Jon got the team some Wonder Pens t-shirts just for fun a few weeks ago, and he’s been wearing his everywhere – to the gym, to groceries, to walk the dog. It’s been surprising and fun to see how many people want to get a Wonder Pens shirt of their own!

Of course friends and family, some of whom have been supporting us since Wonder Pens was just a tiny seed, have already been texting where’s mine, I am a medium! but it’s also been all sorts of wonderful to hear from those of you that we met through the shop, and have been following along with us as we’ve grown. It’s sort of heartwarming to know that people are proud to represent their local pen shop!

Here are some photos! You can pre-order them here – if you’re ordering to get it shipped online, you can also add other items to your cart, and it will all ship when the t-shirts get in, around 2 weeks. If you’re picking it up from the shop, you can either visit us in the shop, or order online and select in-store pick-up. We’ll let you know when they all come in!

If you’re international, just send us an e-mail info@wonderpens.ca, and we’ll take care of you! It will be around $18.50 CAD ($14.50 USD) for shipping, which includes tracking and insurance.

We will be ordering a few extra to have around the shop, but we won’t be carrying these regularly. Maybe our next run will be a different colour!

Here’s Jon in the mens’ t-shirt, wearing a medium. The mens’ version will have the dark rings around the sleeves and collar.

And here I am in the womens’ t-shirt in a small. I am normally an XS, but the small is the smallest size they carry in this model, and it’s very small (if you’ve ever seen me, you know). Sorry this is such a weird picture of me – I’m a very self-conscious person! Especially when it’s Jon who’s the photographer.

And of course we also had to get a kids’ version! I wanted it to say Wonder Pens Baby, but Jon said it cost too much to get a different one just for Caleb, especially since he’s going to grow out of it before we blink.

This is Caleb in the 2-year version. Spilled water not included.

The kids’ t-shirt will actually be black with white writing! The grey for the kids was too light, and I think the white writing doesn’t show up very well. This is just a sample to see how the t-shirt will look! Grey will not be an option – all of the kids t-shirts will be black.

Unfortunately there is no smaller size! No adorable onesies or t-shirts smaller than 2 years, so I guess it was a lucky time for us to get these t-shirts.

And just for fun, Jon got me a neon yellow tank top! You all know how much I love my neon-lime Safari, which has been inked up with Lamy Dark Lilac since we got the Dark Lilac in, and this is just perfect.

It’s a bit ironic since I’m a bit of an attention-dodging kind of person, because wearing this makes me look like a pylon. You have to see it in person, but this thing is bright.

***

In other news, the cat has some sort of hair loss issue! Super has always been a very robust animal, and most of his vet visits have had to do with something dumb he’s done on his own (like eating a giant box of raisins, or tearing his dew claw while very spastically trying to chase a ball playing fetch), but this is our first cat! We’ve had litter box worries, and dog-eating-cat worries, and is-our-cat-too-small worries, and now the cat is losing hair!

Chicken, the cat, started losing a bit of fur along his nose and snout, and so we brought him in to the vet. That was our second vet visit because the first time the vet said he was too small to be vaccinated, which I guess ended up for the best because we needed to bring him back to take a look at the fur.

The vet took a look and said he wasn’t too sure what it was! He ran some tests but nothing common came back, like ringworm or common fungal things. The vet suggested not to touch that area in case it’s contagious, and so we’re coming back next week once the vet gets something in to run different tests. That’s been tough for everyone, except maybe Jon, as the cat is definitely a snuggler, and he’s been screeching in protest at being kicked off the bed.

This past week, the cat has developed another patchy spot on his side! He’s still romping around and chasing flies and eating lots, but every time I take a closer peek at his impending baldness, I have to worry about what’s going on with him. I guess since it doesn’t seem to bother the cat at all, we’re just sitting tight until the vet gets his new stuff in.

The post Wonder Pens T-Shirts appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

Canada Post workers are set to potentially go on strike early July *– I think I’ve heard July 2nd, but what do I know.

This is bad news for me because I’ve recently ordered a watering can in the shape of an elephant (the water comes out of its trunk!) for Caleb. It’s shipping from the US and due to arrive mid-July, which might be right in the middle of the strike.

Jon told me to just go with the generic watering cans – no rain spout, long delivery time from the US, potentially very, very long delivery time, cost 3x as much as a regular one for an adult – but as soon as I saw the elephant…

But I’m sure the real question for most of you is how will this strike affect our outgoing shipments?

The short answer is we’re not too sure yet. We’re busy trying to keep everything crossed that there won’t even be a strike!

However, we’ve been busy looking at other carriers just in case. We’re hoping to keep things moving along the best we can! Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Other carriers may not be able to ship to rural destinations, or it may be completely exorbitant, and we may not be able to sustain the cost of that. In either case, we’ll let you know what’s going on and see what we can do.
• Some other carriers also cannot ship to PO boxes.

We very likely will have a bumpy road to setting up a new carrier, and we, as always, know that you guys are patient and willing to bear with us as we try our best.

We will not be increasing shipping rates unless the strike goes on for a long time. We’ve been absorbing the extra costs of our Canada Post shipping, but private carriers will be more expensive. Right now, we’re forecasting some increase for a little while, and hoping that things will right themselves before too long. As we see how much packages are costing, we may have to make some changes (i.e. increase the cost of shipping).

I read an article on how Canada Post may be shooting itself in the foot, with this strike.

Small businesses (like us) will have to look at other carriers (like we are doing now) in order to continue to stay alive – trust me when I say not being able to ship orders online for even a few days can be huge to a business as small as ours. Once we overcome the hurdle of getting set up and learning a new system and routine, we might never come back.

That’s not to say we’re never coming back! You know me and how much I love the whole notion of the postal system and dropping off love letters in red boxes and having them magically appear days later and provinces away. It’s just a thought to think about.

I think this may be another argument for making Canada Post an essential service, as it really, really detrimentally affects small businesses like ours.

In any case, if you’ve got any snail mail waiting to get out, now’s the time. If you have any parcels that are really urgent you can always pay a bit more to go with a private company like FedEx or Canpar, but snail mail is a bit tougher.

Within Canada or internationally, you should be sending letters out today or tomorrow, or at the latest Monday – internationally, of course, as long as it exits the country and into the hands of the receiving country’s post before the strike, your letter will make it to its destination just fine. It’s times like these that I regret not having the electronic contacts of some of my penpals, so at least just this once I could legitimately blame a long response time on something other than me procrastinating.

At the very least, an extremely thin silver lining is that our train trip out west is planned for the end of July – far enough away that if the strike does happen and we need to set something up, we have enough time to make sure everything is in place and rolling on wheels before we head out. If the strike was timed to happen right when we were going on our trip, I think we might have had to cancel the whole thing.

And who knows! Maybe if you’re in Toronto, or coming to the city for a trip, it’ll be a good time for an in-store pick-up, to check out our shop and say hello!

*As a side note, I just love how the article uses the word “alarmist” with quotation marks. It literally makes me laugh out loud to think that Canada Post doesn’t want to be “alarmist” in telling everyone that there may be no mail delivery, which could mean no elephant watering can, but in a serious way, could really affect how small businesses and their owners and their employees can afford to continue to put dinner on the table.

But the real priority is, you know, making sure they’re not being “alarmist” or anything.

The post Impending Canada Post Workers Strike appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

What seems like a million years ago, we cajoled an invitation and invaded our friend and local repair guy Jeffry Fridfinnson’s home. He and his wife Erin were both incredibly gracious considering that we invited ourselves over and brought our toddler along as the real party-time.

Along with Erin’s father, they’ve been friends of the shop for a long time now, and while we’ve only been in business just over three years now, it’s long enough for us to really and truly appreciate what that means. I always love seeing them poke their heads through the shop doors, and to hear everything they’ve been up to.

We visited them more than a few weeks ago, and being as ultra prepared as I usually am, I took some notes while we chatted. For example, I see here in my notes that I wrote:

-US dollar
-repair work
-e-mail
-mostly stubs
-churn tuyere tytg

You can guess how helpful these notes have been as I write this blog post. It has been a test of memory and logical deduction and some imagination, of which I have a-plenty.

Jeffry and Erin live in Cabbagetown, which is not too far from the shop, and a great neighbourhood – I taught at the school just down the street from them, so it was a bit nostalgic coming back to the beautiful old houses and shops along Parliament and Carlton.

It’s sort of a bit ridiculous for me to say that, since Cabbagetown really is very close to Leslieville, the neighbourhood we’re in now, but it’s so different to see a neighbourhood by walking the streets as opposed to just driving through.

Jeffry is an artist himself, and got into fountain pens after discovering the work of artist Mattias Adolfsson and seeing that Adolfsson uses fountain pens himself – in particular a Pilot Falcon.

Since then he’s been amassing fountain pens and adjusting and tweaking them, and from there, learning to take them apart and fix them. Over time, he’s also been investing in more and more tools and equipment to fix up pens properly.

Fun facts:

1. He and his wife taught English in Korea for three years.
2. His favourite ink is J. Herbin Stormy Grey.
3. His favourite vintage pens are Parker Vacumatics.
4. In his pen roll (at the time of the interview) were: a Conklin, a Parker, a Namiki Falcon, a Sailor and three TWSBIs. huu

Jeffry now repairs vintage pens, and also adjusts and grinds nibs, doing stubs and changing tips sizes as well.

In fact, we keep Jeffry’s card on file in the shop for people who come in looking to get their pens repaired – doing great work and being close by to the shop help, but I can also personally attest to the work he’s done on my Parker Lucky Curve (now twice…).

This is clearly a man you can trust with your most valuable fountain pens. (Really!)

Jeffry’s advice to people adjusting or tuning their nibs is to go careful and slow (of course), but also that nibs are not as fragile as people may think. I know it’s always a balance, and that you never want to risk springing your nib or bending it completely out of shape, but that nibs have their own strength in them.

And of course I have to include a slightly blurry picture of their gorgeous girl Morley. Jeffry and Erin both mentioned that they were worried Morley might be too excitable for Caleb, but Morley was a complete sweetheart.

The truth is in the calm look on Caleb’s face – having grown up with Super around, the dog who barks at his tail and jumps up on everyone, he is now completely fearless when it comes to “excitable” dogs.

Of course in my notes, my only complete sentence is “Morley is ten years old.”

