over there.

Shave Set

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I got two things, actually. I got the holiday set, which includes like a travel size shave lotion, shave. Actually, I'm sorry, full size. The aftershave lotion, full size shave cream, the razor, which I don't know if you've seen and I don't even know if it's online. It must be on there in the travel kit. So let me open this up here.

Winter Winston

Myke Hurley: I think you may have got the Winter Winston set.

Winter Winston

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. The Winter Winston set with like the copper handle.

Shaving Set

Myke Hurley: Yeah. She's a beaut, right?

Shaving Set

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. My wife has already claimed it. So I said, well, just hang on. I want to let me let me talk about it on the podcast since they were nice. It's nice to just send it to me. But it was an ooh and ah moment. And so she has already claimed that. So that will be for her. And then a couple little razor blades, the little plastic cover that goes over your blade for when you travel. Because now when you travel, you can throw it in the Harry's travel kit, which is like a little dop kit. Yep. And it's wonderful. This one, it's really cool. It's, I don't even know how to explain the outside cover. It's like a knitted cotton. It's a cotton nylon exterior. Traditional like dop kit setup. It's got a big open pocket in the middle with like a little pouch pocket on the side. It's lined so the waterproof doesn't get through. Any leaks or spills don't get through the into the outside. It's got the handle so you can carry it easy. It's got an external pocket and it's got their little little logo, uh, elephant logo on the outside. It looks so cool. Um, I've been really, really, oh, mammoth, wooly mammoth. Cause we're wooly. Is that what it is? Harry, right? Yeah. Harry. I see what it, I see what they did there. Yeah. It's really cool. I've been very impressed with it and it's only 25 bucks, which is for a dop kit. That's a great deal. Um, you know, they usually, you know, you can get all these fancy leather ones for, uh, uh, you know, a hundred dollars or more. And this one is just like in, in Harry's nature, everything is like super high quality and very, very well priced. And, um, so I want to mention that the, the bag is $25, right?

Shaving Set

Myke Hurley: But the, the, what you have is a, is a bigger set.

None

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Harry's

Myke Hurley: Which is $95, which is there. Like that's the number one set. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You have a few different things. So it's very cool.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it's lovely, but yeah, the, the, the bag is super awesome. The, the limited edition, uh, the copper handle is stunning. Uh, you get the little travel stand with it. This is like in one of their big, big, uh, kind of top of the line bundles, but they have like a $60 bundle, which has a bunch of that stuff in. Then they have some from 40 to $50 with travel kits in them. Right. So you can get that. And then they have some of the regular sets as well. Uh, but you can get the, the winter Winston, which is the one with the, the lovely, uh, copper handle. You can pick one of those up for $30 and that comes with the firming shave gel and the, the, the blades and stuff. So there's tons of, no matter what your price range, they've got some fantastic gift sets to match for the people in your life this holiday season and finding the perfect gift couldn't be any easier. It's just so simple. No frustrating trips to the mall. You just go to harrys.com. It takes less than 30 seconds to place an order and they're fantastic customer service to back it up the whole way. Harry's not only makes really high quality grooming products. They also give 1% of their sales and 1% of their time back to the communities they serve in so you can feel good about a gift that gives back. So go to harrys.com right now. There's a special offer for listeners of this show. Harry's will give you $5 off your first order with the code penaddict at checkout. And you want to make sure that you don't wait around on this one. Free shipping for the holidays ends on December 10th. So act now. Go to h-a-r-r-y-s.com. Use the code penaddict at checkout. Harry's makes every morning feel like a holiday. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So did you bring your Harry's gear on your trip to New York City?

Myke Hurley: I didn't because I don't have one of those great kits travel sets yet. Mine's in the mail because it's coming from... I should have picked it up. They're in New York.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, really. You really, really. But it was a whirlwind tour for you though. So you didn't have much, much time for mixing things up a little bit. So what did you do when you were there? When you were visiting the US?

Myke Hurley: So we did a bunch of great little activities. We're going to talk about it in some real detail on analog. That records... If you're listening to this live, records live tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll be out on Sunday if you're listening to this later on. But we went to a Walmart to see what that was like. We did a bunch of American Christmas things. We went Christmas tree shopping. Nice. And we did some sightseeing around Manhattan and stuff like that. But there was one thing I had on my list that I had to do. And everybody knew I had to do this, which was to visit CW Pencil Enterprise.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I'm so jealous.

Myke Hurley: That was on my list. That was the one thing I had to do when I was there. Because I really, really wanted to go to that store. We've been tracking Caroline since... I think she was just an online store, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Pencil Thing

Myke Hurley: So I really, really wanted to go there. Well, I've got a bit of a pencil thing going on now these days. So I figured, why not go get some cool woodcase stuff? So I'll come back to that in a moment. But I really loved New York. Have you been to New York?

Brad Dowdy: I've only been once. And it's been probably 10 years. And it was just for some work stuff for just a few days. So I didn't get to tour around too much. Just, you know, very, very small little time in there. So I got to get back up there.

Myke Hurley: It was fantastic. We went to a bookstore called Strand, which is huge. And I bought a new coloring book. Nice. I bought a Star Wars coloring book. Oh, really? Yeah. Yep. Cool. I saw it and I was like buying it. Because obviously they had a huge coloring section in there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. They're everywhere.

Myke Hurley: And I was like, there's no way. There is no way that I'm not getting a Star Wars coloring book.

Brad Dowdy: That's amazing. I want to see some pictures of that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Sorry, Joanna Bashford, but I'm going to skip over you for a little bit now. I've got Yoda to color in.

Myke Hurley: So I've got that. But yeah, it was really nice to see it. I'm like, I'm teasing now. I'm teasing the CW pencil discussion. I really liked it there. New York is a really interesting place. It's kind of like London. Was this your first time there? Yeah. I'd never been there before. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Gotcha.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But I did really, really enjoy it. I really, really enjoyed it. So should I talk to you about? Please, you're killing me.

Brad Dowdy: You're killing all of us.

