Scribe

Yeah, I never thought about that. Which one of us has to be Kathie Lee, though? Because I would way rather be Hoda.

I think I have to be Kathie Lee because I'm older. Okay.

So I've been consuming a lot of things, mostly television show that I can't stop talking about. It's called Riverdale, and it's on the cw. It's not the most highbrow show I've watched, but I feel like it appeals to a lot of demographics because the characters in the show are the characters from the Archie comics. So you have, like, Betty and Veronica and Jughead and Archie and Ms. Grundy. Like, all of them.

It's. No, it's like a drama.

Oh, live action. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's like a. It's like a real. It's like a real people show. And it takes place in 2017, too, but it has, like, a similar storyline to Twin Peaks. So, like, the first episode starts out where, like, Cheryl Blossom's brother is murdered. But it has, like, kind of Gossip Girl vibes, too. It's, like, real. It's really. It's really juicy and very scandalous, and I love it. It's been, like, nine episodes. I think it's on on Thursday nights. Yeah. Nine o'. Clock.

Jughead is played by Cole Sprouse. Remember, he was. He's one of those, like, blonde twins who Used to be on the Disney Channel. And instead of wearing, like an actual crown, he wears, like a gray beanie that's knit, so like, the edges are pointy so it kind of looks like a crown. And he narrates the whole thing. Yeah. And he's dating Betty. It's really good. What? Everybody should watch it.

I have no idea.

No.

No, this. Wait. Oh, I don't know. Actually, maybe. Yes, that might be the same kid.

I don't.

Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah, that. I think that's the same kid. Yeah. Blonde twins. They're like in their early 20s now. Yeah. So, yeah, one of. One of them is Jughead. It's an excellent show. I highly recommend it. If anyone's looking for something new, it's very surprising and very strange. As a. As a really big Archie comics fan and a really big Twin Peaks fan, I'm very happy about it, but.

Yeah. And I should probably share what Caitlin and I are both drinking because we are drinking Brad Pitt Rose, which is from Brad Pitt's vineyard in France. We are drinking it because there's. Well, because it's pink. It's a color called Millennial Pink, which is. Which has been like, a very hot topic in the pencil HQ lately because we call this color Eraser Pink. And we're a little annoyed that now it's being like Millennial Pink. Now it's become, like, branded as Millennial Pink or metamorphosis.

Like Mauvey Pink. Dusty pink. Yeah.

Yeah.

That might be true, though. But we have to give credit to.

That's what we're doing.

Yeah, we don't have wine glasses, but we're pretty much.

Yeah, I never thought about that. Which one of us has to be Kathie Lee, though? Because I would way rather be Hoda.

Lee because I'm older. Okay. Oh, man. Sorry. But, yeah, so I'm. What am I writing with? I've been writing with a very old, probably like 1940s Venus velvet that's been floating around the office for a really long time. It's really beat up and it has a really great gold pencil clip on it, though. That's a sample for one that we're actually stocking very soon. But it's. It's a. It's in pretty rough shape, but I'm determined to finish it. So I've been writing with that. And in my. In my household there somehow ended up. There's. I have this pretty, pretty little jar in my bathroom that holds all of my hair ties. And there's been a very freshly sharpened black wing in there for weeks. I don't know how it got there. I think Fed put it there. I'm not sure. But I've been using that pencil a lot at home just because I always happen to be passing by it when I need a pencil to make a grocery list or do whatever. I'm calling it the bathroom black wing. And I kind of like that it's there. I guess it's important to have a pencil in every room.

Yeah. I don't know. But the bathroom blackwing, that's my jam right now.

Yes. Oh, wow.

Your presence is enough. It's not exactly.

Yep. Well, we technically met seven days ago. Today is your first day of, like, actually working here? It was a Saturday two years ago.

That you were late.

Great. It was the only day Caitlyn's ever been late. Was her first day.

Yeah, I didn't notice, so. I didn't notice until you said something about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I accidentally dropped his sharpener on the floor too. It was really. It was really awkward. He hasn't been back since. No. That was the first time we had, like, A famous person that we recognized in the shop.

Yeah, it was really. We were really awkward. We were horrible. We've come a long way. We're really good with the celebs these days. Yeah, man.

Are we allowed to talk about these things?

Well, yeah, we can. No one here knows any A list celebrities, do you? I don't know. Who knows?

Like.

Yeah. Our most regular celebrity customer is a very regular celebrity customer. And it is not. Not who you would expect.

We can. We can type it in the. We could type it in. Well, I don't.

Oh, yeah. Our most recent one is Michael Stipe.

And he's been in before, but none of us recognize him because he has a beard now, like a weird beard that none of us knew.

He's getting up there. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, should we write it in here?

Yeah.

Yes. So this weekend I went to Chicago to visit my brother who just moved there. It was kind of a last minute trip. I went. I just booked it like a couple weeks ago and only realized after I booked my trip that my team, the Pirates, were playing the Cubs this weekend in Chicago. So it was perfect timing, but it was a very eventful weekend. I will say that when we. When my sister went with me because she lives here in New York as well, and we arrived and went straight from the airport to a stationery store called Greer that's in. It's an old town like on like the Lincoln park end. And it's. It's a really beautiful shop. It's owned by Chandra. Chandra. I don't know how she pronounces her name. Yeah, then they. I bought so much stuff. They have so many Lovely paper things there, and lots of great cards. I bought these postcards that have illustrations of tiny post offices on them. I'm a little obsessed with those, but it was fun. It was nice to, like, start out my trip with some stationery. She gave me this really old Lyra typewriter eraser that's this really great, kind of, like, sweet Smurf blue. It's really, really cool. I've never seen it before. And then that night, Evan and Annie, my siblings and my brother's roommate, and I had dinner at Alinea. And I don't know if anybody watches Chef's Table on Netflix.