And out of all this! We’re very excited to offer our newest upcoming class: an Introduction to Nib-Tuning and Adjustment Workshop with Jeffry Fridfinnson, on Thursday, July 14th from 7-9pm.

Jeffry will be covering a bit of the fundamentals of how a fountain pen works, in order to explain and demonstrate how to adjust nibs to get it writing exactly as you like it.

I am hoping to attend myself! I am keeping my fingers crossed that everything will go well with the little monkey and also the dog and the cat and I’ll have the evening to get my fingers inky.

The post Wonder Pens Adventure + New Nib-Tuning Class with Jeffry Fridfinnson appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

Hope you all had a great long weekend and Canada Day, or Independence Day if you’re in the US!

We had a wonderful Canada Day celebration. Canada Day was on Friday, and our brick + mortar was closed for the day. It’s always nice when the holidays fall on Friday rather than Monday, since our shop is already closed on Monday, so it doesn’t really seem like an ‘extra’ holiday.

We visited Jon’s parents uptown, and Caleb romped around in the grass.

Three Generations of Chan Men. Alternatively titled: Jon at His Station While the Meat is Grilled.

We also made it all the way downtown to City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square.

Caleb had his first hot dog, which I thought was going well, until he discovered the tastiness ratio of the wiener to the bun is a bit skewed towards the wiener.

In my usual wisdom, I had put ketchup on his hot dog, which meant he was gripping a wiener covered with ketchup in his bare hands, and then threatening to grab my clothes.

We roamed downtown for a bit, and made our very first visit to Muji! I’m not sure what took us so long to pay our first visit, especially since we’re not too far from the city core where it is.

It was a bit nuts in there, and after five minutes, Jon took Caleb to wait outside while I admired teapots and towels and organizing accessories. Of course I had to spend some time around their stationery displays, and got a notebook and some gel pens!

Muji even has a stamping section to customize your notebooks, although I was too chicken to stamp anything on mine.

We had thought about making it down to the beach, but Caleb was wiped so we called it a day.

And there it was! It was a great day. It was fun and exciting to do something a bit different, just to explore a bit in our city.

We live in a pretty great country, and sometimes I certainly take it for granted how safe and diverse it is, and how many great resources and opportunities we have here. Everything we’ve ever had the opportunity to create and do with Wonder Pens has to do with everything that’s possible here in Canada, and it’s nice to take a day to remember that.

If you want a dive down memory lane, you can check out last year’s Canada Day post – it’s surreal and shocking and tear-inducing to see some of those photos!

***

In other news, it’s been a crazy last few weeks around here, if you’re subscribed to our weekly newsletter. It’s included surprise trips in and around the city, a visit to CBC radio (pictures to come later this week!) and an appointment to the dentist that I’ve been dreading for months.

My family dentist is located an hour outside of Toronto, and it’s been a production for every visit, since we also need to package up Caleb into the car and drive back to Hamilton. Despite vigilant oral hygiene habits, I continue to be plagued with dental issues, which has meant a constant stream of trips back to the hammer (do they still call it that?? or am I totally out of touch with …everything??).

The silver lining is that Jon has finally come to terms with the fact that I’m never leaving my dentist, and as of our next visit both he and Caleb are now patients as well. A family affair.

The latest is that Caleb’s had some sort of virus that has left him cheerful and happy in between the occasional throw-up and crazy diaper disaster, but has left me with a husband saying, “so the laundry seems a bit backed up here…”

I called Telehealth Ontario, which is this free phone-in help line in our province where you chat with nurses about what’s going on.

The recommendation was to give Caleb some sort of electrolyte fluid in 2-3 tablespoons every five minutes, and after four hours, if he’s not vomited again, increase it to 4-5 tablespoons every five minutes for the next four fours, and if he hasn’t vomited during that, then he’s fine to eat plain and starchy foods for the next four hours after that.

…which is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. What fictional character could possibly accomplish this feat of feeding tablespoons of liquid to a toddler every five minutes for eight hours? Mary Poppins?? Nurse Ratched??

I tried my best. But let’s just say all the liquids came in unmeasured sippy cup form. And possibly not quite in five minute intervals. And possibly involving some frozen mangoes.

The post Canada Day 2016 appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

We wanted to write a quick update on shipping changes based on a potential Canada Post labour stoppage.

We’re still in the middle of not knowing exactly what’s going to happen, which is sort of a tough position to be in – if we knew for sure Canada Post deliveries were going to stop for a certain amount of time, we could plan accordingly and be prepared invest in setting up new systems and training and schedules.

It turns out (no surprise) that Canada Post is by far the least expensive shipping method and has the most extensive delivery routes out there.

Shipping by private carriers to rural postal codes is crazy, and we’ve had a few orders where the cost of shipping by FedEx to a rural postal code ends up being more than the cost of the order and then some.

Canada Post Corporation or its workers need to give 72 hours notice before anything can happen, and we’ve been waiting and watching what’s happening. They gave 72 hours notice for a potential lock-out to happen Friday (tomorrow), and so up to Wednesday, we tried to rush and Xpresspost everything out we could that safely make it by Thursday.

Now the notice has been extended to Monday, so we’re back to rushing everything out.

Unfortunately, with this wild ride, we’re going by the seat of our pants, which means we’re figuring out costs and different carriers as we go.

So here’s what we’re going to try, keeping in mind that we may have to change things over the next few days or weeks, especially if we can source a reliable and lower cost option.

$8 flat rate Canada Post expedited shipping, or free expedited shipping for orders above $125
$12 Canada Post Xpresspost
$18 FedEx Ground

We’re still going to offer our standard $8 flat fee expedited shipping through Canada Post, for those of you not in a rush and willing to wait. I am definitely with you in keeping my fingers crossed that there will enough delays and extensions and hopefully a resolution to the negotiations.

You can also order Xpresspost which should bump up your shipment through Canada Post faster, especially if there’s an extension to the labour dispute. However, if the Canada Post service disruption does take place, your Xpresspost order may get caught in that.

The ever so slightly bright side is that from what I hear, Canada Post has already seen a dramatic decline in packages and parcels coming in through them, so what is still being sent through should be going through a bit faster.

For those of you who don’t want to risk getting caught in Canada Post if they do have a labour stoppage, or an extended one, you can select FedEx Ground.

We’re still subsidizing both the new Xpresspost and FedEx options, but of course we’re still keeping our fingers crossed that Canada Post will sort things out soon.

And, this may also be the right timing for us to start offering Xpresspost in any case, since more and more often we get requests for upgraded shipping options for rush gifts or parcels to arrive before a trip, and we’ve been processing these manually.

We’re really sorry for the inconvenience this may cause. You know that I am as excited as anyone to receive shipments of new pens and inky things and paper and treasures, and I also love seeing letters appear in my mailbox (as if by magic!). As a small business, we’re already feeling the financial costs of this service disruption, and we’re hoping everything gets resolved as soon as possible.

***

In other news, the cat is still alive, despite many near brushes with death involving a large dog, being stepped on, a potential fungal infection/food allergy and patchy spots, being hugged aggressively and carried like a football by a toddler (and maybe by everyone else here), having his food eaten by the dog or spilled by Caleb without anyone noticing, and being trapped inside large boxes of packaging material.

Actually, despite all of this, the cat actually appears to be growing. He’s now passed the 2lb mark. We were all worried that he was going to be a small cat, but sometimes small ones are the scrappy ones, the survivors. It’s how I got through life. (Just kidding, I grew up in the suburbs.)

The cat has turned out to be a real snuggler, and having a little meat on his bones has helped with that. I wanted an affectionate cat, one who would come and curl up in our laps, and I was told to start him young to get used to hanging out with people, and it seems he has no problem with this at all.

During the day when it’s bustling and noisy, he’s hiding under the packing tables or on windowsills or sleeping in our bins, just waiting for someone to pick him up for a nice rub around the ears.

At night when I’m trying to answer emails or write a blog post, he just crawls right up onto my chest purring like crazy, and it’s so hard to resist when he just closes his eyes and tilts his head back.

The post Canada Post Service Disruption Update appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

Just new in the shop we have Clairefontaine Triomphe pads, premium and white and super smooth stationery for your notes and letters to pop into the post.

I’m not sure if this is terrible timing, given the potential Canada Post stoppage, or maybe great timing, since if Canada Post does go on strike or get locked out, there will be plenty of time for everyone to catch up on their snail mail – either way, we just got in something we’ve been meaning to carry for a long time.

We got these pads in just in time for our Letter Writing Club evening this Thursday! Our Letter Writing Club is from 7-9 pm in our shop, with everything providing from stationery and pens to postage and treats. Hope to see you there!

I think actually the real reason it took us so long to finally begin carrying this paper is that I’ve always been in love with G. Lalo paper. Jon has long said I need to stop stocking the shop based solely on what I’d like to use, but I think my desert island paper might G. Lalo. Who needs anything else??

Apparently lots of people (like one of my favourite pen bloggers who happens to be Canadian).

Clairefontaine Triomphe Pads are a bit of a staple correspondence paper for letter writers everywhere. It’s like all Clairefontaine paper – smooth and white and luxurious for your fountain pens, but in pad form.

We have it in A4 + A5 plain and lined, and the plain pads come with a liner sheet which you can tear off and place underneath as guidelines. Each pad comes with 50 sheets, and they’re glued on top for tearing sheets off.

But of course, the most important thing is how this paper holds up to fountain pen ink – and like almost everything from Clairefontaine, it does beautifully.

Here are a few close-ups of my writing with Rohrer + Klingner Sepia, a favourite of mine. I currently have it in three pens! All coincidentally Parker.

It is a dream to write on.

I love how the lines of ink are crisp and even on this paper, especially compared to the G. Lalo Verge de France paper which I typically love, where the lines end up looking a bit uneven because of the ridges of the paper (which give it the texture that I love!).

There’s something very romantic and old-timey about textured and thick paper, but I can’t deny that it feels super smooth and rich writing on this Clairefontaine Triomphe paper.

***

In other news, it’s another hectic week for us, as we charge forward, undaunted, into the depths of the unknown with Canada Post Corporation withdrawing their lockout notification (for yesterday).

We’re back on high alert with the possibility of 72 hour notice for a strike or lock out, but I’m hoping they’ll continuing negotiating in good faith and come to a resolution soon, rather than locking anyone out or going on strike, especially as I’ve got some stuff coming internationally that will make its Canadian journey through Canada Post.

