Christmas Currently Inked

It's Christmas! Now that we're in December, I think it's officially the season. I've sort of had my head in holiday prep for a little while, but I'm glad to be joined by everyone else.

While I'm usually a bit more willy-nilly about my Christmas pens, this year I thought I would see about a more unified front. While the Safari is more of a polarizing pen as compared with the Metro - it's a very distinctive aesthetic - these are the pens for me, so why not celebrate the season with them. Someone asked me the other day about Caleb's first fountain pens for school, and whether or not he would be using a Metro, and I had to say he would be using a Safari. Not even the ABC? Nope. Straight to the good stuff.

This year's picks: Apple Green Safari with Pelikan Edelstein Olivine

All-Black Safari with Sailor Kiwa-Guro

Red Safari with Diamine Carnival

Neon Lime Safari (2015's special edition, now discontinued) with J. Herbin Stormy Grey

Vista with Sailor Jentle Epinard

Pelikan Olivine, this year's special edition from Pelikan.
    Diamine Carnival - a Christmas red.     I normally might ink up a few more Christmas inks, but I already seem to be overflowing with inked up pens. At a certain point, it might behoove me, as a responsible pen clerk, to clean out and store a few of them, but as of right now I'm enjoy all the choices, all the abundance. I'm feeling wild.* I think I typically try to keep under 10 inked up, typically 5-6, with a rogue one or two floating around my desk or bag, but for Christmas cards, you've got to have the right inks and pens, or why even bother?** And so I added to the overflowing pen roll. Our upcoming Christmas Card Party, this Thursday, December 6th from 7-9 pm at the Main Shop, and I hope we might see some of you there. We've been unpacking boxes of Christmas and Hanukkah and seasonal cards and it's a thrill to see them all along our walls. For me, I'm making my list, checking it twice, pens ready for action - I'm hoping to get a real chunk out of my list this Thursday evening. As the years have gone on, our circle and community seem to be growing and deepening, and this is the season for adding an extra line or two to share with people the things you don't always have a chance to say the rest of the year.  

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  In other news, we're marching on into the holiday festivities. You would think that each year we would get more organized, have figured out all the timing, gotten better at balancing family obligations with keeping the shop from careening off into the ether, know where to hang up the string lighting - and that this busy time of year would get easier and easier. However, this year, shockingly enough, it seems as hectic and rushed as always. We currently don't even know where our string lights are, much less where we're going to hang them: Jon has ordered new ones, which have been delayed in shipping. The old ones had been packed away somewhere in the moves, and no one is eager to go digging around in the murky basement boxes. I'm hoping the old ones will turn up and we'll have string lights everywhere. That being said, with each passing year, with Caleb getting older, I'm trying harder to slow down and enjoy it all. I always worry that my kids are going to grow up without those classic traditions - I definitely do not have it together to bake Christmas cookies, and our Christmas tree goes into the shop - so I can only hope they'll grow up with fond memories of some of our more unconventional traditions. Seven days a week at the shop, Christmas candy at the registers, sealing up stacks of envelopes of Christmas cards, heading to our vendors and friends. So this week, we're off to get our Christmas tree - two in fact, one for each shop. Double the fun. *In that manic, unhinged way small businesses get around the holiday rush, heightened magnificently by the preceding weeks of postal system job action. **Totally just kidding. No judgement here, the world is your oyster.