Myke Hurley: All right. So I can't remember what kind of part it's called, like where the store is, but you can find that by looking online. And it's a tiny store, like super, super small. There were four of us and there were like two other people in the store when we got there. And it was like everyone was like in each other's way. But it's a pencil store, right? So like, what do you expect? But it's beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: So even just the picture you put on Instagram, I was like, that is such a good looking picture because the store, you know, forget you in the picture that just the store itself is so photogenic. It's Caroline does an awesome job. She really does.

Myke Hurley: I mean, I don't know if it was like planned this way, but everything in that store is Instagram worthy. Right. Every part of it. Like there's like artwork on the walls, which was, you know, there's this one piece which shows like in different. It has, it's like a frame, it's like a deep frame with a bunch of pencil stuff in it. And it shows the making of a pencil. So it starts with like a block of wood and then like stamped out and then cut into the pieces. And then with the lead put in the middle and then stamped out all together with the eraser part. Like it shows the, actually you can kind of see it over my right shoulder. Okay. So if you look at the picture that will be in the show notes, you can see there's like these blocks of wood on the wall. And that is the piece which shows the making of a pencil. There's a bunch of like artwork, like just pencil related artwork and posters and stuff like that. And every, every inch of the store is covered in these beautiful little displays with real colorful pencils arranged in these excellent little pots and stuff. And yeah, just the whole thing was fantastic that you could try everything out. And it was great. Everyone enjoyed it because it was just such an interesting little place. And I was so excited that Caroline was there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's awesome. I was glad she was.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I would have, I would have been upset if I didn't get to meet her.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And I didn't want to like, so I was thinking like, do I just go in and like introduce myself? Cause I wanted to talk to her. Right. Right. But I didn't want to kind of just be like, Hey, it's Myke. Do you know who I am? Right. And also it's like, I don't know if she has any idea who I am. So we were in there and we were talking and then Marco mentioned something to me, Marco Arment, who I was staying with. And he was like, Oh, does this hurt you being in here? Like it's the pencil store, you know, and you're a pen guy. And I was kind of just like, no, no, I'm like coming around to it, you know? And I can't remember how it came up, but we like, we got chatting and I started talking to Caroline a little bit and I was like, Oh, you know, she was like laughing. I was like, Oh yeah, I'm on this podcast called the pen addict. And she goes, Oh, are you Myke? And I was like, yeah. I was like, yes, that's who I am. So yeah. And then we just started chatting and I was like saying how awesome it was to be in the store and saying like, you know, that we've been following her, her work and kind of her progress for so long and that it's great to see how it's going. And she was just saying that like the store's taken off. I heard her saying to somebody that like, I think that they got a call from the daily show or the today show or something like that because they needed pencils for. Gift guide thing that they were doing. Nice. I think it was like a gift guide for teachers. I don't know, like to get for teachers for the end of school or whatever. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's probably like the today show.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And so they had to like rush some pencils up to Manhattan or whatever. But she was just saying that like the store was really taken off and they were, and it had been so successful. And like she even had an office now, which was like detached from the store because the online stuff's so busy and just the business is so busy. And I love, I just love that this exists. Right. Because it shouldn't. Right. There is no world when you think about it where like in New York City, somebody can pay the like the rental fees to have a pencil shop.

Brad Dowdy: Right. It doesn't make sense.

Myke Hurley: It doesn't make any sense, but they do. And it's successful and it's awesome. And you can see why, right? Because I spent like over a hundred dollars in there. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Because if you're drawn in and there's no way you're leaving there about buying anything.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah. Because that's what we've always talked about just from the pen perspective. You're like, you can get something like that will really change your writing experience for $3, you know?

Pencil Purchases

Myke Hurley: Yep. And so do you want to know what I bought in there?

Brad Dowdy: I absolutely want to know what you bought in there.

Myke Hurley: So I got, I got, I got a few different things. I got a, just this little assortment pack of pencils. They just do these little assortment packs. I was like, okay, I'll just get one of those. Like, it's just like, I think it was like an assortment of weird pencils or something was what it said, like all peculiar pencils. I was like, okay, that seems like fun. So I got one of those and then I also got a Palomino Blackwing Pearl because I figured you should. Yes, you should. So I picked up one of those. Then I also bought a, oh, so the pack that I bought was the unusual pencils pack. So I got one of those because that sounded like fun. I'm going to find these from Carolyn's site and I'm going to put them in the show notes. Okay, cool. I got a, the Blackwing Pearl because I just figured, considered to be, you know, the Blackwing, the best pencil in the world. Today, I figured you got to buy one. I bought a metal sharpener. Okay. So hang on, this guy.

Brad Dowdy: Like a handheld sharpener.

Myke Hurley: But it's not one that you don't turn it, like hasn't got like a crank on it.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. No, yeah. You hold it in your hand and twist it.

Myke Hurley: Yep. But it's, but it's one with like a, it's like a barrel. So the shavings are collected inside. It's got one of those.

Myke Hurley: Because I also bought the, I bought the Palomino Blackwing because it was like, I'm in the pencil store. I should get one of the best pencils that exists. So what I also bought was one of the most classic designs. I bought a Midori bullet pencil.

Brad Dowdy: Oh man, that's, that's a great pencil.

Myke Hurley: And I just figured I'll get one of these. Like there's so many reasons why this isn't something that I'm massively excited about. Like the pencil's real small, right? Sure. Um, and it's a woodcase pencil and I am more of a mechanical pencil man, I guess. But this is like the design, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Right. It's been one of the most well designed stationary products, you know, the last, I don't even know how long it's been around 20 years or more. Um, it's just the really, really classic design. It's in all kinds of photography. You'll see it just in random things, you know, like if Twitter's doing some promo and there's some desk, you might, you're liable to see that pencil laying there, right? Because it's so photogenic and so classic of a design. Um, I, I have one and I, I don't break it out enough. It's, it's killer.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's just like, that is, you know, for every reason I'll buy a Blackwing, I will buy one of these because it's like, yeah, this is what you buy, you know? Right. If you're a pencil person, all pencil people have one of these, I believe, you know? Um, and so it felt like a good thing to just go for.