While me, Super and Chicken are all sleeping like babies, and the baby is sleeping his usual turbulent sleep, like that of an old arthritic woman, Jon has been losing sleep and hair over the turmoil. We’ve seen our online order volume ebb and flow, and we’re hoping that we’ll be able to just keep sending out orders and ride the tide.

I’ve been sending my snail mail out as I’ve been writing it, rather than holding onto it in case of a stoppage, maybe in some foolish optimism that there’ll be no stoppage and all my mail will continue flowing out.

Despite most of our classes taking a break for the summer, it seems like we’ve only gotten busier, especially as we get ready for our trip, and we’re still doing a few last interviews as we’re waiting for those just right few folks to come into the fold.

I dragged Caleb in his wagon up to our local pet supply shop to pick up litter and cat food. We’re low on the litter because I underestimated the number of litter boxes one tiny kitten needs (three), and we’re low on cat food I suspect because Super is eating it when no one’s watching.

This week we’ve got another vet checkup for the cat on Thursday, and another doctor’s visit for Caleb on Friday. His doctor is on the other side of the city, in Roncesvalles, but we really like him, so I guess it’s worth dragging Caleb onto the TTC.

The post Clairefontaine Triomphe Correspondence Pads appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

A long overdue post! Two weeks ago we were invited in to The Candy Palmater Show at CBC Radio, and we were thrilled to have another family adventure.

For those of you who have been following along with the blog, you might remember we visited the CBC this past February to chat with Fresh Air about letter writing for Valentine’s Day. I shared some pictures on the blog, and just looking over that post again and remembering that season feels a bit crazy. I can hardly believe how much has changed and how big Caleb feels now.

We arrived a bit early, and wandered around the downstairs PATH, and Caleb had his very first visit to a toy store. It was surprising to me that he actually knew what it was, even having never been in one, as he pulled us right to it.

He was in shock and awe at first, but you can guess how long that lasted.

Caleb has historically been more interested in adult things – maybe because we didn’t really get him too many toys as a baby. He watches us sweep and use the dustpan in the shop, and that’s what he wants to play with, or our stamp for boxes, or the button maker, or the credit card machine. But these days, he’s really picking up on the whole concept of toys.

We were welcomed by Aparita, a producer for the show, and also the person who had first contacted us. As is usual with me, we had to play a bit of phone tag throughout the entire day, mainly because I think there’s something wrong with the ringer on my phone. Classic Liz.

Aparita showed us around the building and introduced us to some hardworking radio people, and she was great – even a fellow fountain pen user herself (how amazing is it when you meet someone in the wild and they just whip out a Lamy 2000?).

That’s me!

When Aparita told me the interview was going to be live (no editing! no smoothing over any accidental Freudian slips about the end of pen and paper!), I started freaking out a bit, and she said I was going to be fine. That was really nice of her, especially since I could tell she was eying me up and trying to decide if I really was going to be fine, given my freaking out.

It was great! I was nervous, but Candy was a pro, and also warm and funny and is a fountain pen lover herself. It was kind of like talking to a kindred spirit, someone who gets the idea of writing something using pen and paper, and understands why a letter just feels better than an e-mail.

What’s really amazing is that despite everyone asking how business is, or whether or not people are actually still buying pens, much less fountain pens, there is so much interest in it all! People truly are interested in writing by hand, I think maybe because it’s something substantial and tangible and physical.

We sometimes think because there’s so much technology everywhere that all the paper we have left, maybe in those paper books included, must be crumbling into dust, but it turns out that there are more of us, people who write by real pens on real paper, than you might think.

And here’s a picture of Caleb! Aparita and the other producers/sound engineers (??) were so kind to squeeze this photo in during a commercial break, and I can’t stop laughing at how funny this photo is: tiny Caleb in his little pink tank top staring up at Candy.

You can listen to our segment here.

***

This CBC interview, which took place nearly three weeks ago now, is definitely pushing the boundaries for “current events” on the blog. I’ve been meaning and meaning to write this post up, along with answering any number of unanswered emails and unanswered letters. Along the way, we’ve lost and found the photos from the day, and as time goes on my memory blurs, so this is more an approximation of the trip more than anything else.

One of my favourite people came all the way from Guelph to pick something up from the shop, and she left a letter and a book for me! In her letter she started off with “…no need for recriminations about not keeping up with your correspondence”- a true sign of not only how long it’s been since I’ve written back, but also a sign of that kindred spirit we all in our lives, a heroic patience in the art of correspondence by snail mail (especially with me).

We’ve been a bit all over the place these past few weeks it seems, and I have so many things lined up for the blog – stuff happening in the shop (sort of time sensitive, but I guess clearly not), ruminations and thoughts (basically just rambling).

We also just had our pen tuning class with superstar Jeffry Fridfinnson – even though I was a bit disorganized and didn’t take very many photos, I can’t wait to share all about it, especially now that I have my amazing Jinhao that I tuned to perfection. Just kidding, actually I lucked out and my Jinhao happened to write wet and well right out of its plastic sleeve. The real reason is that I have some pretty funny pictures of Jeffry and his wife Erin in the shop after the class, with Chicken.

These days Caleb has been running rampant through the shop and the packing area and climbing on chairs and pushing buttons on all sorts of things. The other day I caught him raising the big box of all of our boxes of Pilot cartridges above his head, and then throwing it onto the ground while yelling and dancing wildly.

When things get really out of hand, Jon looks at me and then looks at Caleb and declares that it’s time for day care. Caleb and I look at each other in fear, and then Caleb grins before tearing off into some other opportunity for destruction or harm.

This is all to say that there is so much to say, and I can only hope I have enough time to tell all of our stories. Every once in a while a blog post that I really wanted to write about falls through the cracks, and I always regret it because these small and big events for us are so important to the fabric of our story, for our shop and our family.

I love being able to look back and see our old shop and Caleb as a little bean and remember all the excitement for Plains of Abraham or Franklin-Christoph, and even more so, I love being able to remember how things were when I wrote that blog post, where I was sitting and whether it was Super at my feet or Chicken on top of my keyboard, and whether it was cherry or apple pie season or snow on the ground or Christmas in the air. There is more and more to come.

In any case, it’s been a busy week, full of life and things and good surprises, so I’ll leave you with three of the best:

1. I’ve been craving Fudgsicles for years, and I could never find a grocery shop that stocked them. Last week T&T had them – and on sale! I’ve been trying to sneak eat them when Caleb’s not around, or else I have to share with him, and let me tell you he is no good to share a Fudgsicle with because he’s a biter, and before you know it, he’s chomped up the whole thing. (Plus, you know, I’m supposed to be modelling good eating habits.)
2. I made it across the city to Caleb’s doctors appointment, and despite being half an hour late due to construction on College & Queen & Gerrard, and despite being past office closing on a Friday afternoon, Caleb’s pediatrician took pity on us and let us in, and declared Caleb alive and well. Someone will be getting a surprise fountain pen in the mail….
3. Chicken’s fur is growing back in! The vet took a look at him and said it’s a miracle! That’s not actually what he said, but it basically sums it up. A mystery, and we’ll take it.

The post Our Interview with CBC Radio’s The Candy Palmater Show appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

The long awaited Caroube de Chypre, the brown 1670 ink from J. Herbin, has arrived!

I had (and still have) a whole bunch of blog posts in the queue, some of which I had ideally wanted done before we leave on our trip but now may never happen given my organizational skills.

I have awaiting this ink my whole life, an empty spot on my ink shelf of brown inks, just waiting to be filled with this beautiful bottle and its sparkles.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have a real thing for both brown inks and brown pens. It’s not even a matchy-matchy issue, where I like my pens to have matching ink colours, I just like brown pens and brown inks. And a bit of sparkle.

J. Herbin has been releasing their 1670 Anniversary Inks over the last few years, with Rouge Hematite and Bleu Ocean, and then Stormy Grey (my previous personal favourite, mainly because of how it writes, a good feeling in the nib and a nice opaque and dark grey with a hint of gold sparkle), and then last year Emeraude de Chivor.

I thought I would share a few snaps of the new ink!

I’m using Clairefontaine Triomphe paper with a Pilot Custom 92, medium nib, a wet writer.

Things to keep in mind when writing with this ink is that wet writing nibs do the best if you’re hoping to see a bit of that shine – not just broader or italic nibs. Some italic or stub nibs are quite wide, but if they are also dry, then the ink is spread thin and there won’t be enough concentrated ink to show the sparkle.

Broad and wet is always a good way to go with these 1670 inks, but if you have a fine or medium that is extremely wet, you still may get good results. Lucky for me, I like wet pens, so I naturally gravitate towards pens that will do well with all of these inks!

Paper is another important factor – ink resistant papers do the best, like Tomoe River, Clairefontaine & Rhodia, Life Stationery. If your paper is too absorbent, the ink will soak in, rather than sitting on top.

The ink itself is a reddish burgundy brown, with gold sparkles a bit of green sheen.

This is actually with the same pen, but right at the beginning after I’ve just filled my pen, my feed is extra saturated from the dip into the bottle, and the sparkles are everywhere! It’s may not be how the ink will look all the time after the extra ink on the feed has been evened out, but it’s sure nice to look at.

Here’s a shot of my barrel after I’ve let the ink sit for a few minutes while taking photos of the writing samples.

I generally don’t like to shake my fountain pens too aggressively, because ink sometimes ends up in the cap. Because I carry my pens in my backpack or bag, and they got jostled around so I end up with a few droplets in my cap anyways, I don’t want to add to it. However, if you’ve got these sparkly inks, sometimes the gold can settle, so it doesn’t hurt to turn your pen upside down or roll it around to get all the gold reconstituted back into the ink.

And just for fun, here are a few shots of drops of ink on the page – much, much more than would come out of a pen, but it’s how you can really see all the gold.

We sometimes get asked whether or not these 1670 inks are safe for fountain pens. While obviously these inks are made for fountain pens, the best answer is to use common sense! However, I can appreciate that that answer is a bit vague. I would say you should never do anything you’re worried about, especially in an extremely valuable pen.

I will also say that in my experience, it cleans out very well out of converters and barrels, flushes very cleanly without staining, except maybe the Rouge Hematite, although I always find a bit of gold glimmer left on my feeds even after quite a few flushes, which usually just add some glamour to the first few lines of the ink I put into my pen next.

