A Few Winter Housekeeping Things

It's that time of year again: along with the beauty of winter comes...the cold. Every year we play it by ear a bit, and we adjust as we need to, but as we start seeing lower and lower temperatures, we have a few changes to how we send out packages containing ink. Most of you who have been with us for a while know what's coming, with the colder weather. You can read more details from last winter's blog post, but the gist of it is:

1. Packages containing ink will be sent to the post office for pick-up. If you're willing to accept the risk of any damage and have it delivered directly to the shipping address, just let us know in the comments.
2. Full bottles of ink may have a portion siphoned off into a plastic vial, to decrease the chance of glass breaking if the ink inside freezes and expands. We've historically done this with Noodler's and Diamine.
3. Cartridges may burst, and unfortunately there's nothing we can do about this. Last year we had to do many, many refunds on orders with cartridges. Order them early, folks!

I mentioned in last winter's blog post that we might stop shipping Diamine if it gets too cold, but we made it through last winter alright, so we'll try for the same again this year. We'll have to see if Diamine's new bottle design fares any better this side of the pond! It's definitely one of the biggest challenges to running an ink shop at this latitude, the cold temperatures, but we remain steadfast against the snow (at least until early January, at which point I start breaking and also start moaning about winter driving and lost mittens). A bit of disappointing news as well: unfortunately our big winter Diamine shipment looks like it may be caught in the cold weather. We were hoping for it several weeks ago, but delays in customs, cold weather across the country and, now, cold weather here means we may catch a break and get it in before the deep winter sets, or we may be looking at spring. It's a shame because Diamine has some of our most popular inks, but there's nothing like an ink shortage to help you use what you already have and love (as you wait for spring...). As we get closer to the holidays, I'll be posting more details, but we will have holiday hours again at the shop this December, opening 7 days a week. And perhaps hot apple cider! And a Christmas tree!

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And lastly! We're up for BlogTO's Best Card, Paper and Stationery Shop in Toronto. We'd love your support! It's pretty crazy to think about how far we've come - when we first opened our doors now almost five years, we were babies and had no idea what we were doing. We've had a lot of adventures since then, some hairy moments, a few ink spills and a lot of joy. And now we have real babies. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and for everything you all do to support us everyday. You can vote here: http://www.blogto.com/city/2017/11/your-favourites-new-categories-november20-2017/