But Alinea is in episode one of season two of Chef's Table, and it's a restaurant that, from the minute Evan decided to move to Chicago, we were like, okay, we're. We're gonna find a way to go to this restaurant. And two days before I left, I happened to look it up on their ticketing website. And I guess there must have been some sort of cancellation. Cause it's, like, pretty hard to get reservations at this place. And they had a table, so we went there. And they don't give you a menu when you get there. It's like a set thing. It's like 16 courses or something. And on the table, they have a word search that functions as a menu. And so first thing I did was, was, of course, whip out my pencil, because I had one in my bag.

It was a very, very small mono 100F with a cap on it. And so it was one of those longer caps, so it kind of, like, functioned as an extender. And before we even were, like, we had time for them to explain to us what the word search was, one of the guys came over and was, like, very excited that I had a pencil, like, ready to go and explain to us how it worked. And so we passed it around the table the entire dinner, trying to get ahead of ourselves to, like, figure out clues as to what we were eating next. But they were all, like, descriptive words. They weren't, like, food words. They were especially impressed when I figured out the word nostalgia long before, like, they had a chance to give me clues about it, because, well, that's a big word in my vocabulary here. But that was a really amazing experience. It was, like, definitely the most fun I've ever had at a restaurant in my entire life. And I did get to keep the word search. We did complete it, too. We found every single word and some hidden words that weren't part of the menu. And some that. That the guy who made the word search didn't even know were in there. So I think we won at the word search. But there were four other tables in the room and nobody else did the word search. I was really confused by that. Yeah. But anyway, so that happened. And then the day after we went to see the Pirates play the Cubs, which, by the way, sorry, Tim, I'm sorry that all three of those games were pretty sad. Well, for you, not for me.

Just. But I will tell you though, I

Yeah, I didn't see any of it. We. We went to Wrigley Field and all three of us were in our, like, Pirates gear. I was wearing my 1979 throwback jersey with Kent to Calvi's name on the back. And there were probably like 200 Pirates fans in the whole field. Like, there were none of us. It was so weird to be in a place where like the game that we went to, the Pirates hit four home runs. And it was so weird because we knew the Pirates hit a home run when it was silent. It was very. It was a very strange experience. There are so many Cubs fans. But one thing that I was thinking,

Yeah, okay. Bye. Tim, we can argue about this later. I have a lot of opinions to express to you. But the one thing I was very impressed by was that when you buy a scorecard at Wrigley Field, they have real pencils, like full size pencils with erasers that don't suck.

They're really nice. They're pre sharpened, they're white, they have the little Cubs logo on them. And blue, like all the way down the whole pencil. And the erasers are pretty decent. I was really impressed.

No, it's like. It's just like the little logo repeated in blue, like up the pencil and it's.

Maybe they redo them every year. I don't know.

Maybe when they run out, they do a new one every like 10 years. But really though. Yeah. How many people actually score baseball these days anyway? But

I have one for you. Oh, you do? Yeah. They were pretty cool. I was very impressed by that. Because these days, like, if anything, like, if. Even if they have pencils, it's like those short golf pencils maybe, if you're lucky, with the team stamped into it. At Citi Field here in New York, they have tiny golf pencils that say, let's go Mets on it, like, in foil. It's like, foil embossed, just in, like, a generic typeface, but it's embossed in red because I think maybe they didn't have, like, orange and they thought people wouldn't notice. I don't know, but it's. It's pretty funny. The Cubs ones definitely were much better. I was very impressed.

Yeah.

Going towards the pencils.

Yeah. Yeah. I did get to. We did take a family picture with the trophy, which was pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm gonna print that out and frame it.

I'm not kidding.

Anyway, that's all I got.

Well, like, what if they. Well, they don't listen? Well, I did. I also did this. I did their podcast at 3:00pm as opposed to. What is it, 9:00pm?

Yeah. So I think, like, yeah, this. Yeah, you guys are really fun. I'm also allowed to drink, so.

So I'm not gonna drink at 3pm at work. Who do you think I am?

But no, it was. It. It was a little scary, I will tell you. I was a. I was, like, a little bit anxious about it.

Don't know why. I mean, I've talked to Mike and Brad both before. I don't know why I was nervous, but.

Don't worry. Thank you.

No.

Yeah,

Yeah. She has a new shop near the pizza place that you like. Yeah. Very, very close to there. Like, one minute. One or two minutes. It's actually much bigger than the one in SoHo. And there's. They have an amazing selection of notebooks.

Bad idea.

No, we are not out of them. Our system said that we were out of them. I don't know why. I just. I didn't count them when we got them. I just entered the numbers that were written Sharpie on the boxes. We have, like, a hundred more than we thought we did. So they are restocked online now. I also ordered more, so do not worry. They're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Yeah, just about a month or two ago, we got those.

It's weird, isn't it? It's like it doesn't erase very well, and it's, like, really, really scratchy, but, like, dark. It's really confusing.