I haven’t had or heard of any first hand clogging experiences, and actually I find that these 1670 inks write very well – maybe something in the formula to counteract anything to do with the added gold flakes.

However, this may also be because people using these 1670 inks often exhibit some additional caution or common sense in flushing out their pens more regularly, especially if they’re not going to use them for a while. I will admit to personally leaving Emeraude de Chivor in a Platinum 3776 music nib for a few months, and everything was fine, but I might not recommend it.

***

In other news, we’re keeping busy, and slowly starting to get ready for our trip. We’ve been undergoing a decluttering process basically for the last three years, and I have some yarn that I either need to do something with or donate, so I’m bringing it on the trip to crochet something out of it while we’re on the train. I can only hope my fingers still remember what to do, or that there’s internet access so I can watch a few instructional videos.

Jon has been making lists with things we need to do for the shop, buying safety equipment and visiting the bank, and I’ve been trying to mentally prepare Caleb (i.e. myself) to part from our animals. Despite being in excellent and loving hands, no one knows them like we do.

You have to rub Chicken’s ears just right so he leans back and purrs with his whole body. You have to catch Super at just the right moment to catch him before he jumps up on the table to steal food. And you have to be able to tell the difference in Super’s whining between needing to be taken out and needing to be let into the apartment because he suspects there’s food on the table. And you also have to watch Chicken much more closely than Super because he is much more stealthy at climbing onto the table and calmly feasting on dinner scraps.

I think Caleb’s really going to miss the both of them as well. Just yesterday we were walking around the aisles of Shopper’s Drug Mart, and we walked through the pet aisle. He saw a picture of a cat on a bag of cat food, and he picked it up, and tried to put it in the basket. Caleb’s one task in assisting with the care of our animals is feeding Chicken, which he does with great enthusiasm.

(I notice he didn’t do this for the dog food, although it could be because Caleb’s never seen us feeding the dog, since we feed Super after Caleb’s gone to bed every night.)

In the morning, Jon usually gets up first, and it’s me, Caleb, Chicken and Super all in bed. Sometimes Jon complains that there’s no room for him, but I suspect he will also miss them, although he would never admit it out loud.

The post J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary Ink – Caroube de Chypre appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

We’re getting ready to head out on our train trip!

It’s been a busy week of last minute errands getting everything in place, in addition to received a bunch of orders to keep our shop as stocked as possible while we’re gone. We’ve been picking up things for the shop and things for the trip and trying to clear off memory cards and finish up the laundry.

And of course I’ve been thinking about which of my pens will be making the journey with me, and the even tougher decision, which inks to put into them, along with which notebooks I’ll be bringing along with me.

It’s a short list! Coming up to this trip, I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to wash and dry pens after they’ve been written dry, so I don’t have to leave pens at home with ink in them, or bring along too many.

Here’s the list:

TWSBI Vac Mini, medium – mystery ink, I’m guessing Asa-Gao (someone returned a Vac20 bottle with ink in it already, and Jon used my Vac Mini to demonstrate filling with it.
Pilot Custom 92, medium – J. Herbin Caroube de Chypre
Franklin-Christoph Model 20, medium – Pilot Iroshizuku Ina-Ho
Parker Lucky Curve, soft fine – Rohrer + Klingner Sepia
Kaweco Luxe, F (not pictured) – Kaweco black cartridge
Parker Duofold, medium – Diamine Ancient Copper
Parker Sonnet, medium – Noodler’s Blue Upon the Plains of Abraham

We don’t carry this ink regularly, but it’s available as a special order, along with the rest of the Iroshizuku Line.

Everyone’s favourite Canadian ink! Noodler’s Blue Upon the Plains of Abraham

And look at this! It just arrived this week – the Lamy 4-pen, or four colour pen. When I was a kid, I used to love the white and blue Bic four colour pens, so how could I resist.

We only ordered a few of them, but despite my very good intentions of not accumulating more pens than I can use, I’m keeping one. It has a very good gravity-directed colour changing mechanism, and I’ve been changing colours willy-nilly just for fun.

I have to admit that it’s not exactly the same writing experience as a fountain pen, but it’s not bad for a ballpoint. It’s really the four colour function that sold me.

I’m going to be bringing a handful of Preppies in case we bump into anyone on the train or around who might like to try a fountain pen. I try to carry one or two in my bag, punctured, in case I come across someone running an errand or at a cafe.

I like to have at least one or two at the ready immediately, so in the heat of moment we’re not left awkwardly waiting to see if the pen is going to write. I’ll scribble a note or two with it if I haven’t given it away in a few weeks.

Here’s Jon and his pen roll. He has opted for the “I’m bringing whatever is in my pen roll” route, which are these pens in the photo. I don’t know how he lives with himself.

We’re taking the train to Vancouver, hanging around for around a week and then flying home. I’m thinking by the time we make it to the plane, some of our pens may be dry, but it’ll depend on how much time we have for writing postcards and writing in general.

Look how empty my pen roll looks! What restraint!

For notebooks I’m bringing my personal journal (the B5 brown covered Life notebook), my Midori Traveler’s notebook for everyday notes + keeping everything together, and my Hobonichi for my three daily gratitude thoughts.

My personal journal is just for my thoughts and ramblings and whatever comes to mind. I’m thinking and hoping we may have some down time, first on the train for a few days, and then secondly in Vancouver with Caleb, where we’ll be home early for Caleb’s bedtime. I had considered using an insert in my Midori TN for personal journaling to save weight and room, but we won’t be backpacking or hiking with all of our gear, just moving from the train to the AirBnB, and then to the airport, so I think we’ll be okay.

My Hobonich is for the same, and I have to admit there are a few days where I’ve missed! Maybe I’ll try to catch up, or just use those pages for other memories.

My I revamped my Traveler’s Notebook a bit for the trip. I have one notebook for planning, organizing and notes – I’m hoping to do a few blog posts, and keep in touch with a few things going on in the shop.

The start of my calendar for planning for the blog while we’re gone. I watched a video of those bullet journallers drawing out their boxes, and I definitely need a ruler.

I’m hoping to keep a notebook of just memories, photos and details from our trip. As we travel more, I’m planning on keeping all of these notebooks in one of the 10th Anniversary Midori TN tins. I’ve tentatively packed a few items to bring along for keeping a Travel Notebook on the road, and hopefully I’ll have some time coming up to share more about that.

I love that I’ll be able to go out day to day and keep everything together in my Midori for organizing and keeping ticket stubs or little pieces of paper all together. I’ve also got the matching Pan Am zipper pocket so I can tuck away things in there until I get back to our Air BnB.

We’re excited! There will be no wifi access on the train, which is giving Jon a bit of grey hair, but I think will be a nice break. I’m thinking I will still be able to write blog posts, and post them whenever we get into a station and I can hook up to wifi for a few minutes.

I mentioned before that Jon and I took the train from Russia through Mongolia to Beijing, which was a crazy adventure, but also quite an experience in the train itself. The VIA rail is going to be a train ride, but I think a completely different type of ride.

There will be showers, and our family will have its own little cabin, and we’ll also have tasty meals! Everything I’ve seen and read about taking the VIA has talked about how wonderful the food is, so my expectations are high! The views, and the glass-top car when we get to the western provinces, time for reading and explore the cars with Caleb. I can’t wait to share with you all how it is.

The post My Analogue System for Travel: Pens + Notebooks for our Train Trip appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

We’re heading out on our wild Canadian adventure! And by wild, I mean, it’s going to be a bit intense and crazy to see how Caleb does in a tight cabin and walking up and down skinny aisles with other humans in such close quarters.

But it’s going to be great.

And I thought I would share a bit about what we’re bringing along for the ride – things for us, things for Caleb, and after it all, what ended up being useful.

Here are most of the analogue supplies I’m bringing:

Including: my journals, books to read, a set of playing cards, watercolours, envelopes for tips + a thank you note, scissors, wax seals for postcards we’ll send home, stamps, stickers for Caleb, my address book, and my pen roll.

I’ll be keeping a sort of travel journal along the way, although I might finish up the details when we get home.

This is a lot more electronic baggage than we brought on our last train ride, which was five years ago, across Russia and into China, partially because we didn’t have so much technology then, but mostly because we have the business now.

We’re bringing a few different types of cameras (my Instax and also the Polaroid), along with one laptop and one iPad to check emails and update the blog. Chargers for everything, extra film, and a white noise machine, especially for the train ride to help buffer out any footsteps or voices or clanging doors while Caleb’s napping or sleeping at night.

Packing for this trip has been a bit different than other trips I’ve gone on with Jon. When it’s just adults, you have what you “need” and you have what you can live without.

There really aren’t too many things Caleb “needs,” and yet there are many, many things that I don’t think he could live without. It’s safe to say that over half of our baggage is Caleb related, although some of it will be used up along the way so we won’t have to bring it back.

A few favourite books (would you believe that his favourite book is actually called “What’s Wrong Little Pookie?”) and a few new ones. A few toy cars, a few dinosaurs, and some snacks to hopefully last us until the end of the train trip.

We’ve been cloth diapering since Caleb was born, but for the trip, we figured it would be too much to have cloth diapers with us in our cabin – we might die from the fumes. One package of disposable diapers should last us until the end, but I brought a few cloth ones for just the last few changes on the way home.

It’s been a side effect of being a “frugal” new business entrepreneurs that we don’t have too many clothes for Caleb, and depend instead of frequent laundry loads, but luckily for us the week before we left my parents gave Caleb two pairs of shorts, which increased his total number of shorts to five.

***

The days before we left were spent making lists, and checking them twice, and making more lists, and then deciding which ones we could cross off as unnecessary because there wasn’t enough time.

It’s funny because even as Jon and I were scrambling to get things done, Caleb’s just going along as always. A few months ago we had started dabbling around in potty training, and while he’s had some success, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve basically completely eased off in my “instructions.” But in the last couple of weeks, he’s been taking over on his own! He typically wanders around the apartment naked, and when he needs to go, he just walks over to his potty and pees like it’s nobody’s business.

Whenever I catch him, I try to celebrate with him, and get all excited about flushing it down the real toilet, because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing as the responsible parent that’s supposed to be monitoring his actions and teaching him potty training. But sometimes I just find pee inside his little potty. It’s like he already knows what he’s supposed to be doing…

Here’s one last photo of Caleb helping me pack.

