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Transcript
That's just good. Yeah.
Hello, and welcome to episode 27 of the erasable Podcast. Tonight we're talking about the topic of journaling in pencil. Or if you want to zoom out a little bit, we might be talking more about just the permanence of pencil in general, but I'd like to introduce my co hosts, which are two of my favorite pencil pals that I've been saving. That especially bad pun for Johnny Gamber and Andy Welfle. Guys, how's it going?
Very good.
Fantastic.
How are you, Tim?
I'm doing okay. I am doing okay.
Cool.
Tonight.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's been a long day. We were in Georgia all weekend.
Oh.
And we're in Georgia for, like, a long weekend. Columbus, Georgia.
Cool.
Which is, like, south of Atlanta. So we're down there for a long weekend, which was a lot of fun toddler birthday party, but also super exhausting toddler birthday party.
It is a toddler birthday party.
Yeah. Yeah. But we're back, and it was. It was a good weekend. I got good with staples, which was super exotic for me.
They have those Ampad writing tab wrote writing pads that I like.
I didn't even think to look. Look at the paper. I just went straight to the pencils and then bailed as soon as I didn't find anything I liked. But.
Yeah. Which apparently they made a. Made an appearance in one of the Daredevil. Daredevil episodes. Somebody posted in the group a picture of that Ampad writing thing in there. Yeah.
Yeah. I went in there and I didn't find anything that interesting. I was tempted to buy some Noricas because they have, like, on sale. It was like 650 for whatever's like a 36 pack. It was one of those things where, like, impulse made me want to buy it, but then at the same time, I was like, I'm never going to use these, so I'm not going to do it. I didn't buy them, but they did have a couple things that were interesting that I didn't buy. They had the colorful Ticonderoga pack, which was like an expanded version of the Target one. So it had, like, orange and the two shades of purple in there. It wasn't like five shades of pink and then yellow.
Yeah.
They also had box 0.5 and 3, which I thought was kind of cool because I'd never seen those in a store, like, around here. So they had, like, the. The medium and the hard Ticonderogas, but they didn't have the number ones, which I probably would have bought if I would have found those.
But yeah, I'm always the guy that goes through all the boxes thinking this one, staples might be different.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like I said, tonight we're talking about the permanence of pencils and journaling in pencil, a topic that we've been kind of wanting to talk about for a long time. But before we get that, let's get through our standard sections and let's talk about our tools of the trade. And Johnny, why don't you kick it off?
I am drinking beer that I just opened up tonight that I've never tried before from Yards Brewing Company in Philly, which is pretty close to here, called Love Stout, which has one of the coolest logos I've ever seen. It's a heart with a knife through it and it's one of those stouts that doesn't taste. I don't know, not the Imperial stout, but not an Irish stout. It's just a really smooth sort of chocolaty stout. It's really good. And I'm writing with our pencil of the week, the Mitsubishi 9850, in a notebook that I can't describe because Tim hasn't seen his yet called show notes. But seriously, awesome.
Well, I figured probably next week Tim should get his package and we can talk about it more. But it's from Harrison Skelf, who is the future hands on podcast person. And he sent us these fun little things.
So this is one of the coolest little homemade presents I've ever seen. Love it.
That's really cool. I am excited.
Yeah. How about you, Andy?
Well, I am drinking a delicious. It's a drink called mountain goat blood. It's not a cocktail, it's actual plasma. Actual mountain goat blood?
Yeah. You can only drink it in a flagon.
Yeah, it's a flagon made from a mountain goat horn, so it's useful. Tim sent me the blood from the mountains of Tennessee. Do they have mountain goats in Tennessee?
Of course they do. Never seen one, but sure, yeah, they definitely do.
There's one right there.
Hi, mountain goat.
Does it improve your climbing ability?
My climbing? Just like by being near it.
No, I mean drinking. The mountain goat blows.
Oh, yeah, I definitely.
You take on its powers.
No, no, it actually makes it worse.
You fall a lot.
It's really hard to climb mountains with diarrhea.
And that's what comes from ungloblic. Yeah, I'm actually drinking. I'm actually drinking a weird grapefruit beer that people who I live with. I won't be a stereotypical person and be like, my wife bought this, but. Well, my wife bought this. It's a grapefruit beer made by Schofferhofer. It's a Hefeweizen. It's actually, it's kind of weird. Like we weren't sure if it was going to be good. Like Johnny, you mentioned who makes one that you like?
Shiner.
Shiner, yeah. Shiner has a good dry one. But this is like somebody took beer and added grapefruit juice to it. So it's kind of sweet and weird.
Oh, is it grapefruit soda like a Radler style beer?
Yeah, something like that with something in there. It's just a little too like. The trouble is it's like you can taste the beer and you can taste the grapefruit juice, but it's like, I wish it was grapefruit tinted beer.
Basically.
Yeah, the shiner's real beer. Yeah, grapefruit juice.
So I'm drinking that and I am writing with. I just had lunch yesterday with Elaine from Jetpens. She drove up to San Mateo and she brought me those green Mitsubishi 9000s, the ones that say on the back, made by elaborate process which is the best slogan written on a pencil since Half the pressure, twice the speed. I think it's pretty great. So I'm writing with that. It's. It's pretty good. It's. This particular one is an hb, but I got a couple in sizes or in hardness is softer. But yeah, this, this writes. I know that there was some discussion about whether or not it's a uni because it doesn't actually say it on it. So I would go so far as to say this doesn't write as well as like the maroon unis, but it does write very nicely and I like it a lot. So I'm writing with that in my field notes. Tim, how about you?
I am drinking a weak tincture made of ground up grape Pez and tepid water.
Tincture.
Tincture. Learn something every day.
Is that like a T?
Something like. You tell me, Johnny.
I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do that.
I am actually drinking a Simpler Times lager from Trader Joe's.
That's a good name like that.
Yeah, it is. We stop there and it's their house beer. It's like $3.99, a six pack.
Do you like it better or worse than the Name Tag beer?
I have not had the Name Tag beer. Is that the one that they sell at Trader Joe's? Too.
Yeah, that's like the other one. That's like, their house beer.
This is the only one I've ever had, actually, so this is all I can speak for. And, I mean, I like it. The one thing that is sort of appealing about it is that it's $3.99 six pack and it's 6.2% alcohol by value, so more for your money. Yep. And actually, I had a funny story from a friend who lives in. Who went to school in Knoxville, and he said that when the fraternities at University of Tennessee found out, like, the Trader Joe's had opened up and that they had this, they, like, came out and, like, bought all their stock of simpler times for, like, months. And, like, nobody could buy it because they were buying all this 6.2% cheap beer.
Wow.
It's pretty good. It's a little caramelly, like, in a bad way. Yeah, but it's cheap. Does the trick. And I'm writing with a general's layout pencil, so I hadn't done that in a while. And so I was deciding to get back into it. I had missed them, so.
Yeah.
All right, well, how about Pencil of the Week? So this week we are. We decided to talk about the Mitsubishi 9850HB, which is not exactly, like, a easy pencil to get a hold of. The one place I know of is Jetpens, and that's where. That's where I got mine. It was from Jetpens. Where did you guys get yours?
I. I'm trying to remember where it came from. And honestly, I feel like the one that I have came from either you or Johnny Tim.
But so ultimately it wasn't me because I've only had two.
So, Johnny, have you. Did you send me.
I have both of them here.
I don't think so. I've only had one and I lost it until today, and I have no idea where I got it.
I get that.
I also put them in our houses.
It's a pencil Gremlin, but it's like a reverse pencil thief.
I love the Pencil Gremlin.
I woke up to a vintage black thing on my pillow.
It's like a horse heading.
Thank you, Pencil gremlin.
Yeah, he's like Santa Claus. It's like a weird German fairy tale. I could have gotten it. I could have gotten it from Jetpens or I could have gotten it from Ido. They have a lot of the Mitsubi. This is the one. Yeah. I could have gotten from. From Mido, too. I Just can't remember. I need to, like, to keep better track of, like, where my stock comes from and where, like, I used to keep in my Baron fig. I used to keep a, like, sort of like an inbox, outbox record when I wouldn't, like, sent somebody something and when I received something, but I gave that up because I'm bad.
Yeah. I don't know. I got mine from Jetpens. That's the only place, like, when you search it online, that's the only place you can get them from. And they're not for being a pretty solid, nice pencil. They're not very expensive. I think they're a dollar apiece. I haven't been able to find them as a. To buy them by the dozen. I think on Amazon you can do it, but it's like $18 plus shipping. And it looks on Amazon like it's straight from. From Mitsubishi. But I mean, I could be wrong. But on Jetpens, they're a dollar apiece, so they're pretty. Pretty reasonable.
Yeah.
Yeah. Johnny, what do you think about it? Why don't you start us out?
Well, I think the opposite of you in some ways, because I think a dollar is a lot for this pencil. It's kind of meh. It's very pretty, but I feel like the point wears out for how not dark it is. And the eraser does a good job, but it wears out really quickly. I tested it today, and it looks like someone took a bite out of it.
Boo.
But I mean, it's a nice pencil. If it was. If this was up against a Dixon, I'd be like, this is a really good pencil. But when they're hard to get and they're a dollar, I want them to be a little more. Wow.
I can combine that, though.
I'm gonna say B minus, but that's because I really like the finish.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about you, Andy?
