Editing The Pen Addict 337/transcript (section)

== Ink Guru Selection ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Thank you. All right, so we'll move on to the Ink Guru. This is the person, they have 10,000 sample bottles in a cabinet. They've got their color decks all filled up, and they're looking for something new. Brad, what would you recommend?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm fascinated by this stinking Ackermann Delfts Blue. Just for the packaging and the bottle and the idea behind it and the reason why it exists. It's just everything Dutch. It's everything Ackermann. It's what I expect. They make the most beautiful bottles. Like, if you know someone that's, like, just a huge ink junkie and they have, like, they've subscribed to, like, all the ink flights and all the ink samples and, you know, and have a few bottles of their favorites. If they don't have an Ackermann ink, number one, the ink is amazing. Number two, the bottle is the best in the business. And this Delfts Blue, I'm just in love with it. The only reason I haven't bought it is because I may not actually use the ink. The ink is really good. It's just a traditional blue, and that's traditionally an ink color I don't use. But, boy, am I tempted. I might just have to break down and get that for myself. See, I'm selling myself on these gifts. That's the other problem with this gift guide. Between stuff that I want and stuff that y'all bring up, I'm going to end up buying half this stuff. But Ackermann Delfts Blue is at the top of my list. I think it's really pretty.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So, I'm going to go with the Mont Blanc Lucky Orange because that, I mean, one, it's a limited ink, right? At least it's not super easy to get. So, like, that maybe increases the desire for the Gotta Catch Them All ink collector. But I just, I've been super impressed with the color. I think it's a beautiful, rich orange that I really, really enjoy. And it's been different enough to the oranges that I've been using over the last couple of years to make it something that I'm going for more and more often. I think this is a wonderful color and quite a surprise for me. Like, I wouldn't have expected such a wonderful orange to come from Mont Blanc. So, you know, I would have just thought, oh, they're the stuffy, fuddy-duddy people. They're not going to create something so vibrant and wicked. But they did. And I love it. It's a great, great ink. And it's paired very nicely with one of my sailor pens.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I really like that orange, too. It's one of the few that I've actually purchased this past year, maybe last year. But, yeah. And the bottle is beautiful, too.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't, you know, their logo, for as much as it can be that you feel about it, it looks really good, especially on the bottles, right? Because they just... Oh, it's a stunning logo. And it's such... It looks... I really think that it looks better on their ink bottles than it does on their pens. Because it's so big and bold on the bottles. I think it looks really great. Yeah. It's nice. Very nice. And nice packaging, too. Just in general, like, the branding around the Lucky Orange has been really great.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So, my suggestion for the Ink Guru would be to try something, a newer ink. And so, I recommended the Three Oysters, which is the new... I believe it's Korean. Is it Taiwanese? It's Korean. But there's a couple of colors in particular that I think are pretty unusual and pretty unique. One of them is called Doldum. D-O-L-D-A-M. And it is sort of like a blue-gray with a grayish... Grayish sheen. I don't know. It's the... It's like one of the coolest colors.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm looking at this. It's pretty wild.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. It's very unusual.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Just a great... It's just a super cool color. And then there's two other ones. One's called Red Wine, which is a really nice burgundy color. But not... It doesn't look like a lot of the other burgundy colors that I've seen. And then they have a sort of a golden color called mustard, which is also really nice. Non-metallic. It's just a golden color. It's kind of... It really does look like mustard, yellow-green-ish, which I think is really nice. And of course, you can never go wrong with including a color ring in your holiday gift giving.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think if you don't do it, you are going wrong. Right? Like I think it is a bad idea not to do it. You must. Everyone must have one. How else are you going to test your rings? Exactly.

'''Ana Reinert:''' There's no other way. And I've got a shameless plug for the Pen Addict listeners this week. The well-pointed desk shop has 10% off anything in our store if you use the coupon code Pen Addict. And that's good through the 15th.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. If you're shopping for stationery, the color rings or the color decks are a mandatory purchase. They're such a great product. And I could not recommend them more. And even if Anna wasn't on here, I'd still say the same thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I quite like the person that makes them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' She's pretty okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Thanks. Thanks, guys.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. I'm going to introduce this next topic because I think it brought about some confusion in our list. And this is how my brain works. So in the beginning, we had the stationery newbie. It's like this is the person who just got their first taste. Their first hit was free. This person, the novice, has no clue about this. And you want to kind of introduce that person into what is a decent stationery item or two that is a step way up from anything they've ever used before. This is a person where you're going to give them their first, like, good stationery products. What path would you go down?

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So I genuinely really struggled with this one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I agree. It was harder than I thought it would be, honestly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, mostly because the writing implement that I would pick, you'd already picked it, which I feel honestly was unfair from you because you know that I was going to pick it, but you did it beforehand. So I went slightly differently, and I'm actually pretty proud of my pick. So for the paper, I would choose the Rodeo web notebook for two reasons. One, the paper is amazing. And two, it looks like a Moleskine. So when you give it to someone, you're like, oh, I get this. Right? Like, I see these all the time. So I think it is a really great upgrade for someone. And I think it's also just like a great starter notebook. And it comes in a really cool orange as well as black. So I like it. It's very well made. Paper is very good. Big, big fan of the Rodeo stuff. I haven't used them in a while, but I always love it when I do. And then I was thinking, what else could I pick? Right? Like, I was really struggling. I didn't want to pick a fountain pen because that feels like it doesn't fit the brief. You've picked the thing that I would pick. So I came up with the Rotaring 600 mechanical pencil because it's, you know, they have a pen chalet for like $30. It retails typically for like $40. I don't think you can spend that amount of money on anything else in pens and get like the very best that the category has to offer. But you do with the Rotaring 600. You spend $30.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like how you explain that. That's a really, really accurate statement, I believe.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I think that it's like for that kind of price to be able to get the tippy top, I think makes it a really exciting thing. And plus, it's not too complicated, right? Like it's not got anything to it that's funny, right? Like people understand how to use a mechanical pencil. And it looks great. You know, I think the pairing of the Rodeo web notebook and the Rotaring 600, that is like a professional looking thing. Like that is a nice looking thing. But it's also fun in its own way. So I think that this is an interesting pairing and could be something that somebody really enjoys.