artisanal pencils

This is awesome. There’s a guy who will sharpen a pencil for you. For $35. He calls is “Artisanal Pencil Sharpening.”

He also wrote a book on how to sharpen a pencil. AND! Not only that! He teaches classes about it!

AND! AND! He’s sold 1,804 hand-sharpened pencils already! According to the calculator on my phone, that’s over $63,000!

Apparently, David Rees used to be a political cartoonist. Then he got a job with the Census. On the first day, the instructor told the new recruits to sharpen their pencils. He had such a good time doing it, that he decided he wanted to do it for a living. So...he did.

This is all real. I looked it up. The video is really funny. There is some adult language, so, you know, don’t use those words.

I’m a huge fan of the yellow #2 pencil. It’s great. I must admit, though, that I use the electric sharpener at work. I will also admit that I don’t like it. It’s not a very good sharpening. It gets the job done, but it’s pretty sloppy.

I also have an unelectric sharpener at home. That one is not very good, either.

Lucky for me, this guy lives in the Hudson River Valley in New York! That’s not far from here!

(I know that because my sister lives in the Hudson River Valley and I’ve been to her house. Hi Sis!)

I might have to make a road trip to get a pencil artisanally sharpened. I don’t know if he does a factory tour, but if he does, I'm doing it.

If I didn’t wear glasses, I would put a pencil behind my ear all the time. It makes me want to get contacts because I totally rock the “pencil-behind-the-ear” look.

I sometimes wish I could be as entrepreneurial as that. But what could I do? Staple stuff for you? Sharpen your scissors? Type weird blogs that are sometimes funny and sometimes boring and sometimes about pencils? Hmmm…idea...

I’m off to yellow #2.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj