Hello all, I've been lurking here for a short time (a week?) and have fully taken the plunge. My (probably familiar and often repeated) story: I've always hated shaving. Discovered some videos on traditional wet shaving accidentally (looking at knife sharpening info, and stropping). I bought the cheap DVH soap/bowl/brush at Wally world, wet shaved with my Fusion, and it was noticeably less awful.

So, merry christmas to me: I just bought a Merkur 38c, a tweezerman badger brush, an alum block, a tube of Proraso sandalwood cream, a sampler pack of blades from a big online retailer. I then got a straight razor & strop "kit" from SRD with a Dovo Best Quality 6/8. It's all on the way.