Brad Dowdy: So what you'll end up, what you'll end up doing is you'll end up enjoying the Blackwing and then you'll end up hacking the Blackwing pencil to fit in the Midori bullet. And that's when you know you've made it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Is that when you're gone then at that point?

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. That'll happen.

Myke Hurley: I, uh, I was trying out some stuff in there, you know, just, just kind of see like playing around with different things that are out on display. And one of the pencils that I liked the feel of the most, like from the way that it feels in the hand and the way that the kind of the graphite was, went onto the paper was the Blackwood Jumbo pencil by Caran Dash. Is that how you say that?

Brad Dowdy: I have one of the, yeah, I believe Caran Dash or something. That's it. We're in the ballpark, I think. Yeah. I have, I have that pencil. It's awesome.

Myke Hurley: I really liked it. It was just one of the ones that I picked up and tried out and I was like, oh yeah, this is great.

Brad Dowdy: Because. It's a little bit wider diameter, a little bit heftier, a little bit denser, I guess.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because Adina was, was, was kind of displaying to Marco, um, the difference between all the different, uh, softness of lead. Mm-hmm. Right. And that this was one of the ones that they had out on display. And I asked her like, what ones did she think felt quite nice? And she gave me that one. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to buy one of these.

Brad Dowdy: Can I just say, I love the fact that Marco was in there picking up pencils. That just boggles my mind. Yep.

Myke Hurley: He, he kind of liked it. He kind of liked it. Tiff, Tiff bought a bunch of things.

Brad Dowdy: Well, yeah, I imagine he's, he's not, he's not far removed from being one of us.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. There's, there's one, there's one, uh, set like, uh, one degree of separation. There you go. One degree of separation.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So his, his wife Tiff is, is very much into this kind of stuff. Yeah. And, uh, so she, she got a few things you said.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, she did. I can't remember what it was that she bought, but, but she got a few things too. But then I got two others and these are the ones that I was maybe the most excited about because it was so cool. Wow. I know. I got, I know. Uh, Ko-i-no, right? Is that how you said? Sure. Magic pencils.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. That's the one Anna was talking about on our gift guide episode, right?

Myke Hurley: I knew I'd heard about it somewhere. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Ha ha ha.

Myke Hurley: These things are amazing. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I need to go order these as soon as we're done. I bet. I was going to do it last week or two weeks ago when we had the gift guide episode and then, uh, didn't do it.

Myke Hurley: I bought the, uh, neon and America. Okay. So neon is a bunch of neon colors. It's maybe about six, like maybe four to six colors in here or like bright blue, bright yellow, bright pink, that kind of thing. And in America, can you imagine what colors are in the American one?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm going to go with red, white, and blue.

Myke Hurley: Yes, you're correct, sir. Ding, ding, ding. But they're really cool because you just, you know, you write a little bit. It's one color. You turn it a little bit. It's another color. Um, Anna was completely right. I knew I'd, I knew I'd heard of them somewhere. Yeah. Now I know where that place was. Yeah. She was raving.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. She was raving about them.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. They're really, really cool. And again, like the, the, um, blackwood pencil, they're really thick. They're chunky. Um, and I, I love these things. They're super, super awesome. Super awesome. So everything was, was cheap except for the sharpener. The sharpener I got was like $50. Okay. Yeah. And then the, the Midori, uh, which is obvious. I don't remember how much that was, but it was a little bit more expensive too.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, well, I need to see, uh, the Midori was probably in the twenties. That's where they, they usually run. Um, the, uh, the sharpener, uh, I definitely want to see some pictures of you. Haven't shared that yet. So you got to put a link in the show notes to that one. Cause I want to see it. Um, as, uh, Tim from, um, the erasable podcast sent me, um, uh, a really nice one. And, um, yeah, I'd be interested to see what you got as well.

Pencil Sharpener

Myke Hurley: Yeah. All right. I'll, I'll find it for you now and I'll put it, I'll put it straight into the chat room and in the show notes. Cause I did just bring it up a moment ago. Um, I just saw it and was like, oh, I love that design and just really wanted it. Uh, I also have, um, my Midori is white.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I have the brass one. I, I, I think I like the white one better. The brass one has the patina and it's really nice. The white one photographs really well. I like that, um, kind of lacquered, uh, paint look on that one. It's really nice.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. There was just something about that one. I was like, Ooh, that's real cool. Yeah. All right. So I found the, um, the pencil sharpener. So I put that in the chat room. Okay. That's just, yeah. It's just a cool, I just grabbed me. I was like looking at them. I was like, I'm going to need a sharpener cause I don't have a sharpener big enough for the thicker pencils that I bought. Right. And I was looking around and I was like, Ooh, I like that one.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I've never seen that one. Wow. That is fancy. It's pretty cool, right? Yeah. It's real cool.

Myke Hurley: So that was what I went for.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Really nice. Oh, that's cool.

Myke Hurley: Man.

Brad Dowdy: You did good.

Myke Hurley: Oh, Doug wants me to say what material this is made out of.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. What is your sharpener made out of?

Myke Hurley: Aluminium. Nice.

Myke Hurley: So that's a big hole, right? That's a huge hole. Yeah. I, there was also part of me that just really wanted to support her. Yeah, for sure.

Brad Dowdy: For sure. I mean, it's like, um, you know, even though we don't like know her personally, but you know, she's in the same realm and you feel just like this, you know, I don't know if this, we have this whole support system in this community. Right. And, you know, we all believe in what everyone else is doing and, you know, want to support them. And I, I don't know. I think it's kind of cool. I, I'm the same way as you, I would feel the same way. And, uh, I hope to get up there myself, uh, sooner rather than later. I don't have anything on the books, but, uh, I, I, I will certainly make it up there, um, before too long.

Guest Interview

Myke Hurley: And Caroline said, she'd love to be on the show.

Brad Dowdy: Good. So good. Good. Good. I've talked to her. I've talked to her in the past and we've just never, we've, I've just never set it up officially. So we will do it soon. Now that you've been there and, uh, you've, you've come back with, with some goods and you can talk about the shop. Um, we will definitely get her on very, very soon. Maybe right after the new year. Once, uh, the holiday season gets, uh, gets a wrap wrapped up for her.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And also they wrapped everything so beautifully.

