The Stationery of the In-Between Week

The new year is upon us, and I’m still in my in-between week, enjoying my stationery. I was going to commingle this with my previous post, but there was too much life and too much stationery.

The kids are off school and we are doing the occasional winter vacation things, and in between, I am puttering around my own office/closet. I am glad for the return of Canada Post, both so the shop can right itself again, and for the sending out of mail again. I’m on the brink of a new journal, which is just right for starting the new year. Have I been holding back and speeding up and waffling around to try and land it just right? Yes, I have.

There was so much that came into the shop over the last few weeks, and in the busyness of the final rush to Christmas, I’ve been accumulating it all in bins and boxes on my desk to finally be enjoyed now: the new Papier Platz washi tapes, the three new Iroshizuku inks, the new vinyl stickers from Little Truths Studio, the new designs of stamps from Germany, Heindesign. What a perfect stamp! And the books! Stacks of them to gently peel open and breathe in. It is all glorious and a delight to be futzing about, swimming in paper and Japanese stickers. Some things are just not the same in digital.

I am back in my letter writing, albeit a slow re-entry, more jalopy than 747. But I am well-supplied with stationery: plain pads of paper to stamp onto or new letter writing stationery from Furukawashiko, a couple packs of the extra large sticker flakes from eric small things to put onto my envelopes and to slip into envelopes as a tiny gift to the recipient, fountain pens inked up and ready to go.

I saw this wonderful mini pocket pen from Opus 88, called Hugging (!) and I fell in love. I knew immediately I needed to have it. I could not resist it. I wasn’t sure if this was a pen we were going to carry in the shop, so Jon reached out to Kelly for just a little taste, and she sent two with our regular order from Taiwan. Now I’m fully in love and I’m anticipating more coming in soon along with a second mini pocket pen involving a rabbit. More to come! I can’t wait.  

I can’t use it all! There’s too much! And I love it. How can one possibly exist without having too many books to read? What is such an existence? The delicious act of contemplating the prioritization of reading library books and owned books and which book should be which? What desk is a desk without enough stationery to dream with (that is to say, too much?). No, no, there is such a thing as too much. (Is there?) These are all impossible contemplations.

I wish you just enough. Just enough for whatever it is you need on your desk and in your journals and for this year ahead.