Things continue to be sunny and hairy around here. We had a successful inventory day, and we counted a lot of things. We got a few shipments in that we were holding off on counting so as to not make inventory more complicated, and those are slowly sorting themselves out again. Our favourite distributors at Crestar sent us these Pilot branded page flags and I’m pretty excited about them.

We are still working on re-opening, and the timeline is still loose. It’s the same news every week, and I apologize for there not being more of an update, especially as we see other stores beginning to open up and figure things out. We always seem one step behind things, and it’s no exception here. We’re struggling with how to approach a lot of things, mainly that our shop is a high touch shop, physically. We don’t want to have to have our staff police mask wearing, or hand sanitizing if someone touches their face in between trying out a pen, and we’re hearing so many stories of both tough interactions and good resolutions of conflicts between people based on different comfort levels of safety out in public. We strongly believe the best way to stay in business is to serve people the best we can, and we’re just working on figuring out what that is.

We miss you all. A regular customer, who had stopped by for a curbside pick up, and was walking up Clinton, waved at us when we were driving up the street on our way home and it was so heart-warming you’d think we were heading off to war or something, floating away on an ocean liner. Lots of things have changed since the beginning of the pandemic that we can’t wait to set up in store: washi tape displays, all the new books we’ve begun carrying and want to talk with you about.

There’s been a heat wave in Toronto recently, and we’ve been making iced coffee. We ran out of ice cube trays here, so I had to resort to using these silicone gummy bear trays I once bought several years ago in a fit of trying to convince myself that I was an excellent and crafty mother and have not since used once. They’re terrible for pouring coffee into, these tiny bear holes, all in a jiggly silicone tray, but once they’re swimming around in my coffee they’re sort of cute. Plus I don’t feel like it was a total waste of money or cupboard space to have kept these trays that I never otherwise use. Plus, because the bears are very small, when they start melting down a bit, they’re very satisfying to crunch. It’s the small things in life.

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July 04, 2020 — wonderpens

Comments

wonderpens

wonderpens said:

So glad the bears could finally be put to some use! Here’s to staying cool and getting through.

Chris

Chris said:

Awesome!

We are at war…at war with our own minds. The physical health part was scary at first, but now it’s our mental health that we all need to watch out for – this blog and browsing the website keeps me grounded and close to the things I really love. Your store is an escape for me where I find peace, hope to walk the floor again really soon…

Keep well,
Chris

Andrea

Andrea said:

I love the mindfulness of using the gummy bear trays for ice cubes in a heat wave. Very real, very present, very pragmatic.

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