I think it's. Yeah. Pretty solid performer. I really like the high unis when it comes to Mitsubishi, so I feel like I sort of compare everything against them. I'm kind of doing that to this green pencil too. But I. First of all, I like eraser pencils, so I like the fact that it has an eraser even. So I would give it maybe a little bit higher than Johnny goes, maybe like an A because of that. And yeah, I just like the fact that there's an eraser and it seems pretty solidly on there. Like, that ferrule is pretty. Pretty nice. And like, you know, some ferrules just seem Weak and like it's going to fall. Like it kind of rocks a little bit. It might fall off. That one's pretty good. And I, I don't know. I. I think.
I don't know.
I think maroon is kind of. I just don't like maroon that much. I guess I wish it was a different color, but. But I like it better than yellow. So.
Yeah, when I was looking for this pencil, I realized I have like five different pencils with the same color scheme.
Yeah.
Made it kind of difficult to find.
And it's weird because it's not the same maroon as like the Hyunis.
So it's a little.
It's like a little bit off. So some sort of like a weird, like, branding OCD itch inside my eye. Like my temple, like, goes off.
That's like with the Palomino hp. The blue and the orange ones have like the slightly different colored ferals.
Yep, exactly.
That drives me crazy.
And I do like, I do like when it says office use on it and that like, fun little script on the back of it.
Yeah, that is pretty cool. The grade markings on this are attractive with a little star or asterisk.
I wonder if it's like a way that the Japanese use their, like, use punctuation. But I never understand why Mitsubishi is in quotes, quotations.
I bet Mitsu And Bishi are two characters. But I could be 150% wrong on that.
But yeah, so it's in like quotes. And actually I'm noticing on my green pencil and yeah, on my. On the 9850 as well. Do you notice how the opening quotes are not correct? They're not.
Yep. They're backwards.
So. So if you were to use those just the straight up and down quotes that a lot of like web writing uses, it would be technically, those are like a hash and the quotes are backward. The opening quotes are the same as the ending quotes where they should be backwards. So that's, that's a little bit. I'm going to chalk it up to just like being quirky because it's a good pencil. Yeah. How about you, Tim? What do you think about it? Oh, you already kind of gave your thoughts?
Well, yeah, I mean, I'm sort of in. I think I'm actually in between. I think when we started talking about talking about this pencil, I was pretty excited because I love the look of it.
Yeah.
I love dark reds like Burgundies and maroon and that color scheme. So that part, it's like, visually, it's immediately appealing to me. I Love it. But once I started writing with it, I'm with Johnny, that it does wear down for as light as it is. And it actually just in general is a little lighter than I would actually. I would actually.
Johnny, stop. Stop making everybody laugh in the show notes.
I just got shown up bombed. So it tastes like mountain goat blood. Which I would know because I'm from east Tennessee, where we don't have. Where we sort of have mountains, I guess.
Yeah, East Tennessee. Yeah. You don't really.
Yeah, yeah, we have some there. There are many mountains, but. But yeah, so it's lighter. I would like. I didn't notice actually. I don't think it's maybe as much as Johnny. Just like how the tip wore down. But I think the two big pluses for this one are the color. I love the look at it look of it. And I love the eraser. I think it has a really good eraser. The eraser reminds me of like actual like high polymer eraser. Works really well. It doesn't have that like plasticky feel. It does feel like just straight rubber. So I think it works really well. If this came in a B, I would really be excited about that. But I don't think it does, you know, that's okay. Yeah. So I would. I would grade it at A. Actually a little lower than Andy. I think I'd put it at a B plus. Maybe just. I had trouble not. Not a B, but not quite like a strong B plus. So like I'll get like an 86%. I call it a B plus minus.
Thank you, Mr. Middle School Teacher.
Yeah.
Gotta be accurate.
Yeah, yeah. It's precise.
Yeah.
So. So, yeah, I think it's a solid pencil. I think I would much rather pick up a golden bear than this pencil. I think. Which is a much cheaper pencil too.
Six times less.
Yes. So, yeah, I think it's a solid pencil. It's a fun one to have. It's really pretty. But I'm almost glad I didn't buy it by the dozen because I probably wouldn't use it.
Yeah.
Enough. I have so many other pencils that I like better.
Cool. Well, we have a link to link to that pencil in the show notes in case you want to go check it out at Jetpens. And Tim, where can people go to find the show notes?
You can find the show notes@ erasable US27. All right, very good. So it seems like we collectively gave it somewhere in the B2B plus range, which I think the benefit of having all three of us doing this is that we get a very. Which is the most important thing for middle school teacher. A very accurate grade. I feel like we nailed it. I feel like it's very solid, very well rounded.
Great on the bell curve.
Yeah, exactly. Let's get into our fresh points, the beloved freshpoints. And Johnny, why don't you start us up, because you have, I think, the most exciting points.
You know what? I'm going to do that one last. Just to be mean. So I was at Lowe's today, and I guess a few weeks ago, someone in the Facebook group mentioned that Lowe's had some new pencils out that were made by Dixon. And I forgot I was just there for something else. And I went looking for their pencils, which come in a box. They're four bucks. And then I noticed a box underneath where they had open stock. Bought a couple. And the coolest thing is they're made by Dixon. They have a regular pencil, which is round, and a fat pencil, which is round. But the fat pencil is actually exactly halfway between a Ladee and a. My first Ticonderoga in width. It's just kind of bizarre. It's a fourth pencil size.
It is a real bizarre size.
Yeah. The Ferrule, I'm pretty sure is exactly the same width. I'm looking at this really closely. Or almost the same width as a. The super fat Dixon. So it kind of looks like a pencil topper. It's kind of big.
Super fat Dixon.
Yeah. They're made in China by Dixon. And, you know, they're ugly, they're blue, and they say never stop improving with lows. And a barcode that's all the way by the eraser that you'll never get rid of. But they all have a flaw in the finish. But the quality of finish is pretty good. It's nice and thick, but. And honestly, I had to go through the box to find, like, five that had decently centered cores. Because, you know, if you have a podcast, you probably do that kind of thing.
Just for example, I got a couple.
I got some to send you guys that I had to get into the mail. I didn't sharpen them yet. I didn't have a time today. But they're not cedar, but they look pretty cool. They're called finishing pencils. I don't know what that means. And they had, you know, new Dixon made blue carpenter pencils, but they were a box of 20, so I didn't buy those because I don't need 20 new carpenter pencils that I won't use. But if you're near a Lowe's, check them out. They're not made in America like the cool Home Depot ones, and they're not orange. I can imagine totally losing one of these. But, yeah, if you're there, especially if they have open stock, they were 29 cents.
Can't beat it.
Can't beat that at all.
And last week. Or not last week, two weeks ago, I got to go to New York, and I had an excellent lunch with Dr. Hans Noodleman. Some of the best Indian food I've ever had, which has kind of spoiled me for some other places in Baltimore that aren't that good. But I got to go to Kinokuniya. Am I saying that right? In the evening.
Japanese bookstore.
Yeah. I was sort of running around, like, looking for the pencils, and they didn't have a lot of pencils, but they had a lot of really cool pencil accessories. So I got some really cool. I don't know how to describe them. They're a pencil cap, but they're really fat, and they're triangular on the outside, and they're sparkly and come in a lot of colors. So pretty cool. I got a pack for you guys because they're heavy. They look like you could hurt somebody with them. What else do they have there? I found hello Kitty pencil caps for Charlotte, like, in the corner. That was pretty cool. They had a lot of cool notebooks. But I was sort of pressed for time, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time there. But the highlight of my new New York trip was that I got to go to CW Pencil Enterprise, which is awesome.
That's so cool.
So I met Dr. Hans at the train station, and then we went down there, and then John from the Twist Bullet Pencil came by. And also one of our listeners, Glenn, who actually lives around here, he came by. So we were all in the store for a long time, chatting and having a lot of fun. So that combined with the fact that I spent the whole train ride being like, don't spend too much money, means that I didn't really buy that many pencils. So I'm kind of disappointed myself. I also forgot to use the pencil machine, the little vending machine.
Disappointed in you, too, Johnny.
I'm just gonna say that sucks. I had a roll of quarters in my. Let's vote.
All who think Johnny should be out of the podcast, just raise your hand.
Oh, I can't do that.
I'm sitting here crying.
We'll just call it strike one.
Okay. Yeah.
Can I erase that? Strike. If I brought you guys something cool, you should.
Sure, yeah. We'll call it strike one. Like half strike point five.
Strike point five. Yeah.
But until I walked up and walked in, I was still afraid that it was some sort of elaborate joke. I don't know. It doesn't seem real that there's a pencil store in Manhattan. Yeah.
I saw this article in National Geographic a long time ago about. I think it was in South America. It was either in South America or it might have been in, like, Southeast Asia. One of those two. I mix those up all the time. But it's the certain, like, pilgrimage that people do where the entire way from point A to point B, they walk. And then, like, for every step, they lay flat on the ground and they step up and they take a step and they lay flat and they get up. And I feel like I have to do that if I ever go there.
Oh, man, I think I wouldn't have a face anymore. Between Baltimore and here, I feel like
I have to be, like, reverential going there.
So I am going to New York on May 3rd, 3rd through the 7th, for a work trip. And I've discovered that our office in New York City is less than a mile from CW Pencils.
So I'm there, man.
