Winter Ink Shipping (#Canadianproblems)

It’s that time of year!

Temperatures are beginning to dip, and we’ve had our first few snowfalls. It’s the time of year when Canadians buck up and take it in the chin (or cower near the rad, growing paler day by day…).

This means a couple of things if you’re ordering ink online!

1. We are going to be sending orders containing ink – ink bottles, samples or cartridges (even if you order a pen that comes with a single cartridge!) – to the post office for pick up. Your delivery person should be leaving you a card to let you know it’s there, but you can also follow along with the tracking info we send.

This is even if you know that you or a family member are going to be home, or if you live in an apartment or condo. Your delivery person does not carry all of the mail for their entire route when they leave the sorting facility. Canada Post sorts mail and packages to be dropped off in the grey “pick-up boxes” along a mailman’s route. Your mailman picks up that section of the route’s mail as they progress, and the time between the package being left in the grey pick up box, and your mailman actually delivering it could be a while – in fact, while it should not happen, it could even be overnight.

Please note that inks expand as they begin to reach freezing, so even as the inks reach 10 degrees, 5 degrees, the liquid is expanding. It is not only after temperatures reach 0 degrees and lower.

2. Diamine ink bottles have a particular weakness for chilly temperatures, and unfortunately, we’re going to be pulling our Diamine inks out of commission very soon, as the weather drops more and more. If you can no longer order it online, it means temperatures throughout Canada are too low to ship Diamine. We have tried our best, but even with sending these bottles to the post office, extra layers of bubble wrap, “do not freeze” stickers, and a kiss for good luck, there are too many broken Diamine bottles for us to continue sending them out in the winter. We are truly small business, and we just cannot absorb the loss of so many bottles as well as potential damage to other items in your shipment.

3. If you purchase a bottle of ink from us, you may receive it with a small portion siphoned out into a plastic vial. This is to protect the bottle from cracking or breaking if the ink inside expands too much.

4. We will do these precautions automatically, at our discretion, and based on our experience with other shipments in your province or town. If you would prefer to have us do something differently, please make a note in the order comments, at your own risk!

5. At the risk of sounding like a pushy salesman, I might encourage you to consider your ink purchases sooner rather than later. Reason one is that your ink has the highest chance of getting to you safely and we can both breathe easier knowing that ink has not been spilt in vain. Reason two is that not being able to ship out ink also means we won’t be able to get ink in from our distributors. If we sell out of one, or two, or a few more savoury flavours of ink, we won’t be getting it in until next spring. I still get minor anxiety attacks thinking about last year and our empty shelves…

All that being said, you can always come visit us in store! And with winter coming, I hope you are taking brisk walks and drinking hot chocolate. We’ve got lots of exciting things to come in the next few weeks as we work up to the holiday madness!

New Year’s Giveaway 2014

With the new year come new year’s resolutions. It’s a fresh start! A field of untouched snow! A new teacher in September! A gym membership! All good things yet untarnished by life.

Only the truly resolute are able to break through on their own – for the rest of us, we’re offering some handy organization tools as our first giveaway of 2014. We hope these will help you meet all your goals, or at least help you organize a bit.

1. Kaweco Al-Sport Fountain Pen with Pen Clip in nib size of your choice.
2. Milltown Pen Case in Mustard.
3. O-Check Hardcover Journal
4. Life Japanese Stationery B6 Grid Vermilion Notebook.
5. Quo Vadis Minister Agenda.

(Total retail value: $164.50)

To enter, leave a comment below naming one of your new year’s resolutions. Bonus points (and maybe a bonus surprise!) for imagination or outrageousness.

This contest is only for people who are cheerfully suffering through Canadian winters, or at least pretending to (you must be a resident of Canada). We will only ship within Canada.

The contest closes midnight EST January 7th, 2014. Winner will be announced on the 8th, and will have until January 14th, 2014 to contact us with pertinent shipping information. Otherwise, we’ll just keep all these goodies for ourselves, or maybe try giving them away again.

 

Updates from the Shop

The holiday season is really beginning! We’ve seen our first bit of snow and frost and I’m about ready to spend as much of my time indoors as possible.

Lots of new things are going on in the shop, and it seems like we hardly have time to get things done. We have lots of new products and we’re working on taking photos and getting them up on the site soon – some of the new products are just new shades of ink or a new ruling in a notebook we already carry; check our Just In section as we try to make sure stuff goes there as soon as we get it up.

It feels like there are new shipments coming in every day (I see a UPS truck right now!), and while some stuff may say it’s out of stock online, we may have just not updated it on the site yet, so feel free to give us a call or send us an e-mail if you’re looking for something in particular.

We’re getting new Kaweco products – the Allrounder is up on the site already, and the Dia2 will be up soon. Both of these are metal and weighty and smooth.

 

Kaweco Dia2 – will be up on the website soon.

Diamine inks has stopped shipping for the winter, so unfortunately, what we have is all we’ll have until maybe around March. Our distributor was optimistic and said maybe even February, so let’s keep our fingers crossed. Both for Diamine inks and warm weather sooner.  Diamine was a newer brand for us, we just picked it up in the fall, so in the new year, we’ll be working on making sure we have enough stock to last us through the winter, like bears preparing for hibernation.

And to hold your ink, we’ve got some TWSBI ink bottles. They are very heavy, with a thick glass base and metal bands. They’re designed to work cleanly with TWSBI 580s & Minis, but you can use any pen. It also has the same inner cone that the Sailor bottles have. These will also be up online soon.

Calligraphy Class Registration – Holiday Gifts!

Our calligraphy classes are just about finishing up for the year, but we have three new classes posted for the new year. We’re also offering gift registrations for the holiday season. We have the registration certificates printed on the beautiful G. Lalo paper so you’ll have something nice to give. If you order online, we’ll mail it to you.

Along with our calligraphy classes, we’ve got some new calligraphy tools, including nib holders and nibs available in store, and soon online. Stay tuned for more information on our pointed pen calligraphy classes!

As the new year comes, we’ve got Rhodia 2014 planners in stock. We also have a few Quo Vadis ones that we’re hoping to get up on the site soon. We have new Jinhao pens in, and we’re working on getting the inventory updated and the new pens up online soon as well!

We’re looking forward to getting the shark staplers and the Delfonics Pen Cases back in stock soon! I know I’ve been saying we’re going to get the Delfonics in for a while now, but I think this time I really mean it.

In store, we’ll soon have gift wrapping available in a few sizes, so please stop by as you’re doing your holiday shopping.

If you’re ordering from us online and you’ve got ink in your package, we’re sending it to the post office for you to pick up unless you let us know otherwise. Please keep in mind that even if you know that someone is going to be home when the mailman comes, the mailman picks up his packages along his route from the grey Canada Post pick-up boxes. After the mailman sorts all the mail, a carrier truck drops off mail for each section of the route at the pick-up boxes, and the mail man stops by along his route, so it’s difficult to tell how long a package may be sitting in the grey boxes for before the mailman picks it up to deliver to you. I know this is not super convenient for many of you, but please bear with us as we want to get your ink to you safely!

We’re closing the shop for a week between Christmas & New Year’s, so please keep that I mind if you’re in town visiting family for the holidays!

Holiday Hours:
Monday, December 23rd: 10am to 6pm
Tuesday, December 24th: 10am to 1pm
Wednesday, December 25th to Wednesday, January 1st – closed
Thursday, January 2nd – regular hours