So I take it you had a good time Sarah?
Why yes, you could say that. Does it show?
I'm still full-up from my time in Titusville. As last year, I once again enjoyed GEC's zero-pretense, welcoming "Here we are, here's what we do, here's how" hospitality (a wealth of resource and good company that cannot be overstated), but this time was all the more meaningful because of connections I've made here. How good it was to meet face-to-face and share our love of knives.
As just one (more) example, consider this opportunity:
Gary had this very box o' goodness along with him. As great as Gary's photographs are, it was education and revelation to handle the knives themselves, this particular selection which has made his cut (pun intended, if not necessary
).
I know I'm repeating myself, to a well-versed crowd no less, but there really is nothing like seeing knives in person and evaluating/understanding them in-hand and/or in relation to one another. To hear their owners' (or:
makers'!) take on them? Gold.
No matter how careful we are to provide scale and helpful comparison and information online, most knives look roughly the same size to me in pictures. (As just one example, GEC's #55s and #85s look much larger to me online than they reveal themselves to be in actuality. I am always surprised at how relatively small they are, though I really shouldn't be by now.)
I so enjoyed seeing Gary's selection, Charlie's barlows and Lyle's farmer jacks, Bob's array of all sorts of patterns for chicken fingering and coon eyeing (or something like!), and maybe most recognizably, watching Brian pat his pockets and bring forth yet another knife he'd brought along (including really cool pieces I wouldn't have seen otherwise, like a wicked one-armed-man #85 and a Menefee). And all this in addition to asking Christ Tucker to please let me see this, and now this, and maybe these together, from the GEC store inventory. For example.
Maybe this is old hat to many of you, but being able to
share like this -- not just the knives themselves, but the knives as seen and chosen and examined and valued by their respective owners and creators-- was a first for me.
Hopefully not a last.
~ P.
Also there was this:
