Shop Updates - Back in Stock + Wonder Pens at Home

It's been busy around here! We've got some shipments with goodies to share, and stuff on the way as well. Here's the good stuff: We just got our shipment of Jinhao pens, and we've restocked most of your favourites. Some of them pens we carry are in and out of manufacturing, but we've got a good pile on hand now, including the Pearl 606, the 126 in Matte Black, and the Lava 165 (my favourite!).

We expecting our Field Notes shipment to come in any day, maybe even tomorrow! I know more than a few of you have been waiting for this, and we've been dilly dallying while waiting for the exchange rate to look more kindly upon us. We'll have the Workshop Companion set as well as their latest seasonal edition, the Shenandoah. I've heard some really good things about the paper quality in the Workshop Companion for fountain pens, but of course I love the colour scheme of the Shenandoah, all warm and green for the fall. TWSBI ECOs, inkwells, and other treats are on their way as well, I think maybe even to arrive tomorrow or Friday. We're expecting more Hobonichis (including some covers!), Emerald of Chivor, Noodler's Plains of Abraham, Blue Midori Covers and other Midori things, and more to arrive over the next few weeks. I think this may be our last shipment of Blue Midori covers, so be sure to sign up on the product page for an automated in-stock notification e-mail if you're keen on getting one! We got a tiny mention in NOW! Magazine's Leslieville suggestions! Check us out :)

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Here on the home front, it's also been a bit of a crazy last few days, with some construction going on in the apartment. We moved the bricks and mortar shop to the west end primarily because we wanted to have a place where we could live in an attached apartment (this is harder than you can imagine to find in Toronto). After months of looking, Jon found this place here, in this industrial building with units that could be renovated and joined together. As with everything that Jon and I have done together over the years, we've had to put a bit of imagination and creativity, along with some tape and glue, into the apartment to make it all warm and cosy. We've got some Ikea tea lights, but even their magic has its limits. This place has concrete floors, which can still be a bit bumpy in places, and the wooden beams are beautiful, but maybe not super smooth for little fingers to run over, and there are some crazy electrical outlets in surprising places, but it's all part of the character and charm of our now home. However, it's still definitely an industrial building, and living in an industrial building has come with its own set of adjustments. The early summer thunderstorm, the big one, caused flooding coming through the bottom of the wall in our unit, apparently along with several other units in the building. Even when it's just raining, if it rains hard enough our toilet starts bubbling and choking up water (key takeaway: don't use the bathroom when it's raining). When the upstairs folks jump or bang anything, sometimes we get a small sprinkling of dust from the insulation and ceiling. Every once in a while we get knocking on the doors to see if it's our car blocking in someone else's in the "no parking" courtyard (it isn't). We've had some some leaky pipes in multiple places, and over the weekend we had some friendly visitors come to examine the ceiling. Work began on Monday, which I guess thankfully is a day the shop is closed so Jon could navigate everything going on and continued into Tuesday. There were some long walks with Caleb asleep in the stroller, including in the crazy rain and wind yesterday. It's crazy the things this kid can sleep through. There was dust and dirt everywhere from tearing out the insulation (although they were very thoughtful about trying to not step on things they didn't have to, and picking up some of Caleb's toys off the floor) and the wooden ceiling slats above. I should've taken some more pictures of the work, because there were guys on ladders crawling above Caleb's bedroom and on top of wardrobes and plastic sheets hanging from wooden beams and ladders and drills...all next to Caleb's wooden cars and our breakfast leftovers and a giant watermelon on the kitchen table. We've been recovering, with dusting and wiping down all of the shelves, laundering the curtains and vacuuming everywhere. But out of the dust, two great things have happened. One is that I found my long lost original Neon Lime Safari! I think I mentioned somewhere that I lost it, but loved it so much, that I convinced Jon that I needed another one. I told him that I thought it fell out of the stroller, so there was "no way" I would ever find again, and so wouldn't it be best for me to just have a new one?? Now I have two :) But even better than that is that we got our "bedroom" wall painted! It's been on my to-do list since we moved in, because nothing really says "we're squatters" like sleeping on a mattress on the floor next to a wall with dry wall mud marks to cover up the stud screws and joins. (We actually do have a bed frame, but Caleb likes to hang out on the bed, and his sense of balance is not so hot.) With everything going on, today was finally back to 'normal.' It's been such a strenuous few days, though, that Caleb, Super and I had to take a 3-hour mid-afternoon siesta.