Yeah.

We have so much stuff in our free bin in the office.

Yeah.

Oh, no, we have to get our own.

Yeah, we have to get our own per. I'd like, pay somebody, like $100 a month to come pick it up. The city doesn't pick it up. We have to get someone else to do it.

I think that's the crucible doing that, not the wopex, though.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I don't know what the add on to the name is. No, I don't know.

Yeah, well, when they approached me, the. The guy who was the creative director at the Time had read Petroski's book on the pencil and was also like pretty familiar with me and the shop. Because of the shopkeeper? Yeah, because of a book that we, that we were in already that they published called the Shopkeepers and Yeah, like their, their thing, their. I mean the thing that they really like proposed to me was that we do a book that was as informative as the pencil but maybe a little bit more accessible and also like as an object, like just more of like. Well, I guess just in general more of an object. Like something that you might not necessarily buy because you want to read it cover to cover, but because you might want to buy it to like put on your coffee table and read like one section at a time. It was meant to kind of be like, like, I guess like a very like modern story of the pencil that. I mean because Petroski published that book in 1990 and yeah, I mean that's been 27 years. So yeah, they wanted, they kind of just wanted to do like a. Just yeah, I guess like a more like anecdotal kind of just more accessible version of the story of the pencil because it's apparently a thing that people are interested in these days.

Yeah, so I, well when I, when I first like signed my contract and was definitely going to be doing this thing, I didn't really immediately think about like what pencil I was going to use. I first thought of like what, what I was going to write it in. Because I, I had decided from the get go that I was going to start taking Wednesdays off so I can work from home on the book. Because I mean I run a shop. It's like a more than full time job. I knew I was going to need extra time and I also had envisioned myself doing this like in cafes or in the library or wherever one might be working in New York City that is not home. And so I bought on sale from Smythson, like my favorite luxury paper retailer in the uk. I bought this like beautiful like greenish blue leather padfolio that came with a giant like a four sized spiral bound notebook. And the paper is like super heavy. It's like a regular spiral bound like lined notebook. But I don't know if anyone's familiar with Smythson paper, but they have this like really signature kind of like sky blue that all their paper is like you can't buy white paper from them. It's all blue, and it's super thick. It's perforated. It's a little. It's a little bit toothier than I normally prefer with pencil. But I truly believe that if I bought myself, like, this glamorous notebook, I would be more motivated to work. That definitely wasn't the case. It didn't quite pan out the way I thought it would. But I, from the start, committed myself to using these notebooks. And for the most part, I really liked it. It was nice to stare at a color that wasn't white for long periods of time. The blue is really soothing. I really like the format of it. I like that it was a little bit longer. The line spacing was great. The toothiness I got used to. I kind of liked it almost. It made it feel like it was like, a super physical thing that I was doing because it just, like. It made. It made the pencil feel just, like, so much heftier. Made the. Yeah, I don't know. And, like, the. The paper is really thick. It just. Yeah, it was a fun notebook to work with. It was very different than what I'm used to, but I really use, like, all the pencils. Depending on the section. I chose a pencil that seemed appropriate.

I went through 39 pencils, and I used, like, the. Almost the entirety of one arrowhead eraser cap with another eraser. I was using a black matte Maru Kun eraser as well. But, yeah, it was 39 pencils that I wore, like, down to the very, very, very end. I used a pencil extender, but pencil extenders get really uncomfortable to use. I learned, like, when you're writing for a really, really long time. So I had to kind of keep a rotation. So as much as I would have liked to have, like, completely curated my pencils by section, I had to be a little strategic about it because I needed to have, like, more than one at a time. But, yeah, I just. There were some days when I really just, like, use whatever was in my bag. Yeah, I guess there was one. There's one point when I first started writing the book, and I was working on the section on how pencils are made. That was the first section I wrote. We didn't do it necessarily, like, chronologically, and I was on vacation. I was really mad because they had assigned me this first section. It was due, like, the day after I got back from my vacation, and I went to. I was in Colombia for, like, eight or nine Days. And I remember sitting, like sitting on the patio of fed my boyfriend's uncle's house on a rubber plantation, the middle of nowhere, like in the middle of the night, trying to like edit the first draft of the first section of the book. And I didn't bring any like colored pencils with me to mark things up with. So I bought these like pretty horrible triangular double ended colored pencils from a stationery store. Just like, that was just local. And they kept breaking and there were mosquitoes everywhere and I was like really uncomfortable and like kind of mad about it. And then the next day I was writing a section about erasers and we happened to be going like really, really early in the morning at like 5am to the rubber plantation to tap rubber from the trees. And then I thought like, okay, like this is gonna be okay. This all happened for a reason.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I kind of went off on that a little bit.

That's a good question. I haven't been asked that before. I'm not sure that there's anything that I was trying to emulate. I definitely had a picture in my mind of like what this book would be. And honestly, like, had I written it entirely on my own, like without the influence of a publisher, it probably would have been like, been quite a different thing. But I don't know. I was just, honestly, I just kept thinking like, okay, I'm gonna try to make this like the opposite of any book that exists about pencils, which of course there aren't many. And at one point the, the editor who I was working with came back and was just kind of like, okay, like you need to like tone it down a little bit. Like you're, you're getting a little too friendly like in your text. And that kind of freaked me out. I was like, okay, like I'm not an academic, I'm not a writer. I'm just telling these stories as I know them the best I can. So I was a little bit self conscious after that, but I think you

I was just kind of like, huh, I'm sorry.