We’ve actually already left! And this blog post is from the road. Internet has been spotty, and it’s only when we pass through a town that we get cell reception, so we can post a few photos onto Instagram or check emails before we exit. Every once in a while we make a stop, but if we’ve stopped, it’s definitely nicer to stretch our legs out in the sunshine.

I’m hoping to catch up and share a bit more about our train ride soon. Hope you’re all having a great week

The post Packing for Our Train Trip + West Coast Adventure appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

We’ve made it onto the train, and we’re barrelling west towards British Columbia.

I had thought I would have a bit more time to blog on the train, but I’ve been a bit surprised by how busy things have been!

Part of it is that we only get enough reception to tether the laptop to get internet intermittently, and by the time we check emails or urgent messages, or post a photo to Instagram, reception is gone again. And sometimes when there is reception, we’re taking a break at a station, or eating a meal, or out and about in the train.

So I’m a bit behind! You can see more photos from just the train trip here as we go, but I’ve been taking photos and I have lots and lots to share.

For now, here’s Train Life, Day 1…

Getting to Union station was easy enough, although even late evening it was bustling and busy. I haven’t spent much time around there in the last few years, but it’s been undergoing renovations for what seems like forever, and I can’t wait to see what it will look like when it’s done.

Train stations are some of the most interesting places in cities, I guess because trains have been around for so long (before planes and buses and more “efficient” ways to travel).

We checked our bags, and the stroller. We hesitated about bringing the stroller since Caleb is such a great walker, walking short and long distances fairly easily without complaining or needing to be picked up, but we figured it would be a good just in case for days in Vancouver with more walking than a toddler can handle.

When we arrived at Union station, we waited to board in the VIA Rail lounge, and we signed up for our reservation for meals – there’s a first, second and third shift. While the second shift was the most popular (being in the middle), we were glad to be able to sign up for the first for shift for our meals on Day 1 + 2, since Caleb’s mid-day nap and early bedtime means eating a bit earlier.

We arrived around 9:00 pm, but didn’t get onto the train and through announcements and introductions with our attendant until 10:30 pm. Following a quick diaper change and tooth brushing, we went straight to bed. Because it was way past Caleb’s, he fell asleep quickly despite all the excitement, and so did we (mostly because of all the excitement).

The next morning we all woke in a scramble, since last call for breakfast is 8:30 am, and it was already 7:45 am.

Caleb’s face was pretty hilarious when he woke up, although out of the three of us, he perks up to fully awake and ready to go mode the fastest.

We hustled down to the dining car, where breakfast was mini pancakes for Caleb and regular breakfast fare for me and Jon.

Here’s a photo of me attempting to salvage Caleb’s shirt with a napkin before the classic Caleb double fisting. You’d think we’ve never taught him any manners. Or how to use a fork.

The dining car has two booths at the back – we’re sitting in one of them – and the rest of the car is tables with chairs. We were extremely lucky to be sitting in the booth for literally every single one of our meals.

Because of the limited seating, even with having everyone split into three shifts, each table was often filled to four. If you were a single traveler, or in pairs, you were seated with other people at a table in order to squeeze everyone in.

We had Caleb, who was a pretty effective deterrent for getting lone traveler seated next to us. There were quite a few pairs, and some families, but also a surprising number of people traveling on their own.

The dining staff (I think) keep the booth for anyone who needs it, seating everyone they can in tables, so whether we arrived early or late, we were very fortunate they kept the booth free for us. The dining staff was really great at getting to know accommodations for everyone, and they were super friendly. It was a lot easier for Caleb to sit and stand and crawl around, rather than standing on a chair and risking tipping over or falling off.

The meals, especially lunch + dinner, often took a long time to come and were in multi courses (soup, main, dessert), so there was a lot of standing and crawling and pulling cars and books and stickers out of bags. I think VIA Rail may do this intentionally, to help break up the long hours on the train, letting passengers spend time enjoying delicious food over an hour or two, which would be a lovely way to travel (if you don’t have any kids).

We hung out in the “Activity Car” for a while before heading back in for lunch at 11:00. If Caleb can move around a bit, he’s generally okay to sit and watch and climb around for quite a while.

One of the biggest adjustments to being on the train was getting our sea legs. It’s been a long time since Caleb was unstable on his feet, and when he would hold onto things to stop himself from falling over.

Our first day he had his share of banging around, and even a few tears! Even while holding my hand walking up and down the cars, he would bump into tables and other people. If you look at the picture up top carefully, you might notice that small bruise under his eye!

Day 2 was a lot better, but day 1 had him swinging back and forth and against walls. Once while holding my hand, he swung backwards and into the door of a bathroom, which gave out, and he fell right onto his bottom and ended up staring up against the toilet.

After lunch was an early and long nap, while the train stopped at Hornepayne, Ontario. We had reception here! But at this time, I didn’t quite realize how terrible reception would be going forward, so we stepped out to grab some snacks at the local general store.

After dinner, we hung out in our cabin with Caleb to wind down and put Caleb to sleep. In our cabin, we had an upper bed and a lower bed – Caleb and I slept in the lower while Jon was in the upper.

I’ve loved co-sleeping with Caleb, but nothing reminds you of how big he’s getting like trying to share a train berth with him.

So we’re having lots of fun on our train adventure! Caleb has been shy but of great interest to many of the other passengers and attendants. I think they all think it’s funny to watch Caleb stagger around drunkenly on the train.

Coming up: Day 2, wherein the biggest disaster of train trip occurs. Also, photos of our cabin, Winnipeg adventures, bedtime routines, an introduction to the dome car, and more on the food.

The post Train Life: Day 1 appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

Heading into Day 2 of our train trip, we decided to skip our tasty train breakfast because we arrived earlier than scheduled in Winnipeg. We were supposed to arrive in time to give us a good two hours to wander around the city, but because we arrived earlier (and the train will never leave early), we had three hours.

Rather than staying on the train for breakfast, while it was stationary in the Winnipeg train depot, we decided to head out and see if we could find breakfast or brunch somewhere in the city.

And so bright and early, we headed out into Winnipeg. We considered dropping in on a few of our favourite customers, but it was pretty early, and I’m also pretty sure that while they may like buying their stationery from us, they don’t actually need to see up appear on their doorsteps.

We wandered around, and being a bit aimless, we didn’t stumble across any brunch diners, as I kind of assumed we might.

Inside the Winnipeg train station early in the morning.

We did stop by for coffee and pastries at Parlour, which was a nice break from the rattling cups on the train.

And then we stumbled across the perfect park!

Caleb is a big fan of steering wheels, and in a train! It was not only great to get off the train for a walk around, but good for Caleb to get some climbing and digging and sliding around in.

Unfortunately, I received two mosquito bites in very quick succession, so we had to depart. Jon was laughing at me until he got bitten a few minutes later.

And our last stop of the morning – you can always count on a donut shop to be open nice and early.

We hustled back to the train in plenty of time (actually, we had the earliest lunch slot, so we were mainly hustling back to eat lunch on time, rather than making sure the train didn’t leave without us). After lunch, we had a nice long nap, a bit of roaming around the train, and then dinner and bed.

***

Here are a few shots of the inside of our cabin, our home for the trip.

It was a bit tight, so hard to get photos with a lot of perspective, but the idea is that on one side we have the beds (upper and lower berths), and on the other side, we have the sink and toilet, which is closed off by a door.

The upper berth – Jon’s bed, as indicated by the single sock. Caleb and I slept in the lower berth.

You can ask to get your lower berth folded up, or your upper berth raised, or both, during the day. This gives you room for two large single seaters. We chose not to do that because we had Caleb napping during the day, so we had our beds out all the time.

They also can just make up the beds for you with fresh sheets, which was really nice the one day they did it when we forgot to leave the sign out on the door to not do anything, although incredibly embarrassing since our cabin was an explosion of toys and clothes and snacks.

Here’s our little toilet area. To add to the delight of the trip, there were buttons everywhere to call for an attendant, including a surprise one in the toilet area.

We taped a sheet over the button by the bed, but at one point we heard this ringing over and over, and looked over to discover Caleb pushing the button repeatedly. It’s a hard thing to resist for a two year old.

Another hard thing to resist: the tissue paper box right at Caleb height. We use cloth napkins in our home, so this was a real treat that was used with great abandon. Noses that did not need to be blown were attempted with five or six tissues at once, drips were immediately wiped, tissues were tucked into pockets. After our box was emptied, what do you know, it was mysteriously refilled by train elves.

We didn’t find it too noisy between the cabins (we couldn’t hear our neighbours on either side, although I’m sure they could hear Caleb when he was loud enough), but we could definitely hear people talking and walking through the hallways.

And the biggest disaster of all: I lost my Lamy 2000 4-colour ballpoint pen.

If I was at home, I would mobilize anyone and everyone available to help me look, but of course, that would be unreasonable on a train, and I’m nothing if not reasonable. Mostly to stop me from tearing apart our cabin, Jon said it would turn up at some point, so I should just continue on and it would appear before my eyes. I’ll let you guess how that went over.

***

I hope it’s not too much a spoiler to say that we’re already in Vancouver!

We’re loving the fresh cool air here, and obviously enjoying ourselves a bit too much, as I’ve been having a hard time keeping up with the blog and Instagram and other things (although of course go figure Jon is having no problem keeping tabs on the shop and answering emails).

We’re staying in an Air BnB and enjoying such luxuries as having a TV, using disposable diapers, and an excellent supply of hot water for showering.

More to come on our last days on the train, making it through the Rockies, the view from the Dome Car, and our meals on the train, as well as our arrival into Vancouver and our adventures here in the city.

The post Train Life Day 2: Winnipeg + Details of our Cabin appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

It’s been too long since I last took a look a fountain pen on the blog! A bit out of distraction and disorganization, with our recent trip, and other things going on in the shop, but here is one of my all time favourite pens: the Pilot Custom 92.

It’s a piston filler with a smooth and wet 14K nib. There’s nothing really so “incredible” like about it that makes it stand out – like being made out of some rare ebonite, or having some crazy filling mechanism – but it’s just that it does what it’s supposed to do really, really well.