I don't know when yet, but can
Tim get to my house so we can take Amtrak up?
Heck, yeah. Come on, Tim.
Two and a half hour ride.
What's the date?
May 3rd through the 7th.
Oh, man, that's gonna be impossible. That's, like, Henry's birthday. So what?
I wish I could have stayed.
And my graduation. So it's like that. That week is my graduation, and none
of those are important.
My son's birthday. Yeah.
I'll get you some personalized pencils while I'm there.
But it's a pencil shop, honey. It's a pencil shop.
Don't you understand?
You have a birthday every year.
Did everybody, all of your friends on social media channels share that Gothamist article about her with you?
Yeah, everybody keeps emailing me. There were, like, a whole bunch of articles.
Yeah, I saw it.
Stalking this kind of weird.
So there were. Yeah, there are a whole bunch of articles. And then I, like, people were sharing them with me, and I would just, like, share back and be like, oh, yeah, we interviewed her last Sunday. And they're like, what?
Why don't you listen to our podcast?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The place is so cool. And their lemon heads on the counter. Have me a big lemon heads. And they're free, which is cool. But Caroline's awesome and she pulled out the stamp machine. So I got Charlotte a dozen of three different colors pencils with her name on them. They were for her birthday, but, you know, we blabbed and gave them to her.
Anyway,
I actually just yesterday I got the rest of my tattoo off. I had it for about, oh, like a week and a half. It lasted my temporary pencil tattoo, and it finally just faded. Yeah.
Who in the sad is like a half vanished temporary tattoo besides maybe a half melted snowman?
One of those half vanished tattoo.
This is all making me feel particularly inspired to finally get a tattoo and maybe make it pencil related.
I told Katie, like, if just go
permanent if you get one.
I want to get a pencil tattoo in pencil, but I have to go get a tetanus shot first. Probably like line up a lot of my favorite pencils, just break them off in there. It'd be 3D. Pretty cool.
Just hope it doesn't swell up.
It would really. It would never fade.
So, Tim, you just blow off your graduation, blow off Henry's birthday, and come to New York and get a tattoo with us.
It makes it even better. Makes it even more.
We could sneak some blackwing lager onto Amtrak and brown bag it.
I can just throw in that it's Henry's birthday is the same as my mom's and that's Mother's Day weekend, and man.
Yeah, bring Henry.
I'm there. I'm there.
You don't need friends. You have pencils.
Yeah, actually, if you bring Henry before his birthday, he won't have to buy a ticket on Amtrak on his birthday.
Yeah, this is just like a checkmate argument you guys are making right now.
Yeah, it's done. Tell your wife. Give her the itinerary. Yeah, but the shop is so awesome. And I don't know how to describe it. It's all over the Internet, you know, it's all over Instagram. And everyone that goes there is taking a lot of photos and posting them, which I also forgot to do.
Take a lot of photos.
But it's so cool. Every pencil you can think of things, you know.
Let's call strike one again.
Yeah, we're back to strike one.
Aw, man,
I'm sorry I'm being hard on you, Johnny.
Don't worry, they wear out at the end of each episode. So you'll be back to strike zero next time.
There you go. I'm wiping my brow. Just play it safe the rest of the episode.
Yeah, Just don't say a word.
I lost a lot of sleep before that and I didn't sleep well that night. And I was sort of staying in New York. Like, I want to open my pencils, but I'm so tired and have a really early train in the morning.
Did you stay the night up in New York?
Yeah, actually, I went to the first Moleskine store in the US which is a kiosk that you can go inside of. And it was kind of lame. Was it Columbus Circle? It was bizarre. I also walked up there from downtown. I forgot how far that is. I was sore. But yeah, if you're in New York, even if you hate pencils, I mean, I don't know why you'd be listening to this if you hate pencils, but totally go there.
You made it to minute 45 and you hate pencils.
They're all. They're all masochists.
They thought it was code for something.
If you're in the Venn diagram of people who like pain and hate pencils, then you're listening to this podcast.
Everything that you buy there, Caroline wraps up in very pretty yellow paper with black and white baker's twine.
It's very cool.
I bought my kids that children's book that is on above the desk. All of the photos that you see called the Pencil, which is actually a cool book, but I think she mentioned before there's a desk there. And when you open it, every pencil that she sells is in there. So you can draw on it. I draw on the Baron fig on the desk and write with it.
And that's so cool.
Test them out before you buy them or write your co host a note bragging that you're there.
She has such a. Just a great sense of style. And I think that really helps because she. It's not only is like, do they have pencils, but they also have like, it's just a. Looks like a cool, neat place to be in.
Yeah. It's got really nice lighting. Yeah, like, very sunny.
The package I got from her, I ordered some pencils on pencil day. And like, they just. They just arrived beautifully. They were like in these. These really nice yellow, like, envelopes. And I ordered a bunch of those, like, little erasers. And yeah, they're just a cool. Yeah, they're smaller than I thought they would be.
So.
So I bet it looked cool when she had the big jar of them.
Yeah. Part of the reason I haven't dug into my bag is because it's so pretty. Yeah. And the bag is handwritten in pencil with the CW logo or the CWPE logo. Yeah, really awesome. That's awesome. And the lemon heads, I have to repeat again. It goes with the yellow and lemon heads are delicious. Absolutely.
I love lemon heads.
I can feel my teeth rotting when. But I love them. Yeah.
Isn't it great?
Yeah. Yeah.
And meeting some folks that we. We know online in person was very cool. So. Yeah. Dr. Hans is like one of the nicest guys ever and John Fontaine's just
kind of a jerk.
No. I was sort of hanging out with Dr. Hans all day.
Yeah.
Until I realized it was 4:00 and I had to run. But yeah, that's cool.
Is Dr.
I had a good time.
Yeah. Is that his real name? No.
So.
Okay.
I just had.
No. I was really disappointed. That's not his real name.
I just had an aha moment. So there isn't a pencil convention of sorts. And we definitely need to base it around CW Pencils. I think that's like the natural things. We need to find like a bar close to CW Pencils and do like a. Our own, like the Erasable Pencil Convention like every year or every other year.
Well, you know, the American Pencil Collector Society does a biannual like once every two years, like convention.
Yeah. It sounds boring, though.
Yeah, it's.
You said it, I didn't say it.
It's a lot of.
Sorry.
It's a lot of collecting and because it's a collector society and it's a lot of. Like they do pens as well, but.
Yeah.
Some sort of a pencil.
I just want to hang out with our group members.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So my last point was that the. The. My membership is up for renewal. So I don't know if folks are members of the Pencil Collection Society, but What is it? $10.
$10 a year? Yep.
You get a cool. You know, you get a newsletter. It's pretty awesome. I enjoy reading that.
I just got mine. Newsletter today. I need to renew re up my membership. You know, they're looking for a new secretary for the board.
Oh, yeah.
So if anybody out there wants to be a. Well, they're not making money, but a semi professional pencil volunteer. That's the way to do.
You're talking me into it.
You should do it.
We should write an article about our podcast for the newsletter.
We really should. That's a good idea.
Keep thinking of it. And I'm like, well, how do we explain it? Seems weird if we write it.
Yeah, that's true.
Get someone else to write it. Hint, hint. Somebody write the article. Send it Doug. He's super nice. He'll publish it.
That's Great.
Yeah, that's about all I have. How about you, Mr. Andy?
Well, most of my things are kind of like podcast housekeeping, but I do have something interesting. But first, stickers have been ordered and they are on their way to Johnny. And Johnny, I'm going to send you a big old spreadsheet with orders in them.
Yeah, you guys think you're getting your
stickers and Johnny is maybe someday in the next three years going to send you.
He's really close to the post office. I'll get him out pretty quickly.
Awesome. So yeah, they should be going out really soon. When they, when he sends them out, I'll make sure to email everybody to make to let you know that they're on their way. Apologies to those of you who live in another country because sometimes it can take a while towards that. I'm talking to you. The other thing is we have something really cool happening. There is a new book coming out and we may have talked about this before. Have we talked about this book before?
I think we did when it first came out in Britain.
Yeah. So it came out in the UK a while ago, but James Ward wrote it's called the Perfection of the Paperclip, Curious Tales of Invention, Accidental Genius and Stationary Obsession. I know that TJ Cosgrove has been reading it. He's been posting some pictures of it. So there is the UK version. It actually has a different name in the uk. I can't remember what it is, but it's not.
I don't remember what it is, but it was better.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the COVID was not as cool, but the name was better. So it's coming out April 21st on Amazon, I think everywhere, but especially Amazon. And we are all getting our copies that day and we want to have a book club discussion. So if you all are interested in reading along with us, there's going to be a link in show notes that is full disclosure. It's an affiliate link. If you're willing to go buy the pre order the book through our affiliate link we get a little bit of the cut. It's 20 bucks. It's $18.63, I guess for the book. And then you can get a Kindle edition for $13 though. So I was thinking about getting the Kindle edition. I was like, you know what this is about stationery. I really should have the paper version of this.
Are you usually a Kindle customer interrupting you ashamedly?