Thank you. That's. Yeah, that's what we were going for. That's good to hear. It's hard. It's hard to find that balance. And I've never, like, obviously never worked with an editor on anything, so I don't really. I had a really hard time kind of, like, understanding that relationship and kind of trying to, I guess, please all parties involved. Yeah, it was. I mean, of course, I just wanted to tell. Tell all these stories the way that I would tell them to a real person in the shop, the way that all of us do all day, every day. But that doesn't necessarily translate the same way, like, written on a piece of paper. So that was the real challenge, was trying to find a way to, like, sort of just, like, hone that in and edit it so that it reads. It reads the right way.

I think it's somebody who is a little bit interested, but maybe not completely sold yet. It's a person who is interested in design, interested in, like, the function of objects, maybe interested, like, vaguely interested in analog tools. I don't know. Or maybe it's people, like, everybody listening to this podcast who are also kind of experts on these things and maybe just want to hear it, like, told as a story or maybe, like, might be looking for, like, a few things that one didn't already know already. I don't know. I. I think the audience is just meant to be. I don't. Well, I mean, I wrote it just thinking about all the people that I know through my job or through just, like, regular life. Like, what would. What would people who don't know that they care about these things want to read about? Or, like, what would. Like, what would. What would, like, my grandmother want to read? Or what would, like My Cousin, who is 22 and doesn't really understand what my job is, want to read. Like, it's. I think it was more about the people who don't know that much than about the people who already have an interest in these things.

Sure.

Yeah.

There's so much to know. Like, why wouldn't we want to know all these things? And I think it's really sad when people don't. Don't. Because I don't think that they just don't realize that there is so much to know. And I think. Yeah, that's really honestly part of the reason why I was so excited to write this book, because I thought, like, okay, this is a way to take what I do on a daily basis and apply it to, like, a wider audience, kind of. Yeah. Get it out to people who might not know that my shop exists or that the four of us are here telling stories every day like that. It's. Yeah, it's just a different audience, I guess. Yeah, it just has a much. Maybe not wider reach, but just a different reach than having a shop and existing on the Internet. Yeah, it's weird. I keep seeing pictures on Instagram of the book in various places. And I went to our letter. The Letter Writer Society that we're all members of here in New York. At the meeting last night, one of the women who's in the. In the group had been to the Met, and it's in the Met gift shop, which I had no idea about. And that's, like, very exciting. I'm going on Friday to see it in the Met. I will be Instagram storying about this. But, like, I love. I love thinking that they're, like, tourists who are in the Met and see this book that's really pink and, like, on a shelf, and maybe they buy it not knowing anything, just because it's there because the Met decided it should be.

You know, honestly, ever since I saw the Show Notes today, I've been thinking about this, and I don't even really have an answer. I don't know, because all of it, I think, is so fascinating, and there's just so much to know about the people who are behind all of these things. And I guess I hadn't really, like, completely realized just how extraordinary some of these people involved with very, very early pencils were. Like, I didn't really know the extent of Joseph Dixon's history. I didn't know how much of an impact World's Fairs had on the pencil industry, which that was probably my favorite thing to research because that was probably the thing I knew the least about was World's Fairs. I had so much fun researching World's Fairs. I got. I fell a little bit too deep down that rabbit hole and ended up researching so much stuff I definitely didn't need. But, yeah, I think it really made me have a lot of respect for the families who even now in 2017, are still involved in the pencil industry, because there was during certain periods of time, especially like, in the first half of the 20th century, and I guess maybe the last 20 years of the 1800s, there was so much drama between families, between, like, different countries within different. Different companies within different countries. I mean, it definitely wasn't, like, the dirtiest of industries, but it definitely wasn't all, like, hunky dory. There were a lot of, like, weird regulations that were set up because there was too much competition or there were certain companies who had too much of a monopoly. There was a lot of drama that I learned about and kind of uncovered that I didn't even realize was a thing. But, yeah, I don't know that. There's one thing I learned a lot. It was kind of fun to take the things that I already knew and kind of backtrack and dive a little bit deeper into that, but also search things that I had no idea about. Like, I had no idea that the brothers who started Hasbro, like, the toy company, were involved with Empire Pencil Company. Like, that. That's the one thing that I think, like, I really had no idea about. And the only reason why I figured that out was because Empire Pencil Company, there's almost no information on that on them. Like, on the Internet. There's not even much in Petroski's book there. There's. There's hardly anything. And then I ended up, like, finding an obituary for, like, from what I understand from the history that I've read, like, the least influential of the Hassenfeld brothers. I found his obituary in the New York Times and found out from his obituary that he had left, like, branched off from the family to take over the pencil company, Empire Pencil Company down south. And there was this, like, huge feud involved with him just, like, leaving and taking over the pencil company. But they had started in, like, the pencil box industry. They made these, like, fabric covered pencil boxes, and you would get, like, an eraser and a couple pencils and, like, maybe a few other accessories. And so they decided to buy a pencil company to manufacture the pencils that were going in their boxes. And, yeah, that's what happened. That ended up being Empire Pencil, basically, like, owned by Hasbro. Yeah.

