6 years old - exchanged a 50$ handmade bullet keychain (souvenir from Norfolk visit) for a dirt cheap, dulled to oblivion folding knife. Wanted to have a knife more than a great keychain I could still be holding onto. Lost the folding after awhile - by then considered an existential failure.
What happened in between wouldn't be important for this specific journey...
36 years old - separated for 4 years, out of a bloodsucking relationship, paying childcare, and bordering depression. Needed a break - not the pills. Went to live with my father who had recently got separated - and was getting old. He needed not to be alone too. Got to cook almost every night. I think interest in knife came before true interest in better cooking. The everyday motion with cheap knife after cheap knife, and inflicted self-cuts thereof, got me to look at proper knife skills. Which quickly led me to shopping my first good knives - AND to start paying more care for culinary skills.
Got carried on with hype and cheap prices and bought a Global G2. First encounter with KKF happened too, and for the first time my researches did not put the Global into the strats of good knives - like not at all... but I was carried on and went to buy anyway...
Also ordered a Victorinox Santoku because of a member here claiming Victorinox truly were the good guys of cheap market knives, and apart the Global Chef I had already ordered, a Santoku seemed to be the only other useful knife to me. Got the Global first, unboxed it, used it, hated it (that's over cheap Cuisinart ceramics, or SS, Chefs), thought about it, fraudulently sent it back as unboxed and got an All-Clad 12.5 fry pan instead. Got the Victorinox in the meanwhile from another online source and loved it - absolutely. It was so much later on that I realized that it wasn't such a sharp knife at all - more of a quite thin, properly made, dimpled blade that was inherently so ever slightly advantaged in some cuts - and so ever really better than any Cuisinart knife. On the first encounter, the Victo's "sharpness" and good behavior were a revelation to me. I think I never had truly believed that a knife could truly lead the cut before that moment. Folding knife regressive anxiety, ya know.......
Still needed a Gyuto, went against any type of hype whatsoever to buy the always overlooked-discredited Diplôme line of Zwilling, because I thought a Wa handle was somewhat suspicious (deciding against Miyabi Koh, and discovering in the process that the Diplômes were pretty much the Yo version of Miyabi Koh). Got both the Santoku and Gyuto. Loved both. That was much nearer of sharp than anything before - and those F-grinds had truly amazing edge retention, considering the **** I've put them through in the shittiest conditions - bamboo boards.
A f*** up in shipping made those two knives two months late - it was only in the beginning of 2020 that I got them, and meanwhile the Victo Santoku, and much time spent reading here, had already opened the door in my mind... that of a proper J-Knife. Still I made a last stand in the W department - a Victo 10" Chef. Loved it enough to waste another month not looking back on my choice to avoid handmade knives once again, although it was nowhere near equal to the Diplômes sharpness or pleasures, which kept me on the rim between not attempting anything, and plunging head first into J-knives.
Got a Misono, a Moritaka, a Takayuki, a Mazaki, a Kurosaki since... and I can feel it won't stop there, although I made some kind of a calculated regression just tonight. That is, while looking at 500$ Gyutos because my next purchase is coming soon... stronger than any will left in me to keep this journey on the budget side. This is nothing, I may have spent over 25K in PC stuff while making another 40K come in for various reasons at work, or for personal jobs. What's a 2K already spent on knvies?
LOL