Yes, because since I moved in my space really condensed, I'm just like, holy crap, I can't I can't keep all these books anymore. So I gave a bunch of books away. I sold a bunch of books to Half Price Books and I have started buying Kindle books. I still go to the library a lot, but yeah, I generally, I'm doing Kindle stuff now. But this one I ordered in paperback especially because. Or hard to cover because it looks so cool. That cover has like this really neat, like, kaleidoscopic graphic on the COVID with like paper clips and fountain pen nibs and specifically Bic crystal caps. It looks really neat. So, yeah, so we're going to read along on the 27th, which is when we record our next episode. That's only a few days after it will arrive, but so we will, we may start talking about it, like maybe the first chapter or so, but then the one after. I hope that we're. We hope to have a really good, just good discussion about it.
This will be a page turner.
Yeah. So we should, we'll probably have something in the group just to like start some conversations and, you know, start to talk about it. Yeah. Cover that. So that's, that's exciting. I've never done one of these before and I love, I listen to Diane Rehm, the Diane Rehm show on NPR a lot. And she'll sometimes do like a book club and it's always fascinating.
Incomparable. Does good book club episodes too.
Incomparable. Has a good one. Yeah. And it's, you know, I was an English lit major, so I love discussing literature and I wouldn't go so far yet as to call this literature, but I like discussing books, so. So buy along in our show notes. We'll have a, we'll have our Amazon affiliate link. If you don't want to do that, you can Google it, find it on your own. No worries. Yeah.
And we should mention, I mean, it doesn't cost you anything extra. It's just.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah. So as far as being an affiliate link, that just means that if you go through our site, you know, we get a little kickback to let us give us some funds to help us do things that we want to do with the podcast, it doesn't cost you anything extra.
So, yeah, we're not pocketing the money and then going to Fiji and you're
running off to CW pencils and
laying down some hundos. The last thing I'll mention is I think I mentioned last week or last episode that I'm starting to try to get into index cards and just kind of explore that world and use that for organizational stuff. In the next episode of Dot Grid, I'm going to. We'll be talking about like to do lists and stuff like that. I'm definitely going to talk about index cards. June Thomas, who is a listener and if you're in the Facebook group, you'll notice she works, she writes for Slate and she, she listed the, the test scoring. The. Oh, which test scoring pencil is the Silver Musgrave? Yeah, the Musgrave test scoring pencil is like one of the Slate picks for like gear. Super cool. She, she is apparently also an index card obsessive and she has a whole bunch of them. She sent me a sampler pack and I was like, oh, she's probably going to send me like what, like three or four varieties of index cards. No, there's probably like a good 12 different kinds of index cards in here. Super cool. There's some that are really little like business card size 55 millimeters by 91 millimeters. There's some that are regular three and a half by five. There's one that's like a recycled paper. It's kind of cardboard colored. She sent me some of the dot dash cards and actually before Chase Nordinggren from the Practical Carry, which is like a, like a Facebook group about EDC stuff minus guns. Chase is awesome. He sent me a whole pack of the dot dash cards from NotCo. They're so nice. So I have somewhere in me I have a big wood clinched post brewing with comparing all of these things. But that's down the line because there's so many index cards to try out now thanks to June and to Chase. So yeah, this should be fun. So yeah, that is, that is. That are. Those are all of my fresh points. How about you, Tim?
My first one I think will have a. Some universal shout for joy in this from this one. But David Rees's show is coming back for a second season.
Yay.
So which is not going to be on. It was on Discovery, right?
I think it was on National Geographic.
National Geographic, that's right. Yeah. So Going Deep with David Rees is coming back for a second season but this time it's on Esquire tv, which apparently is a thing apparently exists but I don't know what that'll mean as far as it being available on Hulu and things like that, which hopefully it would be and I think it will be. But I know Andy, you said that Esquire TV is something that's available on Apple tv.
I'm not sure of that. There's something like one of Those men's magazines a like a channel on Apple TV. I think that's it, but I'm not 100% sure, so I'll find out and mention it sometime.
Cool. I was really excited about that. To hear that David Rees has come back for a second season. That's a show that needs to exist.
It's so good.
I feel like it's good for humans to think about things like that, to dig deep into simple tasks and to have fun.
I was somewhere where there were two people discussing David Rees and I wanted to like interject myself and be like, I got to interview him once. But I was like, I'm not that guy. I don't want to be that guy.
He should have done it.
Yeah, Hang on a second.
He just. He just cocked his gun.
Did you just put one in the chamber?
Yeah, something like that.
You don't like us, do you?
Strike three, Johnny. Just wait for strike three.
Tim, are you at my house?
Yeah, just wait and find out. The second thing I wanted to bring up, which there is a sort of a connection to it, is that there was a article on beltmag.com it's called Ballad of a Pencil Junkie. Did you guys see this?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was.
I think that is an instant classic in the canon of pencil literature. I think I loved reading it so much. And actually today while I was mowing the lawn, I used Instapaper and had Instapaper or really Siri read it to me while I was mowing the lawn because I wanted to read it again.
That's the one of the one who worked at the New Yorker, right?
Yeah. She's a copy editor for the New Yorker. And it's basically about her search for the number one pencil. Like that.
Yeah.
She couldn't understand why the number one pencil had disappeared. And she mentions David Ries, mentions all kinds of things that we're into. Mentions about rediscovering the Blackwing 602 through Palomino and going to the original launch party and all this really cool stuff. It's an awesome article, a great read. Everybody needs to check it out. Some of my favorite takeaways is one, she mentions David Rees and says that his book is one of the only successful books that could be classified under the dual category of humor and reference, which I thought was really, really awes. But my favorite takeaway from it, and I totally agree with her, is that she got used to using number one pencils because they were a little softer, held a point long enough that she could do her work and enjoy writing with them. And she describes using a number two pencil. She says, when I use a number two pencil, I feel like I have a hangover. Which I thought was just a hilarious description. I was like, I totally agree. For me, when I use a scratchy number two pencil, it's like a hangover.
Yeah. I love the idea that there's somebody who comes around every morning with like, a tray of fresh sharpened pencils and that you can just, like, you know, get ready for your day and pick up your pencils and get started.
Yeah, there's. She said she would grab a. Grab a sheath of them.
There's a quiver that.
She said she would grab a quiver of pencils.
There's a woman who worked at the New Yorker who wrote there. I can't remember. She wrote. There was also a copy editor, Nancy Franklin, and she. When I wrote for pencil things, she emailed me about something and we kind of talked back and forth, and she said that the New Yorker used to stock. Yeah, Blackwing Palomino black. Or not Palomino black wings, but Eberhard Faber black wings. And she still had, like, a box that she had squirreled away from there when they were starting to become really popular. So. Yeah, that's. That's so cool. I would love to have been off a fly on that wall back in that day.
Yeah. So the article is actually an excerpt from a book called, I think it's between you and me, something about a comma.
Oh, Confessions of a comma Queen.
Yeah, that's Confessions of a comma queen. So kind of the sassy title kind of doesn't do justice to the tone of what you read. So I think it's a really, really well written and really fun to read. Talks about going to the pencil sharpener museum searching for number one pencils and getting a gross of number one pencils from Dixon that some. She said a secret admirer sent her, that she had like a horrible experience. And then she interacts with Dixon about it. And it's just kind of this awesome saga of pencil stuff.
So we're just like, yeah, that's normal. You just call Dixon if you have a bad experience. And a lot of people like, whoa, she's just taking the time to talk to pencil people.
Yeah, it was fun to listen to Siri try to just try to pronounce Berlsheimer. So I will figure that out.
I wonder if she listens to the podcast.
Siri? Siri, are you there?
No, not Siri. Mary. Mary Norris.
Yeah, yeah, it seems like she's been. She was writing at New Yorker quite a while ago, right?
Yeah.
So I don't know. I hope so. That'd be really flattering and awesome because she's like. She's definitely. We can get the one of us chant going for. For her.
Mary, if you're listening, let us know. And we want to have you on the show.
Yes, please, please, please. So next one is. Just a quick one is I got my order from CW Pencils, and thanks to Caroline Weaver, I have officially assembled my John Steinbeck pencil triumvirate, as I'm calling it, that I posted about on the blog, which was that I've been trying to do for a couple years now. I was trying to get together an original pack of the kind of three pencils that are associated with John Steinbeck, which are the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602, the IBM Electrographic, and the Mongol 480 in round. So thanks to Caroline having the IBM Electrographic, which is an awesome pencil, I now have that. It's a. It's a little. A little off. I talked about this on the post that I didn't quite get it right because the. I have yet to be able to find a. An actual Eberhard Faber round Mongol, which is the one that Steinbeck liked a whole lot. I have a Faber Castell round 480 Mongol, so. So it's actually like an 80s version. And he would have used, of course, like a 60s or 50s version or whatever it was. So not exactly right. But I think it's close enough. Yeah, I think so too. I have an Eberhard Weber Mongol and I actually got a Mongol 2B from Caroline Weaver. That's uncapped. Really awesome pencil. But it's hexagonal. It's not exactly the same. So I was really excited to get that little collection together. It's my own little mini collection. I want to put together some sort of sweet shrine. I need to get like Mike Dudek to make me a three pencil holder that's like permanent. Permanent just for those three to like put them on a shelf and display them. Yeah, I might have to talk them into that.
Get him put into like Lucite or something like that.
Yeah, just get like a sweet walnut 3 pencil. Like they can lay them all like vertical, like step them up one after the other.
That would be really awesome, depending on the weather. Yeah, he did.
Yeah, it's wet today.
He probably would have had the Mongols.