I do. I probably have, like, I have a. I have a pretty large pencil research library in my living room currently there. Yeah, there were a lot of random books that I found out about through, like, documents that I found on the Internet or, like, pieces from, like, old stationery supplier catalogs. Yeah. There was, like, one book of letters between two academics about the rose that I had to buy, like, secondhand on Amazon that took, like, four, five weeks to get here. And then there was, like, another. Another very, like, technical science journal about graphite that was written, like, a hundred years ago that ended up being really useful. It had, like, a whole list of, like, every mine, every known mine, like, a hundred years ago in the entire world. Most of what I learned about the scientific composition of graphite, I learned from that book.

And turns out not much of it has changed since. Yeah, it was. It was challenging. Well, I mean, it wasn't. I just kept thinking in the back of my mind, like, what was it like for Henry Petroski to write his book about pencils in 1990 when he didn't have the resources I had because, well, I had his book and the Internet. It made me. It really, like, made me have so much more respect for the work that he's done in pencil history. But of course, his book was like a. I kind of use his book as, like, a. As like, my starting reference book point for everything. Like, I use the index in the back. Like, if I was trying to research something, I would first, before going to the Internet, like, go to the. I guess the index in the back, go through the book, highlight everything I could find on the subject I was looking for, and then I would go to the Internet next and see what I could dig up there. And then I would end up, like, buying books or, like, looking at things in archives to. Yeah, kind of dive a little bit deeper. But, yeah, it was a lot of research. It was. Especially with, like, the 16th, 17th, 18th century. Some of that was really, really difficult. And also trying to figure out the Faber family tree. I had to, like, draw it out in my notebook because there were so many of them, more than I had even thought, and none of it made sense. I even, like, paid for an Ancestry.com subscription that I only just recently remembered to cancel because I just couldn't figure it out. And even on there, I had a hard time piecing it together. But, yeah, it was super cool. It was weird. I felt like I was in college again, except I didn't go to a real college. So I guess that's what it would probably Feel like to be in college? I'm not sure, but I did the best I could. I mean, I didn't have to like, travel anywhere to gather information. I'm really lucky that I work in the pencil industry and a lot of the people involved with these companies and these families are people that I know personally. So I got a lot of help, especially from Karen d'. Ache. They have like an on staff historian who like emailed me this huge package of photos that were directly illustrated and like, information. It was really helpful.

the main one about lead? Yeah, I mean, I like, I have a hard time understanding what popular belief is because I'm so, like, immersed in this weird, like, very niche world. I don't even know what people think about this stuff anymore.

Yeah. Oh, that's. You know, I don't really. There's nothing that comes to mind immediately. Honestly. I think most of the people who care about the stuff are people who also are really invested in like, knowing the real truth about it.

So I don't. I don't really. I don't really think so. I. The one thing that I think surprised me the most was, like, how well. And I know this, like, Caitlin just said that this very much has to do with the fact that there are still people who think that pencils are made out of lead, which blows my mind. I had a girl in the shop, like last week who honestly did not believe me when I told her that that was not true. She really got like, mad at me about it and really thought I was lying to her, but which, like, blows my mind every time. Pencils are not made out of lead, they are made out of graphite. And it's. It was really surprising to me to actually like, read about how people. How like, how I guess, like geologists and scientists figured out what graphite is because it took a very long time. I totally understand why people think it's lead or why people thought it was lead for a really long time because they just simply did not know what it was. Yeah, it's. It's kind of crazy, but it's just so. It's just so strange to think. Think that there was once a time when it actually would take like a hundred years to Figure out something like that.

Whereas now you'd have an answer in, like, a day.

I don't know. I will say that when I was. When I was in London in October, I went to the Natural History Museum there, which I'm ashamed to admit that I lived in London for four and a half years and not once did I go there. It was my first time as a tourist. And in the upstairs. In the upstairs geology room, which is this long hallway. It's amazing. It's like the most beautiful room I've ever seen in my life. And they have a whole section dedicated to graphite. And they have, like, chunks of graphite from the Borrowdale mine, and they have, like, graphite from all over the world, like, every country that produces graphite. And just like. Just like large chunks in a glass case with, like, tiny little labels. It was pretty amazing. I wouldn't mind, like, becoming a graphite scientist. Is that a thing? Is that gonna be my next career? Do I get to wear, like, a lab coat?

Can it be millennial about, like,

I don't know about that.

There's so much science to that.

Yeah. I found a lot of really great old, like, what am I trying to say? Instruction manuals for, like, the original. Original test scoring machines with the instructions on, like, how. How, like, what pencils to use. I wish I'd save those. I don't even know where to find them now. They're somewhere in a folder somewhere on my computer. But those are really cool. Yeah, I'm gonna be a graphite scientist. But really, though, who's gonna make the lab coats?

Yeah, yeah. I want to be, like, the Bill Nye of Graphite.

Yeah.

Yeah. Can some very small college give me an honorary PhD in pencil history? Is that a thing?

Oh, geez, we're getting carried away.