Brad Dowdy: I know. Um, someone posted a picture.

Myke Hurley: I wish I'd taken a picture of everything wrapped up. I didn't.

Brad Dowdy: And yeah, someone's one of our, one of our followers and listeners, someone that I follow on Instagram just got their package, um, their online order from them. And it was all wrapped up nice and neat. And it looked, it looked beautiful. So there they have got it going on there at CW pencil enterprise. They really do.

Myke Hurley: Um, I mentioned a moment ago, uh, Tiffany Arment, who I was staying with, uh, she's a, she's big into coloring. We've mentioned that in the past. Um, Tiff gave me, uh, one of the books that she had and a selection of gel pens that she had. And I don't remember the brand, but they were kind of just like a big box that she bought on Amazon. I think. Have you ever colored the gel pens? No. So different.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine.

Myke Hurley: It feels more like Tiff said this and it's totally true. It feels more like painting. Cause you feel like you're kind of pushing the ink around. I could see that in a weird way. Cause it's like, it flows out. It's very, it's a very different feel. And I kind of liked it. I'm considering getting like a big pack of gel pens now. Um, as it's another, another coloring option. Cause it looks really different as well. Cause it has that kind of shimmer to it when it's, when it's finished.

Coloring

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Myke Hurley: So that's, uh, that's another, an interesting and different way to get into the coloring thing. If you are interested in it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So she's gone, um, she's going, uh, all in on the coloring thing. So what, once she, uh, she was, she was tweeting out the other, she was having some rage tweets the other day about coloring and I was, I was talking, replying back to her, but, um, I haven't mentioned this to her yet, but we will get her on the show once she goes through a bunch of her coloring books and pens. She was going through a lot of different, um, products at the time when, when she was, uh, tweeting. So we'll have to get her on here one day to talk about all the coloring.

Myke Hurley: I would also like to talk to Tiff about the art that she does. Cause she started doing, like, she kind of has gotten into like painting and things like that. And that might be quite cool. Cause I don't think we've spoken to anyone about that before on the show. And that's definitely in the show's wheelhouse.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Yeah. I would love to do that. So, uh, Caroline and Tiff, um, you can, uh, expect an email from us. I love that.

Myke Hurley: I go, I go to New York and just fill us up on guests.

Brad Dowdy: I like it. I like it. And I liked, uh, I liked your podcasting setup. Uh, I did see that picture of your podcasting setup at Marco's house. Yeah. Which, uh, I wouldn't expect anything less from Marco, but it looked pretty, uh, looked pretty cozy compared to like what I'm sitting in right now.

Myke Hurley: That's, uh, so basically me, me and Adina recorded an episode of a podcast that will be released shortly, um, along with Marco and Tiff. Uh, they don't usually record from those recliner chairs. That was just how we were recording. Uh, Marco and Tiff are sitting, Tiff took the picture and they're sitting in their office chairs and me and Adina were sitting on, uh, reclined lounge chairs, which was awesome.

Brad Dowdy: With your kickback, kickback with your feet up, you know, holding the microphone in front of your face. It was hilarious.

Myke Hurley: Let me tell you, that is the way to podcast.

Brad Dowdy: That's the way to do it. That is the way to do it. Well, tell me about the way to cook pizza.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I will. And the only way that you should be cooking pizza is with an uni oven. Uni is a wood fired oven that is fast, portable and affordable. And they are one of our sponsors for this week's episode. With an uni, you'll be cooking fantastic pizza. In no time. It takes only 10 minutes to heat up your uni wood fired oven and just two minutes to cook a pizza. You will be getting all of your pizzas ready to be like an assembly line. As quickly as you can make one, the next one is cooked. You have to stay on it. That uni is fast. And when it churns out, fantastic tasting stuff. I have eaten pizza from an uni oven prepared by uni's creators, Christian and Darina. It is a real great looking thing. You should go to uni.net. That's U-U-N-I.net. You can take a look at the images and the video that they have on the website. They have a brand new video there which shows you all about the uni experience. And you can see just how great it looks. It's got a great design. But most importantly, it creates pizza that tastes really awesome. Uni weighs only 22 pounds as well. It's real small. It's the perfect size to create nice little individual pizzas. And it's real easy for you to fit it in any space, really. Any garden, any outside space. You could also take it on a camping trip or to an outdoor event, something like that. Maybe a park. And coming in December, so coming this month, is a new cover bag for the uni. So it's even easier to transport than ever. Uni is also super affordable. Wood-fired ovens usually cost upwards of $1,000. But uni is less than $300. This is actually a key factor of uni's design. And it's like a principle from day one is that it is affordable and available to anybody. You can find out more, as I said, by going to uni.net, U-U-N-I.net. It is all that you need to get into wood-fired cooking. And you can use the code PENADDICT at checkout. And you will get yourself an uni cover bag free with your uni to wood-fired oven. So just use that code at checkout. And when you purchase an uni wood-fired oven, you will get the cover bag as well. Thank you so much to uni for their support of this show.

Pencils

Brad Dowdy: So a couple things on pencils. And now that you're going down that rabbit hole, you might want to look into the Black Wings volumes. You're familiar with that because I've been talking about it, right? I'm a subscriber to the quarterly special edition Black Wings that get released.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Let me tell you, the more and more they do with these things, the closer and closer I am to signing up. But my issue is, I know this sounds so dumb, I wish I could just get one of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. What you should do, and maybe I'll do it with you because I don't need them all as well, is split a subscription.

Myke Hurley: That is a good idea.

Brad Dowdy: Like six for me, six for you kind of thing because that's all they need. We should do that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. We should do that.