My last point, and I know you two are going to have something to say about this because I am so excited and so curious. When we've talked about the KUM long point sharpener, the two part long point sharpener, we've talked several times about how one of the big problems with that is that it's made of plastic. If there were a metal one it would be amazing because the blade wouldn't lose its. I don't know if you call it integrity or whatever. It's like it wouldn't have trouble being placed in the correct spot cause lead to break because the metal would hold it better. So I know we were kind of calling for that a long time ago, but I'm sure it had been in the works for a really long time. And they finally come out with a pencil sharpener called the KUM masterpiece. Which is not only a metal two point long or a two hole long point sharpener, two stage whatever you want to call it, but it also, if I'm correct, it actually makes a longer point.
Wow.
Is that. Is that right?
Yeah. And you could slide the plastic over and make an indefinite point.
Yeah. On this link, on this link you have. They have a. They have a picture that's. Holy crap. Did you see what this pencil is in this picture?
I am on my way.
Yeah.
So the link in the show notes, there's a link to kum.net to show off the masterpiece which is frankly not at all a pretentious name.
Is it a there foil wrapped hello Kitty? I'm not there yet.
No, it's. So when you go. When you go to that page there's this like gold pencil and you scroll down and they. It shows you the different lengths.
Yeah.
There's like a gold co branded pencil with palomino.
What?
Okay.
For a little while. Didn't they with the. I don't think it erased or a big fatty racer cap type thing.
I don't remember these.
That is beautiful, man.
We may have to pull some strings and see if we can get some Charles. Gosh.
That's awesome.
He doesn't listen to this show. No, he doesn't. No, he does.
Yes he does. While walking his dog. It's just really sweet.
Yeah. Advantage dog. She's very sweet. Yeah, these are cool. I don't remember these at all.
Golden pencil.
Yeah. Anyhow, that's cool. So the link to that is in show notes.
Yeah. And it is at this point as far as I can tell, it's only available through KUM like through their website, kum.net in Europe. Europe. Yeah. And so you have to pay you have to order it from Europe. It's in euros. You have to get it
converted.
That's the term I'm looking for. Kept wanting to say translated. So it's nine something euro. So what does that come out to? Like 12, 13 bucks?
Yeah, that's kind of a laughter wedge sharpener. That's just made of magnesium.
Yeah. But man, I'd pay it for it.
Oh yeah, definitely. I want three of these things.
Yeah.
Yeah. This is what I want in my, my pencil case. Like permanently like the one I carry with me. Because the, you know, the, the bigger palomino one is awesome but it's kind of bulky, you know, just takes up a lot of room. So I'd like a. I love a smaller one. So want, want, want, want, want, want all of you people on the Facebook group who are in Europe and posting pictures of that just makes me happy for you and sad for me. So. Because they are pretty awesome. So I look forward. I can't wait till I'm sure they'll start showing up and in the States soon. So.
Yeah, Caroline's trying to get them at the store. She said she's having trouble. Yeah, they're not selling them here yet.
She'll find a way. Yeah.
And they're pretty. They're very new. So I mean surely they like. It'll kind of increase the further they go once they get a sense for the demand for them.
Yeah.
Which I think they will not have any trouble spelling them.
So.
Yeah. So that's all I've got. So what do you guys say we go into the main topic?
Absolutely.
Well, tonight we are talking about journaling in pencil. Actually, I'm going to pause. Did you guys need to like take a pee break or anything?
I could use one.
Yeah.
If I'm not the only one.
Alright, so now onto our main topic. So this week we are getting into something that we've been wanting to talk about for a while which is the idea that pencils are not they. We need to break them from their stigma of being temporary. Pencils are temporary only in that they are erasable. So they are, as we said in
our T shirt from last year, pencils are forever.
Like the Arrested Development moment. Hey, that's the name of the show that they are. They're not temporary unless they are attacked by an eraser. So that actually journaling in pencil and doing long term things in pencil is actually a good idea. And that's what we wanted to talk about. And just talk about how we think about journaling in pencil personally, and then just even like philosophically, like, what do we think about this, what ideas do we have, what kinds of things work for us, why is this a good idea, etc. So I think as far as how to start this conversation out, I think we should start by talking about, maybe each of us talk about what's your favorite combination, you know, for journaling and maybe. And maybe even. And that can be general. It doesn't have to be a specific pencil, but like general, but also what kind of journaling you do. And I'm going to look up the questions we got. Someone did ask that question, which I thought was a really good, great question. Just like, what kind of journaling do you do? Because it's not all journaling is the same. It's not all. Dear Diary, you know, there are lots of kinds of journaling.
So
who wants to. Anybody want to start us out?
Sure. I first want to talk about Dr. Hans Noodleman's post on Facebook. Did you guys see this? So I posted the question, just if. Do you have any questions about. About journaling with pencil? And Dr. Hans, he asks, do you tend to use harder pencils for journaling to cut down or sharpening breaks? Do the sharpen. Sharpening breaks interrupt the flow of writing or provide welcome moments of reflection? If you journal in bed, do you get up to sharpen or leave the shavings where they fall, to fall where they may. AKA Going Hamster. And then John Campion says, I'm not sure I have anything to add, but Going Hamster should be the episode title. So I would like to propose to you guys. Going Hamster.
Oh, yeah, I think, I think that has to at least be a subtitle.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's pretty fantastic. That's pretty great.
Going Hamster.
No, I can, I can actually in real life start if you want. Going here. Like it?
Yeah.
I generally like, I'm not doing a whole lot of journaling. Just like every once in a while, if I have something to work out, I'll do it in a field notes book. And I generally maybe will do it for a page or a spread. And I've just kind of discovered that Shelter woods and America the Beautiful are my favorite pocket notebooks for journaling. And I think that's because they both have the same kind of paper, like the wide ruled kind of thick paper. That's really nice. And I just, it's just really smooth and I like it. But not so smooth as to be slick and then like smudge easily. They do smudge but not like super easily. So yeah, I like the shelter wood. I actually just traded somebody a cherry wood graph like the. The other wooden cover that they sell regularly for a pack of shelter woods which I think we both got. Yeah, I think I definitely feel like I got the good deal but I know he doesn't like the lined paper so he likes it too. So. Yeah, that's. Those are my preferred like pocket journaling things and I always keep. I have a shelter wood going with with pages in my Cody Williams leather case that I keep in my bag and I actually really like the gallery leather journaling paper as well. Although I don't really keep a journal in gallery leather. I just think it's a really good journaling paper. Yeah, I don't really have a, like a bigger, like a five size journal going right now, but yeah, that's really nice. And then it's not the most comfortable in the world, but I really like the Musgrave test scoring 100 for, for journaling. I just. Because really. Yeah. Well, it's, it's dark and it keeps a good point.
I feel like it smears a lot.
Yeah.
It was just me. Maybe it's because the print smears on the barrel.
Yeah.
So it puts you in mind of smearing.
Yeah. And being. Being left handed. I feel like I have like overcorrected myself for smearing because I know I'll just end up with smear anyway. So. Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's dark and it holds a good point. It's as we talked about on whatever episode when we talked about it. As we talked about when we talked about it. The. I feel like the, like the hex sides are kind of sharp so they're not super comfortable to hold on to for a while. But it performs really well in my opinion. So I, I use that a lot for, for journaling. Yeah. Those are my favorites. I do think. Well, let's talk about some of the group comments at the end just because there's some interesting points people raised. Johnny, how about you? Do you have any interesting points to consider?
Well, for what kind of journaling I do. I feel like I'm getting boring. Like most of my journaling is. My kids did this today.
It was adorable.
They said this today. It was adorable. This is some food I ate.
It was adorable.
It was adorable.
No, it was delicious and bad for me. And you know, I suspect that a lot of folks who majored in philosophy might have use for anxiety journaling. So that's something I do a Lot. But for good pointers, I find no matter what you use, it's gonna do that. I call it ghosting. I guess it's not a good word. Where the graphite transfers between pages where you've written on them. That makes sense. So whenever I have a journal going, I cut a piece of sort of blotter paper and put it in there.
That's such a good idea.
And for field notes, I use a. Because you go through them so much and you don't want to keep cutting them. I use a piece of an old roadmap because it's durable and actually it kind of looks cool with field notes. Heck yeah. So I reuse them until they fall apart. For combos, I've noticed lately. I don't usually like hard pencils, but some of the nice German brands are good for journaling because they don't smear while you're writing and, you know, you get a good point retention, stuff like that. One of my favorite combinations recently was Baron fig paper and a Faber Castell Castell 9000B. Just like perfect, completely perfect. Right now I'm using.
I don't know.
We've never really talked about these before. There's a brand called Cavallini. They make some cool stuff and some really lame stuff. And they make these sort of mini notebook packs where you get three sort of like a theme, and one is plain, one is lined, and one is graph. So right now I'm using one of those because the paper is fantastic for pencil. They're bigger than a field notes and thicker than a field notes. They last a little longer.
What's the. How do you spell Cavallini?
See, I don't.
I have no idea.
No, I tried to look at it. I just ordered a pack of them today for my buddy's daughter who really likes bikes and her birthday's.
Do they.
Oh, I have definitely seen these before. They have like. They also make that like fancy wrapping paper that looks like little like posts or something.
They do a lot of calendars.
Yeah, there's some, like, fancy, like stationary gift shops around here that have these.