It’s a simple and classic pen. Being a piston-filler, it holds a great amount of ink, which fills easily, and its 14 k nib writes beautifully every single time – smooth and wet. To boot, I just think it’s a great looking pen. It’s a bit understated, while still looking classy; it fits very well in the hand and with good proportions and details.

I’ve actually had mine, the demonstrator filled with ink on the far right in the picture below, in my collection for a while, and it’s far and away one of my favourite pens. If I had a top five pens, this would be in it for sure (I don’t have a top five, because I think I’ve made this statement about more than five pens, but this one really for sure).

It pops up regularly in my Instagram shots like here and here and here because most of the time I’m just grabbing what I have close by and ready to use. I think I’ve basically had it inked up since I got it.

The real problem for our shop is that it’s a special order pen, along with the Pilot Custom 74 and the Pilot Falcons, so it sometimes seems like our stock is trickling in, and every time we’ve received a batch, they’ve sold out – sometimes before we could even get a photo of it up online.

Filling this pen is about as simple as it gets – you move the piston down by twisting the end cap, or the end of the barrel.

You dip the pen into a bottle of ink, submerging the nib, and then you twist the end cap in the other direction, pulling ink up like a syringe (except with a twisting motion).

But the real star of this pen is the nib, both because it’s a beauty but also because it writes so well. I’ve loved and still love many pens, but it’s always the ones that write for you every single time that are the ones you reach for without thinking twice.

I have a medium, which has been wet and smooth and writes perfectly every time I pick it up, even after I’ve left it for a while without using it.

It’s just slightly bouncy, it gives a bit of responsiveness, but it’s definitely not soft. There is a soft nib on the black Custom 74, or of course you could try the Falcon if you’re looking for a softer nib.

When we first got the Custom 92s, we only got a few units each of medium and fine, and I’m not really a Japanese fine kind of writer (those are pretty fine).

While we now also have the broad, and while I normally love a broad nib, the medium is just right for me, and I think I would choose a medium again if I had the chance to do it over. Maybe I just really like this particular nib too much to give it up.

The medium is enough to show a bit of shading and character, and while it’s nice and wet, I can also use it to scribble notes on invoices on copy paper or shopping lists on post-it notes.

The paper for the writing sample is my Life Noble Notebook, and the ink is Waterman Mysterious Blue, one of my favourite inks.

A customer came into the shop the other day and asked what I was writing with, and I happened to be using my Custom 92. We didn’t have any in the pen case yet to show him, so I grabbed my Custom 92 from the back.

He kind of joked (I think) about using my pen, because you know how finicky pen people can be about their pens – I don’t really seem like one of those people, right?? In any case…

While I’m not exactly out front too often to let customers try out whatever’s in my pen roll, this is one of my best writing pens that I’m always so glad to have people try – no matter what style of holding a pen or writing with a pen you have (he was a leftie!), or what nib size you normally prefer, it’s just a pleasure to write with.

For some more writing samples and also more shots of the pen, I used it with Caroube de Chypre in this blog post. The pen and the ink both are absolutely stunning with that chocolate and sparkle, but with any ink, the Custom 92 is a beautiful pen.

We have the smoke and the clear and also the orange, although the orange isn’t up online yet – all in fine, medium and broad. If you’re interested in the orange, just send us an email (orders@wonderpens.ca) and we can set you right up.

We got a pretty good shipment this time, along with the Pilot Custom 74s (same nib, cartridge/converter instead of piston), so I think these will be around for at least a little while.

***

And for a real behind the scenes shot, here’s what it really looked like when we were taking photos for this blog post.

This is our newest human team member, Danielle, who was my hand model for a few of these shots, along with our newest furry team member, the cat. If you couldn’t tell, we’re in the apartment taking the photos, behind the shop.

In the shop, our team is doing their thing without either me or Jon (not that I’m usually too helpful) because – get this – Jon has left to go pick up a generator in Mississauga. Yesterday, we just received notice that on Friday, our building is going to have a power outage from 10 am to 5 pm so we’re going to be doing some scrambling to process orders, print receipts, run the router, turn on the lights…

In this shot, Danielle and I are trying to whisper because Caleb is asleep on the bed literally just behind Danielle, and the cat is slinking around trying to sniff the ink and get in the way.

I have to laugh when the odd person comments that our Instagram or blog photos don’t look half-bad, because behind the curtain, it could be its own show – shipments of broken ink, the dog stealing and and eating an entire block of cheese from the table, power outages for an entire work day, half-frozen peas all over the floor.

You can all say you support small business, and truly mean it.

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We are so excited to announce our first annual School Supplies Drive for Covenant House Toronto. This is something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for a few months now.

Some of you may know that I used to be a teacher, and some of you may further have heard me joke that I went into teaching because I couldn’t part with school supplies.

But the truth of the matter is that the luxury of having school supplies like pencils and paper and notebooks and art materials isn’t something all youth in Toronto have.

We are partnering with Covenant House Toronto to run a school supplies drive for the upcoming school year – we will be collecting any new or gently used school supply items you have, and bringing them all to Covenant House at the end of September.

Covenant House Toronto is Canada’s largest homeless youth agency, based in Toronto at Gerrard + Yonge. They support youth with a huge range of experiences and traumas, including homelessness, trafficking, drug addiction, mental health problems, abuse or neglect and much more.

They have a crisis shelter, on-site counsellors, therapists and medical staff, run programs like the Arts + Minds Therapy Program, job training, work to help youth transition back into their homes or into independent housing, a food + clothing bank, and provide on-going follow-up support after youth have left their facilities.

Covenant House Toronto also has their own on-site high school.

The inside of one of the classrooms.

Their high school, Sheppard Centre High School – McGill Campus, is a partnership with the Toronto Catholic District School Board that provides credits in compulsory subjects (English, math, etc.) so youth who have stepped away from their home schools can continue with their education.

We are collecting supplies for both their Sheppard Centre High School as well as art supplies for their Arts + Minds program.

In particular, they are asking for the following:

School
•agenda books for 2016-2017 school year
•spiral bound notebooks (lined paper)
•small notebooks (for journals)
•art journal books (blank paper inside)
•white erase tape (the best kind would be the white roll out stick type)

Art Program
•acrylic paints
•brushes
•canvases
•sketchbooks
•wool
•molding clay
•markers
•matte board

With the particular need for agendas, we of course immediately thought of our friends at Quo Vadis (who also make the Habana notebooks). We’ve been so appreciative of their support of Wonder Pens over the years, and I’m extremely pleased to share that Quo Vadis has also come on board with us to very generously donate 50 agendas for the 2016-2017 academic year.

Our shop will also be donating a selection of notebooks.

For those of you who don’t have any of these supplies available, we are also accepting $2 donations on behalf of Covenant House. 100% of all donations will go directly to Covenant House Toronto.

We are accepting $2 donations in the shop, either in cash or as an add-on to your purchases, or online as an add-on to your order. If you’re ordering online, you can add the donation to your cart, and you’ll check out like usual.

As a thank-you, we have a Wonder Pens + Covenant House 2016 button for either your $2 donation or your donation of spare school or art supplies. If you place your order online, we will include it with your order.

Covenant House does all sorts of outreach and work: my first time meeting someone from CH was at the school where I was teaching, now what seems like a freaky many years ago. CH came in to give our middle schoolers a presentation on youth homelessness and how dangerous and traumatic it can be to live on the streets, and the risks of things like drugs or trafficking.

Sometimes we think of ‘need’ as being in far away countries, but we can see pretty amazing work being done to try to meet the needs of our youth right here in our own city.

The post Wonder Pens’ School Supplies Drive for Covenant House Toronto appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

It’s our first ever warehouse sale! We’re normally closed on Sundays, but we’re opening up from 1-5 pm this Sunday, August 28th just for the sale. Spread the word!

We’re clearing out some older inventory, moving some things around, and making sure we’ve got room on our shelves for some exciting new things coming in the fall and winter. We may also have a few surprise items thrown in here or there just for fun! Discounts will range from 20-75% off, and we’ll have brand new, used or returned, slightly damaged, floor model, sample or discontinued items all available.

It’s going to be a casual afternoon, so stop by if you’re in the neighbourhood! We’ll have tea and treats and juice and stationery on sale. What better way could there be to spend and afternoon?

Most of the tables in the shop are going to be cleared off for sale items, but if you’re looking to pick up something else that’s not part of the warehouse sale, that’s fine as well – just ask one of the staff for it. You can also do an in-store pick-up so we can have it waiting for you, but it will be no trouble the day of as well.

We’re not planning for this to be a regular thing, or know when or if we’ll do another one – it’s just something that’s timely for us right now as we grow and learn about inventory and how to manage everything.

Plus, you guys who read the blog and follow along with us and who have supported our baby business since we were in our tiny space on the west end are pretty amazing. We’re hoping to celebrate that by having some good stuff at even better prices, or at the very least, a cookie and a glass of iced tea. And maybe a balloon.

This would also be a great time to clean out your own stationery cupboards and bring down any notebooks with just a few pages written in (we all know that feeling) or supplies that you thought you liked but it turns out you never used – our School Supplies Drive for Covenant House has just begun, and we’re looking forward to taking in all donations to Covenant House Toronto at the end of September.

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Last December, I posted about the notebooks I planned on using in 2016 to organize my life and my thoughts. It was nice to sit down at the end of a year and think ahead to a fresh start and what all was going to happen.

2016 was my first year with a Hobonichi Techo, a page a day, A6 notebook with Tomoe River paper.

Because it’s a page a day, and because of its smaller size, I decided to use it as a gratitude journal – a place to write down three (or one or a few) things I was grateful for.

We’re just over half-way through the year, and so I thought maybe an update would be nice, especially as 2017’s Hobonichi’s are barrelling their way down to us from Japan as we speak.

The paper is Tomoe River paper, extremely thin but very good for fountain pen ink. It’s some of my favourite paper, a bit crinkly and with some show through – I love that feeling of a notebook full of pages with words.

Noodler’s Blue Upon the Plains of Abraham

I didn’t quite make it everyday – there are a few pages here and there that are blank. I used a few of the blank ones for doodling or writing out a quote that I really liked, or used it to make note of some ink in my pens.

A few familiar faces!

There are a few things that I’m laughing at reading over, like the satisfaction of getting a really big booger out of Caleb’s nose, or finding a spare fudgsicle in the freezer behind the peas.