Brad Dowdy: So this one is really cool. They're calling this the sci-fi pencil, but it's based off a movie. And it's an old classic silent movie, A Trip to the Moon. I would recall seeing, you know, like scenes from this, you know, the moon, like the rocket hitting the moon in the eye kind of thing. It's kind of a classic movie scene. And they've taken this film and basically like barcoded every frame of the film into like this pattern. They call it movie barcoding. So it's all condensed down, like every frame is condensed into this little pattern. And then they spread that out across the pencil. And it's just, how do you even think of this stuff? I don't know, one, how they came up with this and two, how they pulled it off, but it looks awesome.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: So what I like about this is as they're going further and further down this path, they are becoming Field Notes level of ingenious with the way they're creating these things. Right. This is why I'm kind of wanting them because they're cool and they're made in a way, like for everything I like about Field Notes, you know, for everything I like about the subscription and the limited editions and the colors editions, I'm starting to be drawn to these because that is amazing. They didn't need to do that. They could have just made something that was black and gray and kind of looked like the moon.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: But they went that extra step.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a big deal. I mean, you see it come out in products like this, right? That's where you kind of notice that something special is going on. You know, the brains behind, you know, the volumes subscription has come up with some like really good stuff. And I don't know, this one really surprised me for some reason. I just keep looking. I don't have it yet. Some people have arrived. I thought mine might come today, but they have not yet.

Myke Hurley: And it looks beautiful. It really just does look beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's so good. So, I mean, I'm looking forward to this. I've used most of the first edition, which was the guitar colored, like kind of the flame in black. I use that one a lot. The second one was just a natural wood that wasn't my favorite, but a lot of people raved about that one. And this one, I think, this one, I think is going to top them all for me.

Myke Hurley: So that that plain one is the Shenandoah.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. Okay.

Myke Hurley: You know, if you know, no, no. Like if you think about it. Oh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Like the way the setup of the subscription.

Subscription Model

Myke Hurley: It's like the purists love it because it's the most simple form. But people that may be a little bit more drive-by, like me and you, are less excited about it because it's not cool and interesting.

Brad Dowdy: That was a very good way to put it. Yeah. I'm totally with you on that. Very cool. So, and one quick question we got on, I don't know if I was talking about the, I think I was talking about the pencils on Twitter or something. Someone asked me and Moises Chulian, who's our podcasting friend, and you, what our favorite black wings were. And I figured you probably wouldn't get into that. And, yeah, Ryan Gallagher sent that in. He said, okay, so what's your favorite black wing? Because there's really three core models. There's a black wing, the black wing pearl, and the black wing 602. And mine's the 602. It's the same with Moises because it's the firmest lead of the three. And it's still really dark. It holds a great point, which is why I replied back to him and chose that one out of the bunch.

Myke Hurley: So, mine is purely based on looks, which is the pearl, which is the one that I bought at CW Pencils. I think it just is the prettiest.

Brad Dowdy: It is. It is. Actually, the black one, the solid black one, just the regular black wing is my least favorite.

Moleskin Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: I do like the gray of this 602 the best. And on any of these, what you can do, Myke, and what I've started to do is you can buy extra packs of erasers, even though the erasers aren't very good. But you can change the color. So, like, my 602s have orange erasers on the end of them now. So, it looks really cool. It looks really cool. You know what's not really cool?

Myke Hurley: What?

Brad Dowdy: Someone sent me.

Myke Hurley: No, come on. This is cool.

Brad Dowdy: This was pretty cool because I had never seen this. I don't know how I'd never seen this because I'm kind of an internet stalker like that. And someone sent me, hey, have you seen Myke's very first picture ever posted on Instagram? And that, it was 269 weeks ago. So, what's that? Four and a half years or something? No, five years and five plus years.

Brad Dowdy: All it says, it's a picture of some handwriting, some notebooks, and Myke saying, I love a moleskin.

Brad Dowdy: Explain yourself.

Myke Hurley: Five years ago. Right? Well, okay. Three years ago. What did you say about fountain pens?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I know. I'm totally with it. Hey, I've said it before. I've said it again. I started the blog on a moleskin. The pen addict first reviews for probably the first couple months were in a moleskin reporter notebook. They absolutely were. Which, actually, that looks like kind of what you have there. That's the reporter.

Myke Hurley: I have a reporter. I have the original. What do they call the original? I don't remember. I don't know. Then I have one of the softcover sketchbook ones, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the huge softcover ones. Those were always my favorite. I love the softcover. Yeah, I still have some of these floating around the house somewhere. But I just, I got the biggest trip out of this. Because, number one, I was surprised I hadn't seen it. And then, number two, just the whole context of it. You know, all these things come back to haunt us all these years later. And I just wanted to make sure I shared that with everyone. Because I have certainly fallen on my sword several times. So, you know, I thought I'd do the same for you.

Myke Hurley: But, yeah, it's fun to me, though, whilst maybe not the best. It's fun to me that it is a paper, pen and paper related. Instagram was my first one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. That's very interesting in itself, right? Yeah. Because that would be pre-podcast.

Myke Hurley: Oh, two years before.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, easily. Easily, easily. So, I don't know. I wanted to share that because that was pretty cool. Someone brought it up. Also, on Twitter, some kind of changing course here real quickly is there's a really cool campaign that was tweeted out to me yesterday, the other day before. It's called Write for Your Rights. It's done by Amnesty International. We're going to put the link in the show notes. I thought this would be cool for everyone to check out who's a listener of this podcast. It's basically a letter writing campaign for different cases that Amnesty International is taking on in trying to impact change in different cases. People have been wronged mostly from a human rights perspective. And I was reading through a bunch of these last night. And I'm definitely going to write some letters on these different cases on the behalf of some of these people that Amnesty International is supporting. And I just wanted to mention that because I know we have a bunch of letter writers in our midst. So this is a cool thing to send some letters to. And we will have the link in the show notes. So I'm going to have to pick this up because I think I'm going to I don't know if I'm going to get like full bore into letter writing, but something like this I can definitely get behind.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Put your nice pens and paper to good use.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. And there's some really good cases you can go read about these things. I'm actually familiar with one or two of the people in there, especially Albert Woodfox, who was I'm from Louisiana and the huge penitentiary penitentiary. There is Angola, which is famous for lots of not good reasons. And that was one that really struck a chord with me. So check this out. We'll have the link in the show notes for y'all to send some letters to and, you know, take a look at some of these cases and see if we can impact some change ourselves. Right.