These. Yeah, there's something about that paper and a cheap pencil that's perfect. Like a plain old Dixon. It's really nice in there.
Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at. Oh, yes, they make these. These really cool. I need some of these notebooks. That San Francisco. San Francisco notebook set. Yeah, they have like a vintage, like Golden Gate Bridge postcard. And then they have this like this cool vintage map of San Francisco.
I just got one recently that's called Oddities and one is Phrenology, one is Skeletons, and I forgot what the other one is. But they're really cool books. Yeah. But yeah, I've written a lot of different kinds of journals to kind of
like blow through them.
If I use field notes for journaling, I go through one, you know, less than a week, which is cool when you have a stash. Now my stash is getting kind of big and I'm getting embarrassed, so I go back to that.
What would you say are the like most of the things that you journal about? Are they things that happen, like your everyday life that you just have to sort of.
Yeah.
Dissect or are they like big things or little things?
All of the above.
Yeah.
I think. Yeah. I have a very big, very complicated family. Sometimes you forget who's related to the two and who's pissed at who.
And one of my problems is like, write it down. The last six months have arguably been one of like the most eventful six months of my life. And the thing is is I just like get so mentally exhausted that I don't like feel like journaling. So I haven't been very good about just like capturing thoughts and feelings about moving 2,500 miles away and working at like an insane company and things like that.
You still can.
Yeah, I still can.
Keep it.
Keeping it fresh. Yeah.
Do either of you guys do morning pages? Like was it Julia Cameron? Is that her name or Julia Cameron?
I've done it for periods of time. I'm not doing it currently. I like the concept a lot. Morning pages are really hard for me because I know like it's much better to do, I mean in the morning
and being late afternoon pages.
Yeah. Yeah. Being a teacher, I wake up at 5:30 and I'm out the door by like 6:15 some days. 6:30. Yeah, I just, I have really early mornings and as much as I love to sit down for a half hour and do that, I just don't really have time to. Somewhere over the summer that I'll definitely probably revisit just because I like it so much, but I haven't been lately. I think it's really great concept.
Yeah. If I could get better about doing it like on the train. I take a like a regional like rail transport to work and I'm on the train for like 20 minutes, which I think is like a perfect amount of time. Yeah. But it's like so jostly and Yeah, I haven't haven't quite figured out how to do that.
Yet get something really big and write with one of those woodless pencils from generals if it jostles. Oh, well. You have to carry around a giant journal all day.
Yeah, Yeah.
I kind of wake up with a headache basically every day until I have my coffee, so it's hard.
It's terrible.
All of your journaling is just about how you need.
Coffee sucks. My head hurts.
Give me coffee.
French presses are complicated when you're not awake.
What sort of thing do you write about, Tim, without going into the lurd details.
I keep kind of two types of journals, actually I would call one a journal and one a notebook. Like I keep a notebook. The notebook is more of my catch all where I put story ideas and just kind of like longer form, kind of more random. But things that I really feel like I need to write about because I'm the type of person in general who. Things make more sense to me when I can stop and write them down. Like when I can put it into writing. Just one of those. It's always been that way for me. Even with, you know, with school stuff or even with like relationship stuff. Like I just need, like if I'm. If I'm gonna sort out what I think and what I need to, you know, say, or do I have to sit down and write. That's just how it works for me. And so I keep a notebook, which is where a lot of my like creative writing fiction stuff goes. Bigger idea things. And I also journal kind of in the conventional sense in a small notebook, usually like field note size. And like you were saying, Andy, America the beautiful shelter would have been kind of the perfect sweet spot for those. And I'm just dying because, I mean, I have. I have several left, but I'm just dying for them to come out with a standard edition with that nice paper in it.
Yeah.
I feel like usually the summer months are the ones where they have the line paper. Yeah. Hopefully some. Someday we'll get a. Yeah, a general edition.
Although you guys have you used the regular line field notes before?
Oh, yeah, I have a bunch.
It's a weird different feel with the extra space.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not the same.
Yeah.
But yeah, so then that one I just generally like I read about. I don't. If I find myself doing kind of like a this is what happened today sort of journal, it fizzles out and I stop doing it. So I've learned that that's not really like.
See, I do it when I worth it for me and I feel like it's just Too easy to do it. Like, I. I'll just kind of like, list out objectively what happened today. And it's.
It's.
It's so hard to, like, make that switch and then like, start talking about what's going through your mind.
Plus, when you do it that way and you skip a day, then you're gonna. You're like, ah, man, I gotta write two bays. Yeah, I don't feel like doing that.
Yeah.
Yeah. Mine. Mine generally more. Ends up being more of a. This has been on my mind today. Like this. This specific topic or this specific issue or idea. Like, this has been on my mind. So I'm gonna try to, like, dig into this a little bit. Like, obviously this must be important because I've been thinking about it. So that's generally what my journaling is. And as far as what pencils I like to journal in, it's usually always a B. Yeah. A sweet spot. I don't. I don't like that hangover feel of a scratchy pencil like we were talking about earlier. But I also don't like to have to sharpen constantly. And so the two that I found myself using the most. One is the Palomino B, the orange and black one. I have a dozen of those, and I use that. And then also I have Kimberly B. That I like to use. I was gonna say that a whole lot. Yeah. It's a really nice journaling pencil. It's a little on the light side for me, but I still. I just love it. So that's. That's a really great journaling pencil. Holds a nice point, but it's dark, so that one's just about perfect. And I guess I should mention that I like lined paper just in general for journaling. I can't journal lined or. Or blank.
How big do you write? How big of a line do you like?
I would. I kind of just adapt. My handwriting is all over the place anyways. Like, cursive slash print just kind of mixes back and forth. And the size isn't consistent either. I just am all over the place. I kind of like it that way, but. So I feel very comfortable in, like, in America the Beautiful.
Yeah.
But also, if I have no lines, like. Like my baron fig right now is blank. If I use that, it'll just kind of vary depending on what I'm writing with. And sometimes I like to write big and sometimes small and just.
Yeah.
Yeah. Sort of varies.
So do. One question that Steve McCoy asked in the group was, does anybody have a recommendation for the least smudgy pencil or pen. Excuse me, Pencil or paper combo. He wanted to know kind of what the best pencils for point retention are. He likes cedar point field notes and higher price like Mitsubishi. And then he wants to be able to just sharpen when thoughts are flowing in journal or does he wants to know do you just have a batch of sharpened pencils at the ready or do you want to sharpen kind of like once you are in the flow of journaling?
That's a good question. I mean I think I. I've had like two sharpened pencils in front of me but I kind of like the sharpening part. I like to stop and sharpen and think it's kind of like gather your thoughts and then write it down. It's kind of like taking a breath when playing an instrument, like a trumpet or something. You know, like you have to breathe, you have to stop. I like to stop and sharpen but I might have a couple in front of me. My favorite. I did mention the Kimberly B. The Palomino HB is kind of my all time favorite journaling pencil because it's nice and dark and holds point. But. But yeah, if he likes the cedar point, I feel like the Kimberly B would be a nice transition for him. For journaling.
Yeah.
Kimberly B or maybe even 2B. I have some of those and there's not a whole bunch of difference between the two. Yeah, but I like them both a lot. I've even used the 4B and it's nice but it's like the
like the
black wing pearl is nice for the first three lines and then you're back to sharpening. So I feel like that B2B area is a real sweet spot. So I think the Kimberly might work really well for him.
Cool.
Yeah. For smearing resistance you can't beat a Wolpex. The thing doesn't smear and the cast out 9,000 even up to three or even some events. 4B doesn't really smear.
I am and for paper, paper wise I would say like a Baron Fig journal is really good for not smearing. I. And I guess like if anti smearing is like your main qualifier for paper because I like the America the Beautiful and Shelterwood but it's not particularly smear proof. I just. It's just so smooth buttery. But the. Yeah but the Baron Fig is really good at not smearing. It's like toothy enough where it just holds on to the little graphite particles but not so toothy as to just like eat up your pencil.
Plus I Find that paper goes really well with pencils that already have a good sort of inherent smear resistance to them.
Yeah, yeah. Like a Vulpix in a Baron fig.
Yeah.
Even the grip 20.01, which is really a hard pencil, but it's very nice in a Baron fig. Yeah, really like it.
Somebody asked David Nevis in the group asked us to discuss the different types of journaling he does. A semi reflective, semi historical style journaling that is pretty much like a standard diary idea. A pencil or, gasp, a pen could work equally well. But there's meditative journaling, there's visualization and art journaling, and on and on and on. He wants us to kind of talk about a few categories that could clarify pencil consistency iterations. And he goes, not that it's a big topic or anything because God forbid. Yeah, I. I guess I have never been so intentional about my journaling as to like, fit it to like to a style. And that's not to say it's not a good idea because visualization is like a great idea. I've definitely done like. I don't even know what to call it. Like cathartic fiction writing where, you know, I write like a short story or something kind of in the style of what I'm trying to achieve, just kind of for my eyes. And something like that tends to. Tends to be like longer form, yet more stream of consciousness and not particularly like, well written, but I don't know, like, I feel for longer form stuff. Yeah, like. Like a harder Mitsubishi pencil or like a German pencil, like a Faber Castell might be good because it's not super like soft invisible, but it will last you a long time.
Yeah, like a Tombow Mono.
Yeah.