For the most part, though, a lot of the things I wrote about were events or things that aren’t really so memorable – so much so that I almost can’t even remember that specific visit to the cafe or that trip to the park with Caleb.

I read somewhere that one important thing about gratitude journaling is identifying why something happened. If you’re grateful for a visit to a cafe, is it because you planned ahead and worked harder during the day to make it happen?

This sort of reflection is supposed to make you more aware of what you have control over and what you can do differently, and I sort of tried it to also make note of it. As you might be able to tell from above, though, not all of the things I was grateful for or happy about necessarily had any long build-up or planning – at least not on my part.

I think gratitude journaling for me was more about the process of taking time out to look back on the day, and it was nice to find three things that were fun, or sometimes something I’m looking forward to.

You can tell when I’m looking forward to a shipment that’s going to bring a new ink or pen for me, because everyday for two weeks, it’s the same thing at the top of the page.

There’s not as much pressure on what to write, because it’s just one page. It’s something easy to bring out to a cafe and just jot down a few ideas, or something I could do at the kitchen table while dinner is on the stove, in between negotiating climbing on tables and cleaning up spilled milk.

And sometimes it was nice to just have something to write. A structure already in place for me to keep up with and to fill up the pages with, day after day. There’s certainly a bit of satisfaction in feeling the thickness and crinkliness of the pages before, getting thicker and thicker as the weeks pass along.

One that that changed was that I had initially thought I would use the monthly calendar to record inks, but it didn’t work out that way. I don’t typically do a big clean and flush, and then re-fill of all my pens at once – I wait until it’s written dry, and then whenever I get a chance, I flush and re-fill.

Using the monthly calendar to make note of when I filled it didn’t quite work out because I wasn’t very good at remembering to go into my Hobonichi after I inked up a pen.

Instead, every once in a while, I sat down with all or most of my pens and did a little scribble. There’s a blank page at the front of every month, which was perfect for me, as a monthly record of all my inks is just about right for me.

The Hobonichi is actually a fairly small notebook, so it’s easy to slide into your bag, or even your pocket, if your pocket is large enough. I loved having a leather cover on mine, and I’m hoping to collect a new Hobonichi each year onto my shelf, and have my leather cover age with me.

I used the Midori A6 goat skin cover. I also have the A4 for my journal for Caleb, and I’m thinking very hard about whether or not I need an A5 one.

You may recall sometime last year I had a minor fit when Caleb dropped a glob of butter onto the spine of my leather notebook, but leather being what it is, has sort of absorbed and evened out any extra oils! You can’t even tell.

My leather cover has held up well, although I had someone once comment that my leather looks exceptionally pink. The leather does start out pink, and gets a bit darker and browner over time – in the photo below you can see a bit of comparison around the edges.

You’re able to tan it a bit browner in the sun, but even when I take my Hobonichi out, it’s typically just in my bag.

I also did a post last year on other ideas you could use with a Hobonichi.

The timing for this post is good for a mid-year review, and a bit of a boost to keep it strong for the rest of 2016, but it’s also because we’re expecting our 2017 Hobonichis and new covers to arrive sometime in mid-September. I’m already feeling the crisp fall air and the smell of fresh agendas.

We’re doing a pre-order, something we don’t do very often, because we’ve had so many questions about the timing of when it’s going to be arriving.

We’ve ordered a good amount, and don’t expect disappointment, but especially for a few of you that may have missed out of 2016’s Hobonichis, or those of you who are sure you want one again this year, you can pre-order yours with or without the new 2017 covers here.

***

In other news, we now have a bunch of cat toys for the cat. I previously subscribed to the philosophy that Chicken is a cat, who is supposed to be “playing” with the rodents and prey he kills.

However, we (i.e. Jon) had enough attacking of ankles and feet as we walk around, and a friend told me that we either need to get him some toys to play with, or another cat. So we got some toys.

Super has already maimed about 25% of them, and Caleb broke the two motion-detecting balls with lights in them, but the remaining have proven to be excellent!

Jon can’t believe I paid money for what is essentially a long piece of felt attached by a rubber band to a plastic stick, but both Caleb and our lion beast are now entertained for upwards of 45 seconds at a time.

The post Update on My 2016 Hobonichi – Gratitude Journaling appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

Vancouver and our train trip seem months ago already, with getting back into things here in the shop and in Toronto, but I wanted to share another post from out west. Visiting the beach and the park and getting out into the cool Vancouver weather was one of my favourite parts of the trip.

We were first came to Kitslano beach with a customer from the shop! It’s even crazier because the first time I met her was out in Vancouver.

Lillian had actually come to our shop in Toronto before and met Jon, but I wasn’t in the shop when she visited. We’ve emailed back and forth, mostly about pens, but the stars aligned for us to meet when we planned our trip out west.

Lillian very, very graciously invited us into her beautiful home for brunch before taking us to the beach. I tried to warn her about Caleb, but she has a son of her own, grown now, so she’s already battle-tested.

She lives right near Kitslano Beach, and we headed out in the afternoon. That night were due to be fireworks, but with Caleb going to bed early, we were going to miss them.

We were already full from Lillian’s delicious brunch, but we brought a few cherries and treats and Lillian and I had a great afternoon chat while Jon and Caleb walked around the water. It was a beautiful day, but still a bit too chilly for Caleb to dip in more than his toes.

It was really a completely unexpected pleasure to visit with Lillian in person after emailing her, and she was such a gracious host! It was so nice to receive her recommendations around town and all of her helpful suggestions, but it was really just lovely to chat with her about pens and family and travel and life.

It’s these kind of serendipitous friendships that make running a stationery shop kind of magical.

***

On another day, we also made it out to Stanley Park for a picnic lunch, and had fun wandering around the park. We just brought some crackers and cheese and fruit and finger things to eat, and had a leisurely brunch.

We were tempted to make it into the aquarium, but Caleb was winding down for his afternoon nap, so we headed back to our Air BnB instead.

***

We loved the beach so much that on our last full day (we were headed to the airport the next morning), we made it back for some take-out pizza dinner and one last dip.

It was Caleb’s first slice of pizza ever, and he was so-so on it – I know! Crazy! I could eat pizza forever.

Caleb absolutely loved the water. It was crazy. We started out just walking by the edge, but soon had to strip down because he was running in and out of the waves like he had just been set free after years of imprisonment.

It was warm enough to not make you cold, but cool enough to feel fresh and clean on your legs.

I think if we ever went back to Vancouver, I’d want to stay closer to the beach, especially seeing how much Caleb loved the water. He enjoys the wading pool at our local parks here in Toronto, but there’s something different about feeling waves roll up against your feet.

We loved all the bits about exploring Vancouver and visiting the shops and the sights and Granville Island and taking transit all over the city, but I think the nicest part of it for us, being from Toronto and in the shop all the time, was just relaxing and soaking up the sun and the waves.

***

In case you missed it, we had our first ever warehouse sale this past Sunday.

We’ve never done anything of the sort before, but we were thinking it would be nice to clear out some shelf space and move some inventory as we roll into the fall and work on some new lines we have coming in.

It was a crazy afternoon, to say the least. When we opened the doors right around 1:00, there was already a line-up down our lane way.

Here’s one shot of it I managed to grab in between trying to re-stock the tables, and handing out popsicles. There’s an AC in the shop which normally does okay, but with all those people on such a hot day, and with the doors opening and closing, we ended up just propping open the door and bringing in all the fans we had.

We were lucky that Caleb napped for the first good part of the afternoon, including the bit where I headed to Shoppers and cleared out their stock of popsicles, but after he was up, I was busy keeping an eye on him roaming around.

I was a bit worried about him with all the people, but it turns out we had so many regular customers that I think he had more eyes watching out for him than he’s ever had before.

It truly takes a village to raise a child, and our village is pretty amazing.

We’re probably not going to hold another warehouse sale for a while, but it was exciting to see how many stationery and pen nuts are out there – all of you willing to come out and make the trek out here on a Sunday afternoon. The community here in Toronto really is something else.

I know some of you from out of town who order online from us were a bit disappointed that we didn’t have anything online – part of it is that it was a bit hard to manage, and part of it is that it doesn’t make quite as much financial sense for us to package up and ship things out that we might already be putting steep discounts on.

However, we are thinking of you! And we are thinking of ways to do something special for you online folks as well. Stay tuned.

The post Vancouver Adventures: Beaches + Parks appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

It’s always exciting when we get a new line in the shop, but this one I was especially looking forward to: last week we got in a shipment of new notebooks from Japan, the Stalogy line.

Stalogy isn’t quite as well known in Canada as other Japanese stationery companies, but I think with their quality of paper, they’re going to be become more and more popular.

Stalogy has other notebooks as well, but we’re specifically carrying the Editor’s Series, these black-covered with yellow half-slips, because of how well it does with fountain pen ink. We have the A4 notepads in portrait and landscape, which will be nice for designers and thinkers who like a wider space.

We also have the notebooks in A6 + A5, and the much harder to find B6 + B5. I can say with experience that the B sizes are harder to find because I personally prefer the B sizes and I’m always on the lookout for them.

Here’s the A5 on top compared to the B5 below.

I like both the B6 for notes and an everyday carry notebook, and the B5 for my writing and journaling. I find the larger space just does it for me a bit better.

Stalogy’s 365 Days Notebook is designed to have a page per day, except that it’s a free diary style, so you can highlight or circle the day, date + month that you’re on. The rest of the page is a light grid, with a very discreet 24 hour timestamp along the left side.

If you are faithful to a page a day, you’ll have used up a notebook in a year, but if you do miss a day or two, you don’t have to worry as much about “wasting” the page. I know some customers who are going to try the page a day with a Stalogy rather than a Hobonichi because they know that they don’t want to commit to every single day.

The notebooks have a thin, black cardboard soft cover, and the notebook itself has a nice heft in the hand.

The main reason why diehard Stalogy fans are diehard Stalogy fans, though, is the paper: it’s sort of like Tomoe River paper, and it’s in a really high quality binding. The signatures are super tight and you can flex and open the notebook flat easily. The paper is thin, and because there’s so much of it, it’s a bit heavier and the pages weigh themselves down.

Another important note to keep in mind is that because the paper is thin, you get a lot more pages out of it without the notebook being any thicker than other standard notebooks – 368 pages.