Myke Hurley: Should we take our final break?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe something we can write these letters with.

Karis Customs Pens

Myke Hurley: You bet. This week's episode is brought to you by Karis Customs. Karis Customs, you know who they are. They're an awesome pen maker based in Mesa, Arizona, and all of their stuff is made in the U.S. of A, which is something they are super proud of. This is something that they take very seriously. These guys make a whole range of awesome pens like the Render K, the Ink, the Bolt, the Retract, and the all new EDK and Fountain K. And these newest pens feature new colors and textures not previously available on any of their other pens. And their Fountain pens now use nibs manufactured by Peter Bock, known for their quality. These products, Bock nibs, you can say this, Brad, right? Bock nibs are awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they are. They're legitimately awesome. I'm trying out. Dan from Karis Customs sent me the newest model ink and the newest model Fountain K. And they've been inked up. And I've been carrying them ever since he sent them to me. These nibs make a huge difference. The Schmidt nibs that they've used before, completely fine. I mean, really good nibs. Totally solid. I prefer the Bock nibs. They're a little bit firmer. So this is definitely a personal taste thing for me. They're firmer, cleaner line. I love these nibs. And I love what they've done with the slight modifications they made on the Fountain K. And the latest ink, they're two of my favorite pens I've been using these last couple months or so. I showed my wife the ink last night because she was wanting a pen to address Christmas cards with. And a green ink. And it just so happens I have the brown anodized ink loaded up with one of the Iron Gall inks from KWZ. And she really loved the pen. And then she was raving about it. Then my daughter came over. She's like, oh, can I see? And she's like, oh, this is nice. So, you know, wife tested, kid approved. All the ink.

Myke Hurley: You can choose the materials that your Karas Customs pens have that they're made of. You have aluminum, brass and copper. So you can kind of customize it with the right balance and weight. And the material that fits you perfectly. And if you go for one of the aluminum ones, they do a bunch of awesome colors as well. They're really bright, really vivid colors. They allow you to express yourself with some flair. The folks over at Karas Customs, they're really big on having a connection with their customers. This is something they're proud of. They make these pens by hand. They ship them out to everybody. They love seeing people interact with them. And they're really active on Instagram, for example. And it's a great way that you can see the products that they're working on. And that they can kind of see what you guys are excited about and interested in. And we love Karas Customs. They're a big part of the community. We love Dan Bishop. He's always in the chat room. And we've had him on the show a bunch of times. Our friends over at Karas Customs are offering a fantastic 15% off for listeners of The Pen Addict. If you use the code PENADDICT, you want to make sure that you add that when you're at the shopping cart before checkout. This offer is good from December 1st to January 1st. So it's still great for last minute gifts and also to buy a little gift for yourself. Maybe if you don't get what you want this holiday season because it goes all the way up to January 1st. The holidays roll around, you didn't get what you wanted. You can go over to Karas Customs and get yourself a lovely new pen. Karas Customs are also offering even cheaper shipping options than before. So go and check them out. Thank you so much to Karas Customs for supporting this week's episode of The Pen Addict and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, one more thing on the Fountain K and Ink and some of their other pens. If you're not doing the mix and match materials, you're not doing it right. So you've got to get like the aluminum barrel with the brass section or the copper section or the brass barrel with the copper section or just something to really, you know, pimp out your Karas Customs pen and really make it unique and make it your own. So I love having those kind of two-tone looks. I think the three Karas Customs pens I use the most are all two-tone different material pens. So they're awesome.

Myke Hurley: So I wanted to talk about some hacks, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is interesting. I'm glad you brought this up because we've had some questions on this.

Myke Hurley: So I've been kind of hacking my iPad and my pencil a little bit with a few little things that I've been curious about. So the first is I have affixed a Leuchtturm 1917 sticky pen loop. So this is a little black pad which has an adhesive on it and then an elastic pen loop. I have fixed that to the back of my iPad. So the kind of the pen loop is just right at the edge, right?

Brad Dowdy: So it looks like it's about the size of a square reader. If you're familiar with those.

Myke Hurley: Yes, it is about that size. And then then I can slide my Apple pencil just in the little pen loop and it's right there on the edge of my iPad. So that's a new thing that I've kind of been playing around with. It's losing a little bit of stickiness on one side, but everything else, it seems to be really, really strongly covered, right? Like it's real tough on there. So I don't think it's going to come off anytime soon. I bought a couple of them, though, because I assumed that they would happen. Yeah. There is a slight downside that the smart cover of my iPad doesn't perfectly attach when I flip it around now. It kind of holds there. But if I let go, it falls down. And it's because obviously now it can't touch right directly flush to the back because the sticker is kind of, it's got a little bit of depth to it.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So it doesn't have that full magnetic connection to make it secure.

Myke Hurley: If I'm holding it, if I'm holding my iPad with the smart cover wrapped around, the top of it affixes to it, right? So it's not flopping down. But if I let go of the smart cover and continue holding the iPad, it hasn't got enough strength to support itself. That isn't a massive downside to me, considering the upside of having the pencil there all the time. I also bought a Fisher Space Pen clip.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we were thinking this might be an option for you. And what's the result?

Myke Hurley: Totally fits. Yeah. Perfect.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome.

Myke Hurley: Now, it has the same problem that the Fisher Space Pen has, but worse in that the clip doesn't really like to stay in place.

Brad Dowdy: Sure, sure.

Myke Hurley: Right. And this is an issue that the Fisher Space Pen has. But obviously this one is a lot more slippery. So it fits great and it does what I wanted it to do, which is completely stop it rolling. Right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So you prevent that weighted mechanism from getting away from you.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's just with this on, I never have to worry about it rolling away because the clip stops it. The problem I have, though, is aesthetically it doesn't look as great as I would have hoped because the clip is super small and the pencil's really large. Yeah. So it looks kind of weird. I can see that. But I've kept it on because the aluminium matches up with the aluminium on the pencil, which is fine, but the clip is just way, way, way too small.

Myke Hurley: I'm more likely to remove this than I am to remove the pen loop. So the pen loop is really cool and it kind of stays out of the way and the downsides are not that large, but I kind of don't really like the way the space pen clip looks, to be honest.

Brad Dowdy: So the pen loop will hold the Apple Pencil without the clip? It'll slide in there and it'll hold it fine?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because it's elasticated.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so it's a solid fit on the pencil when you put it in there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I wouldn't trust the pen loop to keep anything from falling out of anything.

Apple Pencil Accessories

Brad Dowdy: Sure, sure, sure. But just in general, it's not loose.

Myke Hurley: No, no, it's perfectly fixed in there. The other issue with the pen loop is if you pull it out so the magnetic cap at the end is going to be going through the pen loop, the cap will come off.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, sure.

Myke Hurley: Whilst going through.

Brad Dowdy: Right, one direction only.

Myke Hurley: That's not hard to work out, I remember. I've also seen some sleeves that have integrated pen loops. So Hardgraft are making one and someone sent me one by a company called Bird and Bell. They're both made out of felt.

Myke Hurley: The Hardgraft one has a little loop on the side that you can put the pencil on and the Bird and Bell one has a little pocket. It has two pockets, one for the pencil and one for like maybe a little notebook or something or any other little thing you want to keep in there. You look like you could maybe fit a pen and the Apple pencil in the Bird and Bell case. Both of these are sleeves. I'm not too interested in sleeves. In all honesty, I want a case which has an integrated stand in it and has the magnets in it. You know, that's the kind of solution I'm looking for. And I've seen a couple of these types of things on Amazon that people have made, but I'm not too keen on the look of them. So I'm keeping my eye out for this, but I decided that I kind of wanted to mention these things. And I'd considered maybe writing something else for you when I get more stuff in, if I keep thinking or if anyone keeps suggesting little things for me to try out. But that's just a couple of things that I noticed.

Brad Dowdy: I think it would be good because what we learned from your first post is this is not a perspective that other people were covering as far as the Apple pencil goes. And it's funny to see now the considerations for a writing utensil in different, you know, carrying formats, you know, like the hard graph, like these cases that you were showing, right? It's like what we look for in a notebook cover, you know, or a folio, something like that. And they're, you know, trying to solve these problems, you know, now for the technological devices like iPads and Apple pencils. I think it's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no doubt. And also like, you know, saying about that post, we haven't recorded since then. That did quite well.

Brad Dowdy: Oh my God. That post. So Myke Hurley is a famous podcaster, but he's also a famous writer now. His post on the Apple pencil review on the pen addict was on tech meme, was on the loop. It was, it was everywhere. It, you, you knocked that one out of the park and I appreciate you letting me publish that.

Myke Hurley: I think one of my favorites though was Steven Sanofsky tweeted it. And if you don't know who he is, he was kind of responsible for the design and implementation of Windows 8. He ran the Windows team. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You had to explain this to me. You were like, oh my God, look at this. And I'm like, I have no idea who that is.

Myke Hurley: Most people that I sent that link to didn't know who he was. And then I would explain it. Like even like people that I would have expected to know, because it's just like, he got fired by Microsoft because Windows 8 was hated by so many people because it was so different. But, but that's not what I am fussed about, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But yeah, it was super cool. Well, because it wasn't in his bio, so I couldn't figure out who he was.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. He works at, he's a venture capitalist now. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's great. But the, the article was universally loved and I appreciate you doing that. And anything you want to, you know, do any continuation on accessories for, for the accessory, you know, I think would do really well as well because you, you bring, definitely bring a different perspective into that type of product for, for basically other, you know, technology nerds that are, are not into like, you know, what should a pencil feel like kind of thing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. What, what I kept seeing, uh, kind of around the web as like a headline of people linking to it was like the pen guy reviews the pencil.

Brad Dowdy: It was over and over. It was, it was some, some form of that, of that comment. And, um, and they were all positive too, which was very odd, you know, no one like, you know, there was, there was no nastiness going around, which was a good thing. Not that you would expect that, but I'm just saying, you know, sometimes you get the snarky comments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was good all around good. And, uh, yeah, the pen addict had like double traffic, uh, like two days in a row from that, um, just from that. So, uh, you're the, you're the man.

Myke Hurley: Woohoo.

Omas Pen

Myke Hurley: That feels good. I gotta say. Just, uh, flexing my right muscles. I know. Talking about the pen addict, there was one thing I wanted to, one last thing I want to talk to you about today. Okay. Uh, I read a review on your site today of the Omas. Oh my word. Milior. Yeah. Italiana.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Art. And you got to add the X extra art at the end. Yeah. Rough name.

Myke Hurley: Well, why is it two arts? I mean, I'm sure one is the art day.

Brad Dowdy: Cause the arte italiana is one thing and then the art is a separate thing.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So you, you reviewed this today. Um, I've heard of Omas before. Um, I've mainly have seen Omas at pen shows. Uh, we don't really talk about Omas too much. Um, like I think I remember asking you one at the Atlanta show, uh, is Omas a thing? Cause like I didn't really know much about them. Um, uh, you, I have not seen as glowing a review for a pen in a long time from you as you have given this pen. Uh, and I want to read a couple of all quotes from your review. Okay. So this is bearing in mind, everybody, this pen costs $680. Okay. So this is quote number one. The majority of the time you can get a comparable writing experience of a lower priced option and the different, and the price difference lies in unique design or rare materials used to make that pen. That's you talking about high value pens in general. And then you go on to say other times the overall experience is so exceptional that the price is justified comparatively. This is one of those times. Then you go on to say, this is the best gold nib I have ever used. And the 2016 fountain pen show season kicks off soon. And a cotton resin barrel or mass will be at all near the top of my shopping list.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I like this pen.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you did.

