There was some once-in-a-lifetime intragalactic phenomenon and here in Toronto it was too cloudy to see it. It looked possibly optimistic before the actual eclipse, the clouds clearing out of the way just enough to give us false hope, and then for the majestic occurrence it mostly just looked grim. Baby napped through the whole thing, the space goggles were relegated to bookmarks, I wore my sunglasses to enjoy a little afternoon reading, and then, thankfully, the sun came back out in her usual glory, just for Chicken to bask in.     ..read more

  What has my life come to? What am I doing with myself? The days and weeks and months and years are sliding through my fingers like water. Six years ago I acquired a cat because we lived in a factory warehouse with mice, and this cat caught nothing, although he one-time watched the dog corner a mouse with Jon and a broom, and now we have a set of six stamps of chickens, emotionally and spiritually (tangentially) related to our cat named Chicken.   Here they are. What fun! I cannot get enough of them. I’ve been stamping them everywhere, each one an imprint of my soul into this tangi ..read more

    The Traveler’s Notebook Stamp Caravan is coming to town, and we are so thrilled to be hosting them again. Traveler’s Company has a set of stamps with different designs and themes, and they send them around the world to various shops.     Visit the shop between April 19-28 and you’ll be able to add stamps to your favourite inserts, postcards or notebooks. Of course we’ll have our Partner Shop stamp as well.   We are holding a meet-up and we would love if you came to visit us with your Traveler’s Notebook and favourite supplies in tow.   And in case you c ..read more

  After many years, we have finally addressed a deficiency in our book selection. It is one of many, of course, but this one seems especially egregious because Lynda Barry is a creative hero of mine.   We now have a bunch of her books available in the shop, and I recommend them highly to anyone who is hoping to be more creative, who likes drawing, who doesn’t think they can draw, who wants to write more, who enjoys using their stationery, who has stacks of unused notebooks on their shelves, who is looking for inspiration, who doesn’t have time for making things, who is looking ..read more

  These days, Naomi, our intrepid 6-year-old middle child, is learning cursive writing, and so I’m back into it as well. What fun!   We have broken out our seyes ruled notebooks and sharpened our pencils and she’s even practising her writing with her Kakuno. You can see what seyes ruled paper we have in the shop here. With Clairefontaine, from France, their regular seyes ruled paper is with blue lines, but Naomi and I are practising on the slightly larger version of the ruling.   I thought I would share some basic guidelines for writing on seyes ruled paper, which is a French t ..read more

  Chicken made it out of the emergency vet, thank goodness, and several thousands of dollars and several small vials of Jon’s tears later. I have visions of Jon harvesting his tears and applying them onto Chicken’s furry parts while whispering angry spells of healing. “But you’re a MUGGLE!” Caleb shouts gleefully, waving a chopstick in the air as he leaps off the back of the couch.   Our crusty prodigal son returned home to his family who loves him, shaved in various places, smelling of various terrible smells, handfuls of pills and little syringes of not ink but of equally suspicio ..read more

      I continue to enjoy my days at the library, crying the occasional tear while wondering how Junia is doing.   The library system is heaving itself back to life, I hear, and me and Caleb have been giving each other side-eye at the library check out, wondering about all the books floating around the house that will need to be recovered and schlepped back to the library and what will remain on the accounts after the dust has settled. Jon has been complaining about these books littered about the house for months, and I have a vision of him now, a maniacal gleam in his eye ..read more

  Some time ago we got in several varieties of the new Octopus Ink line. I greeted them with enthusiasm! But then they sort of got stacked somewhere in the abyss of my office closet, and I forgot about them.   More recently, we got in lots of other Octopus Ink flavours, and I successfully (!) located the original bottles that I had meant to try out and now here they are.   Brown Colibri   Red Duck   Blue Koi   Petrol Axolotl     Blue Chameleon   I had to rein in my enthusiasm in inking up too many of these different colours because I am curr ..read more

  Life continues on, as it does. I’m writing this from a public library, that great institution of free books and free Wifi and the long line up to the bathroom.   Halfway through January, Junia had her start into preschool and it was going so swimmingly it was unbelievable, truly. A week or two into it, she was down to two minutes of crying at the door and the rest of the day enjoying lunch and going down the slide and napping like the champ we know her to be. My little preschool super star! I was already mentally queuing up coffee and bubble tea dates.   Alas, it was not to b ..read more

      Journaling continues to be a balm for life, a way to record those sacred moments, a stirring up of the mundane into something a little more interesting, something to keep the itchy fingers busy.   I hope you do not lack for inspiration, but in case you do, here are a few different types of journals or diaries or notebooks you could try keeping in case you want to try something new for a little bit.   Morning Pages   This is the classic from Julie Cameron. She recommends doing three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing in the morning, to clear ..read more