This picture pretty much sums up the 2014 D.C. Fountain Pen Supershow, as I stumble back to my hotel room on a Sunday afternoon, tired and broke but psyched to play with some new pens, many of which I've been coveting for a very long time. I went a bit crazy this show, mainly due to the fact that I've been saving up for it for a while by refraining from doing much shopping online over the past six months, and also selling some lesser-used pieces in my collection to make room for some acquisitions that I think will work better for me. Not pictured are my semi-impulse Sunday purchases that you will see up on the blog soon enough, including a couple of special edition Delta Fusion 82's in celluloid from Bryant Greer that I couldn't pass up, as well as a Sailor pen with a Music Nib that I had ground by Mr. Nagahara. Also, after talking with Ed Jelley I had one of the Fusion 82s ground by Richard Binder to one of his Arabic-Hebrew Italic grinds. All attendees on Sunday received a free bottle of black Delta ink.

Highlights of "The Big Show":

Getting to meet everyone from Kenro Industries at the FPGeeks gathering on Saturday night. Good drinks, good pens, good people;
Getting to meet many readers and some other bloggers in person;
Seeing how crowded the show was on Saturday, including a massive crowd of young(er) people, which was very encouraging to see, and gives me a lot of hope for the hobby and the industry (Product looked like it was flying off the shelves at Anderson pens, Vanness started running out of certain colors of Akkerman on Saturday, and you couldn't get close to Richard Binder or Mike Masuyama);
Meeting Mr. Nagahara (Sailor's Nibmeister), and watching him perfectly grind my too-broad music nib to a new stub in 10 minutes flat;
Getting to talk to Mike Masuyama and his wife again in person;
Playing with the traveling nib display at the nibs.com booth, as well as two entire tables of inked-up Nakayas to drool over; and
Being amazed at how hard Yafa and Monteverde are pushing the "Tool Pen"--seriously, that thing was everywhere.

D.C. is a can't-miss event, but like last year, it did me in for pen shows this year. I'm done 'til Atlanta 2015!