HB or something. Or a B. Something like that.
Yeah, something like that would be good. Johnny. Sorry, go on.
I was just. I've kind of already touched on kind of my thoughts on this one as far as the kinds of journaling that I like and I like to do. The morning pages idea appeals to me, but I don't usually have time to do that during the school year. But yeah, just kind of a general, what I would call keeping a notebook. Kind of like a writer's notebook, I guess is the best way to put it. Keeping a writer's notebook and then just having a small journal that I definitely don't do every day. I wish I did, but I do it when I can.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had a really good discussion in the group about, oh, just like the archival quality of pencil over pen. One of the interesting Kind of distinctions that was made was, you know, people were saying, oh, it's not good for archiving because it can smudge and if you like, you know, rub it together or there's a lot of activity, it can kind of wear out. But Logan, what is.
What is archived? That gets a lot of smudging action.
Exactly. Yeah. Logan had a really good point where he said that, like, archival stability aren't the same thing. So, like, you know, ink and oxidize or get bleached by the sun or be water damaged or even like, kind of slowly transfer, like through, like, osmosis, kind of just like diffused throughout the pages throughout the years as they're closed. But in just about, as he said, in just about every category except physical rubbing, pencil marks are more durable than ink. So for some people, like, if you have paper that is going to be sitting on a desk or is going to be transferred around a lot, like, probably pencil isn't good. But if you have a bunch of notebooks that you're going to keep on a bookshelf for years and years. Actually, my parents had a neighbor who had lived in their house since, like, the 40s, and he was a chemist, and he kept meticulous notes about, like, you know, like, formulas. And he was a freelance chemist, which is really interesting. And he kept, like, his, like, freelance work and like, time tracking in a journal. And when he died. He died when he was like, in his 90s. We were helping his. His widow just kind of like, clean things out. And he had a. He had a notebook with all the stuff in there that was like, you know, dated like 1954, 1960 something, and it was all in pencil. I. I would. I was dying to know what his favorite brand of pencil was. He was German and he, like, came to the U.S. like, right before the war, World War II. He got out of Germany and he. Yeah, he just kept really meticulous, like, notes about this. And I just want to know what his favorite brand of pencil was, because I bet that he had a opinion. But. Yeah, and it. I mean, it was clear as day. Like, you could. It was. It was great. You could see, you know, just like stroke marks. You could see everything. So, yeah, we had some really, really good discussion about this there and then. I know that one thing that Luke Sinclair pointed out is that, you know, like, artist journaling, sometimes they use a spray fixative with graphite to prevent smear. And he says that you can buy them at art supply stores, generally archival quality. He goes, I have known people to use hairspray. However, I would not recommend that for archival results. That was interesting. Yeah. Any other areas that we haven't covered there?
I mean I seem to remember a post on a little website called I think it's Stencil Revolution.
Oh yeah, Stencil Revolution.
I know that dude.
Nice. Yeah. Post from 2010 called Pencil for long term Writing. That should definitely be in the show notes because this is actually one of those posts that I got a lot
of traffic on that post.
Oh yeah. Well, that was how I think I found your blog was I was googling things and that was like one of the first things I, one of the first because there was a couple that I kept hitting on like over and over that I would like, I would think I would be say, oh, I wonder what, like I wonder if anybody's written about this with pencils. And then I would find it on Johnny's site and then this is one of those that I kept hitting on this pencil for long term writing. I'll put it in the, the show notes because it's a great. Done a great link. You got it?
I got it.
Okay, cool. So yeah, I mean I had some other kind of random thoughts about it which we don't have to spend a lot of time on stuff I haven't as far as stuff I haven't hit on so far. But so pencil, we've established that it does last. Like it stays around for long, long periods of time. And if you do really stop and think about it and this isn't supposed to be a bash on pens because it's not a us versus them sort of thing. But if most people in the history of the world did like journal and write everything in water based inks, we would not have as rich of a, you know, depth of history because there would be a lot of things that the common. Like if there wasn't a common pencil for people to write with and record things for the last, you know, a long time, we wouldn't have as much information as we do now. Which maybe that's a little like over romanticized, but I think it's true. Yeah. That it's, it is pretty amazing how much has stuck around thanks to that.
And a really sad thing was that Thoreau did not journal in pencil. So I emailed the lady that was running the Thoreau project a few years ago or like 10 years ago and she's like, yo, he used it in his notebooks and sometimes if he did it in his journal, he always went over them in ink. I found them with the saddest thing I ever found out.
Just didn't know any better. Right?
Yeah. That's why they can't read his journals because the ink's breaking down. Plus, he had horrible handwriting or idiotic handwriting.
That makes me feel better.
Yeah.
I think sometime soon we have an episode about handwriting.
Yeah. To do with some, like, samples.
My mom has perfect handwriting. It's kind of weird.
Is she a teacher?
No, she was a product of Catholic school, like me.
See, my mom. My mom was a kindergarten teacher in Catholic school. And she has really good handwriting. Torsten von Plotho Kettner asks, do you use the last page until the last space is taken, or do you leave some blank space for later to add something? A new journal?
Depends how much space.
Yeah, I, I almost always. Yeah, I, I agree. It depends on how much space. Unless if there's. If there's more than, like, I don't know, four or five lines, I'll definitely pick up from where I left off.
So. Cool.
Corey Roth goes round hex, semi hex, or triangular Discussion.
Never triangular. For journaling.
Really hard to keep.
Yeah, it's too hard to keep a sharp point.
That's true. You have to turn it, what, like 160 degrees every time you want to.
Yeah. Sometimes I find for long term, a hexagonal natural pencil is perfect. Especially in the summer. Baltimore summers are kind of soggy. Drop around, paint a pencil.
I'd agree with you on that one. I like a hex for. For journaling. I mean, you know, I love a round pencil, but I think more often the ones that I end up picking are hex because they're easier to hold on to.
How often do you. And I know it probably depends on the paper and the sharpness of the pencil, but generally, how often do you rotate a notch?
Oh, my. I don't even pay attention. Do you guys pay attention to that?
I don't usually.
Don't think I do it.
Yeah, see, I didn't know that anyone else in the world did it until I wrote a post about it one time on pencil revolution. And people were like, oh, yeah, I do that. Oh, I thought I was special. And I figured out something really cool like, hey, did you guys know you
could do pro tip guys?
Everybody does that.
It's more of a. Yeah, I think it's more of a feel thing for me. Yeah, I don't know.
I do with pens too, which makes no sense. Why can't use a fountain pen.
It's true. William Min, who is the Creator of Johnny's awesome new logo.
Yay.
He has an interesting point. Journaling versus scheduling. Because I suddenly begun to really think about the differences and how I'm wired. I've never. I've been trying to use the Chronodex for the last couple of months, and it's fun to draw out your schedule. The chrono decks being that thing that. Oh, what's his name from Scription?
Patrick.
Patrick.
Yeah.
He came up. It's really cool. I never really refer to it for the planning process. I end up going backwards and filling out the things I've done. But I do like to journal a bit more. What are the differences for you? Do you do both? I don't.
I don't.
Yeah. I tried keeping.
Oh.
In my field notes. Ambition. There's that little date book. And I tried, like, just doing, like, two lines about my day every day, and I failed miserably.
Yeah. I think I tried to do the. Is it. It wasn't word notebooks, was it? Do they do the Memorandum? Who does the Memorandum?
Yeah, that's where.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I do it.
That's weird. Yeah, I tried to do that and I lasted, like, two weeks this year.
You lasted longer than I did.
It just didn't make like I. I just found that I was like, I don't even care. I'm writing down, like, yeah, my days are boring. I was like. I would much rather like I was doing it, like, in bed and stuff, too. So, yeah, like, late at night probably wasn't a good idea.
Yeah. Johnny, do you. Do you ever do as like a scheduling? Sort of.
I do a planner, but it's sort of one of those things where once I've written it down, I don't have to look at it again because now I remember.
Yeah.
Which sounds really stupid, but it's really.
You don't write it down to remember it now, you write it down to remember it later.
Yeah, I've talked before.
Is it the other way around?
I do a little. It's like the Memorandum, but it's five years that I'm finishing.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's cool.
And I don't know if you guys saw this, but Paperblinks makes new ones that are tenure journals, and they come in a slipcover and they're really pretty.
See, I don't feel like I could. 10 years. I can't imagine doing anything for 10 years.
It's cool because now, since Valentine's Day, I'm on the last year of all the pages, so. It's kind of cool to see what Charlotte was doing four years ago and what Henry's doing a year ago.
It's like an analog time hop.
Yeah. I use a pen in that book because the lines are so small.
I use a micron. Crucify me.
Microns are nice. That's strike two, though.
I seasonal colors for the microns, too. I have a pink one now for cherry blossoms.
What do you think, Tim? Is that strike two?
No, no, I'll take that. You know, I'm the most. I'm the moderate ones. I can't. I can't knock him for that. I was using fountain pens. I was using fountain pens today, and
I've been using a really cool cyno that. Like this orange sino that Elaine gave me that I love.
That's cool.
I just.
There's nothing modern about fountain pens.
I just got a. Hey, I was being nice. Strike two.
Strike one, Tim.
That's strike two, Tim. I was.
I just got some of those. The cyano, you see, they came out with the Sino 307.
Yeah, yeah, I saw those at Target. What's the deal with them?
They're much better. They're darker. They have, like, a richer color because, you know, like the black Sino 207 in black kind of had like a gray sort of like, transparent look to it. And now they are. It's much deeper, so the line's a little thicker. But I like them a lot better. So.
Yeah, that one.
The better.
That one, which is archival. Again, it's worth mentioning for this episode. Cyno. The cynos are archivals. So is the jet stream.
Really? Oh, I know the jet stream was. That's interesting.
That blog, that one pen had a really good review of it that I'll put in show notes.
Yeah, he did. Well, we can't finish with talking about a pen. My last thought about journaling in pencil is just that I've. And I mentioned this on my. Where did I. Where did we talk about this? Just this. The idea that. We've talked about it several times, probably, but that pencil is what we learned on. And so generally writing with pencil is your best handwriting. And it's. There's like a very definite link to the past and the way you write and the way it feels. You know, it just feels. It feels right. I always write my best. My best handwriting when I'm writing with pencil, and I think it's because of that, because that's what I learned to write with. So I can make that as a case for journaling. In pencil. Also on sort of a aesthetic level, just that you want your journals to look good. I think most people, even if people don't admit it, it's true. You want your journals to look good?
Heck yeah.
And you want your handwriting to look right. And I think pencil a lot of times for a lot of people gives you your best, your best handwriting.
So definitely someday when they display your journal in a museum, you know, when
people like we're all expecting, you're like, yeah, what does that say?
But also if you're, you know, a big pencil fan, it's 2015, so there's a pro. I mean, maybe I'm just speaking of myself too much, but there's probably a pretty good chance that a very large portion of the handwriting you do is your journal. So if you really like pencils, just journal and pencil.
Although I have to admit, day one, which is a app, Mac app for journaling is a gorgeous, gorgeous app that's a pleasure to use. But I won't go into it too much here. I actually spent an entire episode of Dot Grid just like ranting about it. So.
Nice.
Yeah.
Well, well, I think we've done a pretty good job talking through this. I think we got some great questions covered, a lot of points. If there is anything else people want to talk about, a great place to do that, to talk about journaling and talk about anything about the episode is in our Facebook group. We encourage people to go to our Facebook group, which is facebook.com group erasable. So head over there and yeah, bring up anything that you may be still thinking about with journaling. We'd love to.
You know what? We didn't talk about what sort of sharpening angle we like for journaling. So that would be a good place to dive into that.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah.
So last thing before we button this thing up is we want to give. We want to give the much awaited results of our awesome giveaway that we were able to offer for our anniversary, our one year anniversary. Thanks to our many very generous partners in this giveaway. So, Andy, why don't you take it here and tell us who won our giveaway and maybe you can mention what episode they liked.
So real quick, before we do that, it's interesting to me. I kind of did an informal tally of everybody's favorite episodes and obviously David Rees and Charles Berolzheimer were scored pretty highly. But among the episodes that were just the three of us, episode 19 seemed to be really, really popular. Like somebody pointed out that that was kind of when we it seemed like we. Our chemistry finally, like, finally clicked, which is interesting. And stuck before that, apparently we were really stiff and formal.
It was like an hour and a half. I don't think we were ever very formal. So your name's Johnny, right?
So that was episode 19 was the prospector General, where we had our clip of Gus Chiggins, the Will Ferrell character. So nobody doesn't like Will Ferrell.
So Ferrell bump.
Yeah. So what I did for the winners, we had almost 100. We had 98 entries, and I count. I numbered them backwards from newest to oldest, and I ran it through the random number generator to pick. Pick the winners. So for the Blackwing pack, which is of course a pack of. Oh, let me grab that. A dozen Blackwing 602s and a Blackwing Slate, which are pretty great. That is Steven, and I'm not 100% sure the last name. One thing I sort of didn't think about is that Squarespace doesn't require you to put in your email address. So I'm hoping that these people will identify that they are the winners and let me know. I'll give information on how to get a hold of me afterwards. But Steven said that my favorite episode was the Prospector General. The episode had a good flow. Plus that picture of Will Ferrell is hilarious, which is completely true. So that's the Blackwing pack. We also had the notegeist Pencil lovers kit, which is a dozen vintage sampler pencils, a dozen new pencil samplers, or a pencil sampler of a dozen new pencils, a pack of pencil caps, a Generals three in one sharpener, and a Koh I Noor magic eraser, which is a super awesome and generous contribution by Gary. Gary Varner from Note Geist. Yeah, that was A.J. berkovich. He said that his favorite episode is episode 15. The joke is, there is no joke with David Rees. I discovered this podcast when I was googling David Rees, who whom I believe to be a very interesting person, and I found a link to the website which then led him to the Pencil Revolution blog, which is now his favorite blog.
Means Stencil Revolution.
Yeah, Stencil Revolution. AJ I hope you're listening and I'll let you know how to get in touch and we can get your address. We also have a couple different giveaways for the classroom friendly sharpener. Whereas you can pick out your favorite color or the large format pencil sharpener. One of them was Dan. Dan says my favorite was the one. My favorite was this one being episode 26, as it was really cool to find out about the pencil store. Gotta go there.
Which.
Yes, yes, yes. So, yeah, episode 26 is his favorite. Also Brian's song, who is a pretty active group member. He's. He's gonna say. I'm gonna say episode 26 as well. You guys have come a really long way and it keeps getting better, but you've managed to keep the relationship fun throughout. So we're like. We're still like pre Yoko beetles.
Yeah. We keep the tension off there.
Yeah, yeah. When we turn it off, we just fight.
All the fighting happens with like super passive aggressive text messages.
Well, I see someone. You didn't put together the show notes today. Some of these edits were pretty crappy today. So Johnny, you offered a sampler pack of pencils plus a behrenfig notebook and one of our group members. I'm probably going to mangle your name and I apologize, but Neha. Neha or Neha. Neha. I'm not sure if that's her real name or if that is a Facebook name, but she wishes us a happy one year anniversary. She's going to hop on board with the folks indicating that episode 19 is their favorite. I appreciate the lengthy review of the prospector a pencil I've been wanting to know more about. So yeah, that was another endorsement for Gus Jiggins for Tim's pack. And by the way, we should. Maybe not now, but at some point we should tell people what's in our packs. Actually can't even get it. Yeah. So Tim's pack, Greg is getting it and Greg says I've liked a lot of them, but my favorite would be the My Pencil Hero episode. It has a thought provoking discussion plus a very, very real deep thoughts from all three hosts, which is pretty great. Yeah, that was really good because I feel like we all three took it in different directions. Yeah.
Remember yours was all like sentimental and
like mine was like people I touching knew in real life. Yeah.
Mine was like, I like this writer a lot. He's really smart.
He's really great. And last but not least, my pack is going to Vikram. Vikram Shah, who is the editor of Scriba Mechanica, which is a great blog.
Feels like your baby.
Yeah. He's awesome.
Yeah.
Your coined word.
Yeah. I kind of feel like a jerk for like.
Yeah, that's my word.
But I couldn't help it. I was definitely that guy. His favorite was episode 12 since you guys gave me a shout out in it. Also, I enjoyed the interview with Jeff Grant and his bullet pencil. He Got the tt. Thanks for keeping this podcast going. Congrats on one year.
Thanks, Vikram.
If you guys would be able to. I'm going to try to dig up your email addresses or if you're in the Facebook group, I'm going to drop you a Facebook line. But if I don't know how to get a hold of you, and I apologize if I don't, please drop me an email. It's andyoodclinched.com with your name and your address and I'll make sure you get these, get these notebooks or get these giveaway packs. So thank you. Thank you so much for entering, guys. That was awesome. Yay.
Yeah, our listeners are the best.
That was really fun to listen to read through all this.
Yeah. If you guys want to see for yourself, if you go to erasable us 26 and read the comments, you can see everybody's comments.
Well, what do you say we wrap this up?
Absolutely.
Johnny, where can we find you on the Internet?
Well, every once in a while you can find me on pencil revolution.com I'm on Twitter ensolution and on Instagram Ensolution. How are you, Mr. Andy?
I am. I'm on Twitter @AWealthly a w e L F L E. You can give me oodclinched. If you just want to see my pencil stuff, I'll give a shout out to my other podcast, which is dot grid, which is a lot of like analog plus digital stuff. That's at nerduprising co dot grid and my website is woodclinched dot com. How about you, Tim?
You can read my reviews and writings about pencil things as well as fiction things and such@www.thewritingarcenal.com. i am on Twitter writingarcenal and on Instagram herewriting Arsenal and you can follow the podcast @erasablepodcast on Twitter. The show notes for today's episode will be@ erasable us27. We have a really awesome Facebook group that you should join if you're not already there. And that is@facebook.com group erasable. There's also a Facebook page which we'd appreciate it if you'd go and like that, which is facebook.com erasablepodcast also, you can rate and review us on itunes or recommend us on Overcast or Stitcher or whatever it is that you use as your podcatcher. This really helps us out a lot because it makes us more visible in our category, in our general category, and helps us gain a wider listenership and we'd really love to hear your thoughts and suggestions about the podcast there as well. Also, do not forget that we are going to have a book club episode coming up soon, so check out our show notes for a link to that book if you want to pre order it and join us in our discussion coming up here in a few weeks. So thank you so much for listening to episode 27 of the erasable Podcast and we will talk to you soon.