Brad Dowdy: Didn't you? Um, so we talk a lot about price, right? And that's where a lot of the conversation, you know, revolves around in pens price versus value. And how do you justify, how could someone in their right mind justify spending X amount of dollars on a pen? You know, for some people that's $10 for some people that's a thousand dollars, you know, there's a whole range. And, you know, kind of when people are getting into fountain pens and they want to, you know, step up from say a Lamy Safari or Pilot Metropolitan, you know, and they're kind of getting into a Twisby and then it's time to get into gold nibs and you can get some awesome writing gold nib pens from Pilot and from Lamy for, you know, $125, $150. That's an awesome price range for really, really great products. So when you start getting above that into like the three and $400, then you're paying, you're starting to pay for a little, a few different things, either some design, um, you know, that's taken some extra engineering or different materials that the pens made from that's, you know, not cheap or, you know, just like a straightforward molded plastic or something like that. And then, you know, even further up the, up the price chain, you start getting into, you know, rare materials, you know, inlays and all kinds of different things. So, I mean, this is like, we could talk for months about this, that topic, but what happens with some of these pens and it happened before to me with Nakaya is when you pick it up and you feel it and you write with it, you realize it's different. And that's hard to put down on paper in a written word to explain for me to explain that to you is a very hard thing to do.

Brad Dowdy: And when it's something like this, Omos, you know, you get that first like jolt of energy when you get it. It's like, wow, this is amazing. And then what happens is, you know, you've written with it for a couple of days, you set it down and you write with something else. You realize you've missed writing with the Omos. So you pick it up again. And then you have six pens inked up.

Brad Dowdy: And you switch to another one for a day. But the Omos is sitting there inked up too. And then the next day you reach for the Omos again, instead of one of the five other pens. And then all of a sudden you're cleaning out those five other pens. And the only one left inked up is the Omos. And every day you miss not writing with this pen. And that's how you know, at least for me, this is, you know, definitely a personal thing. It's not for everybody. You know, everyone will have their own experience. That's when you know that there's something special kind of going on with a product. This could be, you know, for any product, right? Any product that we love. You get this attachment to it that you just can't put down in, you know, just a basic review. But there's this feeling of uniqueness and feel and how it fits, like, your personal experience. Like, the way I write. What looks good to me. How it feels. All of these things. It ticked off all these things on my personal list for something I like in a fountain pen.

Brad Dowdy: The nib is something else. I've never used a nib like this. It feels different. And that's even harder to explain than explaining, you know, how much I love a $680 fountain pen. It's just one of those things you have to use. And I don't know what it is about the nib that made it so good. A lot of large gold nibs are too soft for me. I like firm nibs, which is why I'm such a huge fan of steel nibs, right? Like the Bach that, you know, Karis Custom uses or the Jovo that, you know, Twisby uses. I love a firm steel nib. And this large gold nib, I won't say it's firm, but it's, like, just right. But it's, there's not a lot of flex to it, but it's just soft enough. The line is super clean.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know that I've felt a smoother writing pen than this one, but I don't like totally glassy smooth. You know, I like a little bit of feedback. Everything about this pen was just, like, right on. I don't, you know, you kind of get at a loss for words. I used so many, like, superlatives, and it was almost like I felt like it was a bad review because I was fawning over it too much. But I couldn't cut that stuff out either when I was going back and editing it. I was like, well, I don't know how to explain how different this is from any other pen that I've tried. And it's really, really hard to do that in a good manner. So it basically boiled down to, I think I had this pen for about two months, and I took a while to review it because I wanted to spend some time with it. And I just became attached to it.

Brad Dowdy: And that's how I knew it was, like, something special. And it was a really, really good pen and something that fits me and my style perfectly. Just kind of everything about it really, really spoke to me. The design, the color, the fit, feel, finish, everything.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a pretty darn good pen. So, you know, actually I love this color. This was a teal green one. They have some other colors as well. So I'm going to be keeping my eyes peeled and see, you know, next year might be, I might add one of these to the collection. It's a really, really, really good pen.

Myke Hurley: You are a fan. I'm a fan. To say the least.

Brad Dowdy: I'm a fan. And I actually got, they sent me, Kenro Industries has sent me some pens to review. They sent me, actually sent me four Omos pens. And I sent one to Susan to review, which she reviewed the yellow cocktail, Ogiebo cocktail, which is an awesome pen. And then Jeff has one that he's got a review coming up. You're going to like that one. You're going to like that one too. I've been seriously impressed with the quality and design and style of these Omos pens that they've let me borrow to review. Seriously, seriously impressed with this, with Omos as a brand, if you will. Something I did not know that I would be into. And, you know, until you get to try it. That's why we talk about the pen shows so much. Right. Because asking people to spend all kinds of money without trying products, you know, that's difficult. Especially this level of dollar, if you will. And that's why we rave about pen shows so much. Even if you're not going to purchase, you can at least go and try this, you know, any pen that you have your eyes on. And that way, you know, down the line, whenever it comes around to it, if you're wanting to get that pen, you'll have had the opportunity to test it out.

Myke Hurley: Maybe I'll just stay away from them. Maybe that's a better thing for me, huh?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I would, you know, this is one I'd like other people to try just to kind of get their opinions on. Like people who I know what their taste is like, like yourself. What would you say about this pen? You know, it'd be interesting to get that kind of feedback. Because that's the other thing that's hard, right? Because, you know, it's a subjective review, right? I mean, it's my opinion personally. You know, it's not a generic review. There's personal feelings in, you know, things that go into these type of reviews. So, you know, I try to keep, you know, a lot of things as much as I can, you know, in the general sense. But a pen like this, you know, there's more of an attachment than just, you know, generalities.

Myke Hurley: Maybe I'll have to try it out on a pen show or something.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yeah. There will definitely be some in Atlanta.

Myke Hurley: There you go. All right. I think that about wraps up this week's episode. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 184. And whilst you're there, consider becoming a RelayFM member and supporting this show. We would love that. It would mean a lot to us. You can also support this show, of course, by supporting our fine sponsors. The great people at Harry's, Uni, and Karis Customs. Thank you so much to them for helping sponsor this week's episode. That means a lot. And I want to thank you all for listening. As always, if you want to find Brad online, he's over at penaddict.com and knock.co. He is at Dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, and penaddict on Instagram. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E on both. Thank you so much for listening. As I said again, I'll be back next time. Say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.