Yeah, that was something I didn't really think about before I wrote the book. The publisher originally came at me with this like, okay, you're gonna write the text for this and then we are going to have somebody illustrate it. And they already had an illustrator in mind. The book was illustrated by Orianna Fenwick, who lives in Frankfurt, I think, and she does really amazing, like very photorealistic drawings in pencil. Her like work from her own practice is a lot more contemporary than that. But I've never actually met her, even spoken to her. This entire process was dealt with through a project manager. So it was a lot of coordination. It was an interesting process because for the publisher too, this was their first text based book that they published. And so there's a huge learning curve on their part. And for me too, like, I had to write the text for these books for like each section of the book while simultaneously taking notes on the things that I wrote about that I thought were crucial to be illustrated. And so I had to find a lot of the source images. And so at the end of every week, basically the way that it worked was that I would start my week with instructions or like I already had an outline telling me, like, these are the things that are due at the end of this week and these are the things that are due at the end of next week. And I did it section by section, not necessarily chronologically. And I would submit, at the end of the week I would submit my first draft and I would also submit my illustration notes. And it was interesting because like a whole month went by of me doing this where I didn't see anything, they didn't show me any illustrations. And then they sent me a folder and I got to see a few things and yeah, and I, they. It was, I don't know, I don't know what I thought. I mean, I of course had this entire book pictured in my mind from the very beginning. And it ended up being an amazing thing that was just different from what I expected. But I love the illustrations and a lot of it. Like, I know that Amy, the editor and Orianna, who's the illustrator, got kind of into like Kind of taking the reins on these things and doing the research on their own, too, to find their own source images that they wanted in the book. And so a lot of. A lot of the images in the book are not things. Things that I chose. They're things that other people on the team thought were important. So it was very much a collaborative effort.

Some of those ads are really fun. I think that was probably, like, my largest illustration. Notes to document. And I like. I ranked them by my favorites, like, which ones I thought were the most important. And I was really, really upset to see that they did not include my number one choice, which was a black and white ad from. I'm guessing it was probably from, like, geez, probably the late 1930s. It was a Mongol ad, and it was one where there was, like, a little boy and a little girl sitting at a table. And. And, yeah, yeah, Caitlin's motioning. She's doing it right now. I know what it is. And they have a piece of paper that's, like, rolled up like a cone. And I think it's the girl who's writing on a piece of paper, and the boy has his ear up to this cone and, like, the cone right up against, like, the pencil that she's writing with. And the whole ad is about the sound of a Mongol. It's about, like, the sound that a mongol makes to write with. And it advertises that you can get. I forgot what they call it, like. Like a. Like a pencil. Like, sound testing device from your local stationer, which is truly just a piece of paper rolled up. That's my favorite one. But they didn't include that one. That's okay. It was, like, kind. It was. It was kind of a deep cut. Yeah, I get it. I totally.

Really good. I have all these Mongols now, too. We're gonna work on that. Yeah, yeah. That would be so good.

Yeah, a sound testing station.

We should do. Because we. We have these cards that we use to send just, like, responses to letters that we get in the mail or sometimes customer notes that we have made through artifact uprising, where you can Truly, just, like, upload your Instagrams to their website and have them printed as like, really, like, high quality greeting cards. We should do ones that are like, us recreating famous pencil ads. That would be really good as, like, a greeting card or a postcard.

Yeah, yeah. With like, the girl with the blonde hair, though. There's one with brown hair too. There's the two.

Yeah. And it was honestly, like, what you're reading in the book is almost exactly what I actually wrote from the beginning. I edited each section maybe like twice before I submitted it. And Amy, who edited the whole book, who I actually met in the shop in December. It was so fun to meet her in real life. She was visiting with her family. But anyway, she, towards the very end, like, sent me word documents that with, like, highlighted edits that she made or things that didn't make sense to them. A lot of it was like, kind of translating like my pencil language to something that like, non pencil people can understand. Yeah. But, like, truly, I was. I was also very surprised by, like, how. How willing they were to just kind of like, leave it as it was. They didn't really come to me with any notes on, like, oh, like this. We need to like, move this section to a completely different part of the book. Or like, we want to just completely change the way that you're telling the story. Like, none of it, none of it was like that. They were very, I guess, very respectful of the way that I wanted to tell these stories, which I really appreciate. It's really almost exactly the same as what I wrote to begin with.

Sure. Yeah. That was a part of the book that was really important to me. That, much to my surprise, I kind of had to fight for because it's like I could talk forever and ever and ever about pencil history. But I think what's more interesting is, like, why I'm here talking to you guys about a book that I wrote about the pencil in 2017. Like, I think. I think it's pretty amazing that it's an object that has stood the test of time enough to garner enough attention to even, like, have a book in time, 2017. And so it's important to me to talk about that. And I. And I don't. I don't. Maybe I don't completely understand why. Why we're here and why we're still using these things. But, yeah, I don't know. And I truly believe that the reason that I'm interested in these things is the same reason that a lot of other people are, that it's just. It's just an experience that you can't get from anything else. In this day and age, when we're glued to our iPhones every day, it's just. It's. I don't even know how to put it into words because it's like more of a feeling. I wish I could, like, describe, like, exactly the feeling of why a pencil is important and why it will always be here. But, yeah, I don't know. I think that there will always be professions where pencil is the preferred writing instrument. I think there will always people be people who crave that physical connection to a writing instrument. I think that there, of course, there will always be artists who need things like this. And I'm curious to see how this stuff evolves because I think we're kind of in a strange period right now where none of the companies that exist right now making pencils are going anywhere anytime soon. They're all doing well, from what I understand. I mean, we just did an interview last week for CBS News about how pencil sales have grown or pencil imports to the US have grown 40% in, well, I guess between 2015 and 2016, the whole story was about how pencil sales are on the rise, which is something that I was completely oblivious to. And I'm pleased to hear that because

Oh, yeah, it's totally, you guys.

