Saturday Shop Updates

There's been a lot going on here! As I write, the shop is currently bustling as I'm here in the apartment, watching the baby snooze and the dumplings on the stove. With the fall weather starting to come in (Jon is still propping open the door, but those days are coming to close as the temperatures start to dip), I'm getting all tingly thinking about everything that's happening. We've started getting ready for the holidays, with shipments starting to come in from everywhere. We're well into stocking up on inks in preparation for the winter freeze, when bringing in large quantities of liquid in glass bottles doesn't always work as we'd like. If you're thinking about ordering inks, check out more details about how we ship ink in the winter here. We just got our largest Diamine shipment yet in, actually our first one directly from Diamine in the UK, arranged through our distributor in Canada. Normally, we completely stop shipping Diamine bottles in the winter because they've proven to be a bit more fragile, but these new bottles we've gotten in may be a bit stronger, so we'll see how it goes. We just rearranged our packing area to see if we get things moving a bit more efficiently here, and while it's still a bit disorganized, things are starting to look good here as we get ready for the Christmas season. To help with all of this, we've brought in an extra set of helping hands - Sarah! Sarah has been fantastic, she's been working out in the shop front meeting customers and getting to know the products, helping to pack up your online orders, and also helping in the overall organization of our packing area and operation. Sarah being here has meant that we're finally starting to see some action on some larger scale projects. None of it is really earth shattering, but it's stuff that's been on the back burner for up to months that we now have the time to invest into doing well. Some of it I'm pretty excited about, but a lot of it also long, long overdue backend stuff. Stay tuned! More to come. Best of all, Sarah is a great fit with our small family business because she and Super are getting along fabulously. Jon sometimes jokes that it's Super who decided who was hired, but in all honesty, it's really been terrific that Sarah has fit right in with Jon and myself and the barking maniac and the little monster (you can guess which is which). I've watched enough Cesar Millan to know that our dog's nuts because we're not dog-whispering properly, but Sarah's totally okay with Super clambering all over her, I think maybe because she's got her own (better-behaved) beast at home :) And last, and also possibly least, my own life has truly been revolutionized by our latest tool: we got a price gun. It's been nuts. I've been price tagging everything, even things that aren't for sale. It's so much fun, I sometimes feel like I can't stop. This only thing that's proven to be impervious to my price sticking is the dog, because the price tags are too small to stick onto his fur. I really can't believe it's taken us this long to get one.