COVID19 Small Business Journal: Week 6 Update

We continue to hold steady, carrying on.

Super has made himself at home in the shop, doing his usual trifecta of sleeping in the sunny spots, stealing food, and barking at people who are looking through the door.

You may not believe me when I say this, especially for those of you who have met him, but I do believe Chicken actually misses all the action in the studio shop downstairs. We try not to let him into the shop too much because it’s empty, and once we leave for the day he’s going to be stuck there all day, but he’s always very excited, purring and meowing, to go into the shop when someone needs to go down there to hunt down some inventory, or to water the plants. He’s become both more affectionate and more displeased and disgruntled with his humans in general.

There’s no real big updates. We changed our weekly email newsletter from Fridays to Tuesdays. We’ve always done it on Fridays because we’ve thought of it like a nice way to start the weekend, news of stationery treats in your inbox, but the change will allow us to get orders through the Canada Post system faster, as CP doesn’t normally operate on Saturdays and Sundays. This seems like a pretty small thing, and it is, but at the same time, all these tiny and weird changes are a bit unsettling, sort of like finding a spider in the shower with you.

This past week I sent out the newsletter saying “who knows when our Rohrer and Klingner shipment will come in! Shipping from Europe is precarious these days!” and it turned out that in fact Jon did as the shipment had arrived in the warehouse while I was tapping away on the newsletter. In any case, there is something extremely satisfying about shelves full of neatly stacked boxes of ink. Just because I’m on a roll in sharing non-essential information about life, my favourite Rohrer and Klingner inks are probably Salix, Alt-Goldgrun, Sepia and Konigsblau. People often buy inks for the bottle or label design, and I’m always personally aggrieved when people say they’re not particularly attracted to the more no-nonsense style of Rohrer and Klingner. I love the amber glass bottles, and the classic look of the labels.

We have some other things on their way in that I’m pretty excited about, including a few shipments from Japan. (It’s washi tape!) We also have other shipments including the regular stationery stuff, pens, inks, notebooks. I feel like every shipment we get in we’re so grateful for because we have no idea if things are closing up or it’s going to be months until we’ll see them again.

I’m enjoying my new tote bag, which is a reflection of my general mental state. I now lug around different books for different purposes, and it’s very heavy but it’s all I have. I’ve been frying up halloumi cheese in my cast iron “for my salad” and then eating it straight from the pan, so that’s how that’s going.