I have to clarify that the paper is not quite the same as Tomoe River paper, but it’s really pretty good. It’s almost as thin, and also handles fountain pen ink very well – I’ve used all of my currently inked up pens for journaling with the paper with no problem.

Here are some writing samples.

Noodler’s Blue Upon the Plains of Abraham in a TWSBI Broad, and underneath is Sailor Tokiwa-Matsu in my Lamy 2000 Medium

Top to bottom: Tokiwa-Matsu in a Lamy 2000 Medium, Waterman Mysterious Blue in a Pilot Custom 92 Medium, Rohrer + Klingner Blau Permanent in an Edison Pearlette Medium

The only pen + ink combo that had some problems was the Noodler’s Kiowa Pecan in my Noodler’s Konrad. I think it wasn’t so much the extra ink on the page so much as it was the stiffness of the nib, meaning when I flexed it out, the tines were pressing pretty hard into the page; the carving up of the paper fibres meant the ink feathered into the page.

When I used a softer flex nib, like a vintage flex nib, it did just fine.

Like Tomoe River paper, though, it will also have significant show through, especially with wetter or heavier inks, but you can still see fine or medium nib writing through the back.

The only pen that had feathering or bleed through was flexing the Konrad.

I’m currently using the Stalogy notebook as my personal journal, which was good timing as I switch-over from my Life Noble Note, because I wanted to try out the paper. I

One week in, and it’s safe to say I’m sold – I think I like the heft of the notebook without the additional bulk of a hardcover (this notebook slides easily into my backpack or bag), but I especially love seeing the pages starting to get a bit crinkly from my writing.

***

Behind the scenes, we’re chugging along. Last week Caleb broke my camera, and Jon had to order me a new camera body.

Caleb had sort of broken it months ago, and it was one of those things where it was held together with (washi) tape, and I sometimes had to turn it on and off a few times before it worked. The battery cover had also broken off, and because of the crash, I think the body had kind of bent in a weird way which meant that the battery sometimes fell right out.

It was kind of ridiculous looking back on it, since I sort of blog and handle social media as part of my job, which requires taking pictures, but I think I couldn’t bear the idea of getting a new one until we really had to.

The plus side was that it was a nice week + a bit to really try out how I liked the notebook before doing the blog post.

The new camera body came in today! What a wonderful Friday surprise, since it means we have the long weekend to catch up on photos and taking pictures of the Caleb and the furry ones. It also meant I rushed in a few snaps of the Stalogy notebooks to get this blog post up.

I love the look of the body, but I’m definitely no real camera nut. One of these days I’m going take a course to learn how to use a camera properly.

In high school I took a photography course, but it was back (not so long ago!) when high school art programs had dark rooms for students to learn to develop film and their pictures, and it was a bit more manual. I remember my photography teacher used to just dip his hands into the chemicals and shuffle the photographs around the fixer, while telling us to always use the tongs. Those were the days.

The post New Stalogy Notebooks + Notepads: Editor’s Series appeared first on Wonder Pens - Life Behind a Stationery Shop.

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally carrying the full line of Pilot’s Iroshizuku inks – and the exciting bit is that we’re carrying both the full-sized 50 mL bottles as well as the mini 15 mL bottles.

Previously we carried only a portion of the full line and special ordered in any colours we didn’t carry for customers who wanted them. Part of the problem with this was the wait time, and the other part was not having samples available for customers to just try out.

We previously carried the mini bottles in two sets, with no swapping, so you could only get set A or set B.

We’re pretty thrilled to now be able to carry the complete line, and you can make your own 3-pack! You can select which three inks you’d like from our drop down menu on the product page. Unfortunately we aren’t able to sell the 15 mL bottles individually.

Each set will still come in the hard white case. If you’re not storing the inks in the case, you can take out the black foam that holds the three bottles in place and use it to store something else.

Seeing all the new colours swabbed out, I had a hard time picking three for my set.

Shin-Kai is an old stand-by favourite of my mine, which is a deep blue-black which has just a hint of dustiness to it. It also sheens a bit if you’ve got it really heavy, although if you’re looking for more sheen, you might try Sailor Blue-Black (another favourite). I already have a full bottle of it, but I think it might be my favourite Iroshizuku ink.

The writing sample is with my Sailor 1911S Medium.

The next two I hadn’t tried before, but they are two new favourites.

Yama-Guri is a darker brown. It’s an office-friendly brown that could look almost black with a fine nib or a wet nib, but it has some depth and character to it with its brown undertones. It goes on quite dark, but especially with broader nibs, it will dry to show a warm chestnut brown (as its name translates to from Japanese). It’s similar to another favourite of mine, Rohrer + Klingner Sepia.

The writing sample is with a Parker Duofold Medium.

And this last one is one of my favourite new inks I’ve tried in a long time: Fuyu-Syogun. I mostly have a thing for brown inks, but my second choice of colour would be blue-grey inks, and this grey blue black is just beautiful.

It’s airy and vintage and has these tones of shadow and light. Fuyu-Syogun is ironically named Old Man Winter, because I am about as anti-winter as they come (minus Christmas), but this ink is made for a letter on ivory paper, or writing your memoirs under a shady tree in a field.

I’ve been meaning to do more ink reviews – can you believe my last one was Black Swan in English Roses in March? – so I may have to take a closer look at a few of these new inks for the blog.

I’ve been trying this thing recently where I’m keeping fewer pens inked up, and it’s going terribly. I had it down to 8 pens, but then I had to make a deep sacrifice for this post to ink up three more pens to show off these inks.

You can see the full line up of colours on our website here, or better yet, you can come visit us in the shop to see them in their full glory on the shelf. We had to move around some inks on our shelf to make room for everything, and I feel like we might need to get another cabinet soon. Jon and I are in a heated debate about whether or not to use that top shelf – I’m obviously opposed to it, as I certainly can’t reach it without stepping on something.

You might notice the lower shelves of the Iroshizuku inks have a smaller label with the swab on it. We’re hoping to eventually move all the swabs into these little labels, which will be a labour of love, emphasis maybe on the labour.

It won’t show the hue of the ink as well, but it will certainly make the entire cabinet look a lot neater. We’ll still have our ink binder sorted by brand and by colour available all the time, if you want a look at the bigger swab as well.

***

In other news, Canada Post + its workers have finally come to a two-year agreement, so our pens and inks will be shipping with confidence. We definitely took a hit in shipping FedEx and upgrading to Xpresspost, and so we’re glad to be back to normal now.

Caleb’s birthday is this week, and he’s been receiving a few gifts from near and far, including in the mail, which is, I think must be one of the most wonderful ways to receive a present. It’s mostly books, which is great since Caleb has finally (mostly) ceased to aggressively turn pages to the point of tearing his board books in half.

He’s celebrating his birthday early by a few disasters including:
1. Sticking his hand into a jar of Nutella, licking it off his fingers, and then sticking his hand back in.
2. While naked, opening my bottle of Sailor Grenade (!) on the bed, and leaking it all over himself and the sheets. It would look worse if it was a brownish kind of red, but Grenade has a bit more of a purple fuchsia tinge to it, and now so do our bed sheets.
3. Throwing a glass jar of cheese dip on our concret floor, and saying “uh-oh” after it broke. I have photo evidence of both the “uh-oh” and then the side-stepping away with a guilty face. How young they learn these things.
4. Opening bottle of Gris Nuage on my carpet, which we just had professionally cleaned for the first time in years (after the flood in the apartment), also while naked.

So he is currently stained with both reddish purple and grey all over.

Today he got this little cash register from the team, and it’s adorable and hilarious. Caleb loves messing around with our register and the receipt printer and especially the credit card machine, which is usually when Jon gives me his patented “LIZ” look, which is my cue to take him to the back. From a very young age, he’s been trying to stick business cards into the business end of the machine, pressing buttons randomly.

This one only has swipe, but he’s a fast-learner.

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I can’t believe it’s already Friday! I hope you’ve all had a great week, and a weekend full of exciting plans ahead.

Yesterday was our monthly Letter Writing Club, and I sort of dropped the ball, since I usually try to post about it on the blog to remind everyone.

In the spirit of letter writing, and in particular, of how some days it feels like I’m a kid who needs an adult around here to supervise me, I thought I would share a few photos of Caleb at the post office.

There’s a mailbox outside the post office, but we like to go in so we can visit the mailbox under the counter, which is at Caleb’s height.

He knows the routine: he drops off the mail, and then pretends to open some of the PO boxes with his keys, while I remind him yet again that we don’t have a PO box. One of these days maybe I’ll get one for fun, just so he can pick up mail for real.

We probably go a few times a week to drop off snail mail, cards + notes, business stuff for the shop, mail from our Letter Writing Club, and the odd package.

I’m sort of hoping he’ll pick up the snail mail bug, or at least understand the ritual and process of writing mail and sticking it in an envelope and bringing it down to a mailbox.

He’s even received a few items in the mail, and he loves opening up letters and seeing what’s inside – sometimes stickers, sometimes pictures from friends or family. I think having something concrete and physical in his hand at this early age is so important, something for him to hold onto and treasure (at least for a few minutes!), rather than something that can just disappear on a screen.

Last week he decided he wanted to ride his little bicycle down to the post office. If you’ve ever been to the shop, you’ll know that the post office is just on Queen at Carlaw, inside the Shoppers, which is about a two minute walk.

I thought it was really cute that he was riding his bicycle down the sidewalk, until about five minutes in, when I discovered that he moves about 15 times slower on his bicycle than walking, which is already pretty slow.

We made it there, much to my relief, and took a break in the air conditioning to drop off our mail, and roam the sparkling aisles.

The ride home was a different story, where he went from very slow to basically not moving and in fact at times moving backwards.

His slower speed was also not aided by the fact that he needed to enter into every obstacle he could find, including, but not limited to, bus shelters, ramps into other shops, the soil around trees, dumpster areas, other sidewalks, doorways, automatic sliding doors, pathways to parking lots, medium-large sized bushes, and walls.

I had to literally lure him home with Cheese Nips, holding them out a few feet in front of him to come forward to get. I bought them because they were on sale, but it really must have been my spidey-sense tingling in premonition of our pilgrimage half a block home.

All in, it took us about an hour and a half to make it there and back.

It’s truly such an incredible age when you can be this tiny creature moving at a snail’s pace, completely oblivious everyone around you, and yet so completely aware of every possible distraction to impede your journey home.

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