Yeah. Yeah. But I. And I think it might have something to do with like, kind of a shift towards, I guess, the appeal of nostalgia. Definitely. That's a really big word in our vocabulary over here. But, yeah, I don't know. I think. I think that we're gonna see in the next couple of years, maybe like the next 10 years, a strange time where a lot of these pencil companies who have been around for a really long time are gonna have to think about what their place is. I guess in a. In a. I guess like a longer term way, I think that we're going to start seeing maybe a little bit more innovation just out of necessity. I don't know. I like to think that, like, at our shop here, our main goal is to re engage people. And I hope that this book will kind of do that too. I don't really know. I have like a lot of words to describe all this and they're all getting jumbled up. I should just read to you from, from the book, but I don't know, for as long as people are buying pencils, I will be here selling them. I can definitely tell you that.

I actually didn't. I didn't even know what the book was going to look like, like, until I guess like mid December. I was. I had been sent like a couple of like, sample pages, so I had an idea of what it was going to look like. And then I was sent a PDF of a. Of like the nearly final proof for fact checking in December. And it didn't look anything like I thought it was going to. And I. And I mean, of course it was part of my contract that this is not a thing that I was to be like, super involved with. And they're also a publisher who do really amazing design, like design books. And so of course I like trusted them. But the book was originally blue. It was not pink. It was a kind of like, like very like that really like trendy shade of like cobalt blue that you see on a lot of like, design books or that people use like in type a lot these days. And I hated the color. Like, it just didn't feel right, as if there was only gonna be one accent color. I just didn't understand why it was blue because that just didn't seem like deliberate at all. I thought that it should be something that was maybe like a subtle nod to something related to what the book's about. And so in my very like, passionate and slightly upset email response, I kind of like in passing suggested eraser pink. And I didn't really hear from anyone for a while. And then I got the final proof and it was indeed like a kind of era erasery pink. The color that it ended up being actually printed in is much deeper than the one that I originally saw. I like the color though. I think it suits it.

Yeah, when they were like, when they were like kind of red, like early 1900s. Eraser pink is what it is. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's like the eponym of millennial pink. Yeah, we go to their showroom on our lunch breaks, like on a regular basis, so we can't really say much.

I love that. Yeah, the original eraser pink.

This is another thing that we talked about all day today. Who is my pencil hero?

Johnny Campbell, number one. Number one is K. Caitlyn.

No, I, I mean, obviously Caitlin's included. Johnny, you can be included too. But I, I don't know, I think like a lot of this has to do with families. Like that's the, like, if we were to pare this all down to like a paragraph, a lot of it would have to do with these families who started these businesses, who have been involved in these businesses for, for like decades or like for a lot of these places, like a whole century or longer. And yeah, I don't know, I think my, I don't think I have a pencil hero. I think all of my pencil heroes are living and I don't know, off the top of my head I can think of like Jim Weissenborn at Generals who I have semi regular phone conversations with. And he just wants to talk. He's a great talker. I love talking to him on the phone. He recently sent, just like randomly sent with no note, nothing, just like written in Sharpie. The box, like from Jim smiley face. Like a box full of vintage pencils from their warehouse in California where they keep like their archives of vintage pencils. Like whole like half grosses of really amazing pencils and. Yeah, or like Carol Hubscher, who is the current president of Caran d' Ache and her, her family started the brand and she's just such a badass woman who is like really interested in like bringing their company into the 21st century. And she's. Yeah, she's so amazing and so interesting to talk to and just such a, such a cool person. We were really lucky to be able to spend some like, good quality time with her when we were in Switzerland last year. Yeah. Huh.

Oh yeah. Like people like Mary Norris who are advocates for pencils on like A much wider scale than we can reach. Yeah, I think. I think, like, my Pencil Heroes are this circle of people who I work with on, like, a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

No. Except for when we were just talking about Pencil Heroes. I hadn't heard that term for a long time. Nobody's asked me about that. I remember that when we first started talking about this book and didn't have an outline set for it, I had suggested the book be called Pencil Heroes and it would just be, like, profiles on all the Pencil heroes. And that didn't happen. And I'm a little bit bummed about that because then I could include everybody. All the Pencil Hero. Yeah, I could. Maybe that's the next book, all the Pencil Heroes. I could, like, self publish, print it on, like, printer paper and staple it and mail it to everyone. Well, Caitlin will draw pictures of everyone. Like portraits.

Oh, my God, that would be really good. And everybody could do their Pencil Hero. Yeah.

We have to draw a picture, though.

There have to be portraits, obviously. Yeah.

So that, that pencil is one that I have been thinking about since probably before, definitely before I opened the shop of like, okay, what pencils am I missing? Like, which ones don't exist that I feel like should. And as a person who is very, very reliant on a planner and on lists, I always use a black or I always use a red pencil or a colored pencil in conjunction with whatever graphite pencil I'm using. And I was disappointed to find that there weren't really any graphite and red double ended pencils other than like the Louise Feely ones that she did with I think Princeton when she published one of her design books like a couple years ago. And those are made in China. They're like kind of terrible.

I think it's graphite. Like the, the black end is graphite. I don't. We stocked those when we first opened and haven't stocked them since because they just weren't great quality. If you actually like were to use them. They're beautiful. Yeah. And so that's just one that we've kind of joked with. And I kind of forgot about that idea until one of our like, very original customers, Mike Sachs, who is an editor at Vanity Fair, he has a podcast. It's really funny. He started coming to the shop when we first opened and this kind of, this discussion kind of started again. And then we were thinking about it for a long time and ever since we developed this relationship with Caran d', Ache, we talked about it a lot with them and with Carol and Jean Francois, who's their CEO. And finally they agreed to do it for us. And yeah, I guess before then I was in Colombia and found that they have pencils that are like that, that are made by like very, very local brands.

And the Eagle Shorthandy, which is a very, very old vintage pencil. It's like one of those very thin stenographer's pencils that was one third red and two thirds like a very hard graphite. Yeah. And then in certain parts of Latin America, they make a similar pencil that Is used, from what I understand, mostly by accountants. Yeah. And so Karen Dash agreed to make this pencil for us, and we just kind of went from there. Our friend Adam Kurtz, who's done a couple books, we did a pin with him. He's one of our favorite shop friends. He was in the shop today. And what did he say? He said that it was, like, one less pencil to lose or something to that extent. And I thought that was really funny.

Yeah. Which is what I like about it. I'm a pretty, like, minimalist pencil user. I don't carry a huge pencil case with me every day. I carry one, maybe two pencils and, like, a tiny sharpener.

Yeah. Or we should do. We should, like, quote Adam as saying that we should do, like, endorsements like you have on a book, except on a pencil box. Yeah. Mike would do one for us, too. We could get a few other people.

He's a good sport. I think you would support that.

Yeah. We have the box of the best that we've had. It's one of the best that we've had. We had them for, like, a good week. Do you have one? I don't even know that I have one.

You bought me one. Which you should. Before.

You were very new. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Because I think they sold out on a day that I wasn't there or something.

It's a good one. We have the box still. The box is really slim and really cute. It only holds six pencils.

But. Yeah, the. Yeah. We.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely took some time. It. Yeah. Oh, how far we've come since when I first emailed all these. These people.

Like, from my apartment and was like, hey, I'm opening a pencil shop. And they're like, okay. Like, yeah, I don't understand it, but you're paying us, so we'll sell you the pencils. Yeah, it's. It's amazing how far we've come. And I think it. I think it, like, helps that Caitlin and I have made a real effort to, like. To, like, ask questions and to actually, like, go out and meet the. Meet a Lot of these people and to, like. Yeah, to, like, have them in our shop and show them around and, like, tell them all the stories. It's. It's. And to inquire about things that we want to know. It's. Yeah, it's. It's taken some time, but, I mean,

Yeah. Yeah, they. Yeah. And I think, like, a. And where we use social media very effectively and have an audience that I think is really different than a lot of these companies kind of have on their own. So I think that helps, too, is that we kind of give them, like, a little bit of a cool factor, I guess, or.

Yeah, bringing it back. Some, like, weird young girls selling pencils in New York. It's like, it's a funny story to a lot of people if you boil it down to just that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it really was. And when that. When that pencil first arrived, I was furious, like, very upset, because it didn't feel the way that I expected it to. The graphite part didn't. It felt much harder than I expected upon, like, first use. Yeah. And once we sharpened it, like, off of that, like, kind of like, factory sharpened. Yeah. It grew on me. But Then the explanation that I received for that. That makes complete sense, the more that I think about it, is that they had to make those cores thicker than usual in order to match the size of the red ones. And so, like, the contact on the paper is a lot different because it's. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. And so it just feels different. It just feels really different than what that. That pencil feels like in a different size and a different body.

They really have, like, a month where they make HB cores for the entire year, and that's it.

Yeah, it's like.

Yeah, no, exactly. That's, like, actually what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah. A lot more went into it than we expected. That's for sure. It was. Yeah. There was a huge learning curve involved with doing this, like, truly collaborative pencil.

Yeah.

Oh, please. Yes.

I have nothing against friendly. It's not a great yellow.

Especially because there's so many good yellows. Yeah, let's not go there. Other things I think we're still, like.

Well, we had it until we even had samples.

We were ghosted. Yes, yes.

Yeah.

I had, like, spent so much time sourcing the right zippers because that's very important to me.

Yeah.

We definitely have some things we're working on that you'll see in the next month or two, for sure. Nothing like super innovative, but definitely things that you're gonna be like, oh, wow, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, we've got some fun things.

Yeah. Like making it better or more fun or just, like. I don't know. I think it's even reminding people. Yeah, it's. Yeah, exactly. Reminding people that things are in the

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're very lucky to have a lot of people on our side now, so we can make some things happen.

Oh, my God.

Probably like a hundred thousand. They would make us commit to, like, so many. We would have to file there just to, like, take a Video of this for Instagram. That's one of our, like, one of

Yeah, they're very much like, oh, come here and we'll show you. But like, we can't tell you about it. It's very weird.

Definitely not the same.

I'm so excited about this one.

Really good.

A lot of surprises.

Yeah. Some of the things in this box are things that were really hard for us to get that actually took three months to track down and convince someone to send us.

in far away places.

I don't have my own anything, so you can find me on cwpencil Enterprise Instagram, on Twitter wpencils, which I have been getting better at. I think I gained 57 followers in the past like five days. So I'm pretty proud about that.

Yeah.

long past summer if I could just count the times this has happened before.