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Taking A Hike

My getaway for the past few summers has been a ‘camp’ in the Adirondack Mountains.  It is a series of rustic cabins scattered around an old farmhouse, with a raging little river running adjacent.  ...

Pencils, Pencils, Pencils

Depending on your sense of nostalgia, writing with a pencil can be a “Madeleine moment’. For me, the smell of wood shavings and sharpened graphite can recall the slow walk from the wall-mounted pen...

The May Sale

The people closest to me will gently point out that I tell the same stories again and again.  If you’ve heard this one, please forgive me.   I opened the shop in mid-September of 1987, a shop dedic...

My First Sale

I have been selling fountain pens for 35 years.  My first day in retail was the day I opened the shop, back in September of 1987.  But it wasn’t the first pen I ever sold.    That was in the summer...

Spring Training

Schoolkids are taught the equinox is the beginning of spring. For me, winter ends three weeks earlier. The beginning of March is the start of spring training.    Baseball speaks to me of tradition...

I'm Sorry, And You're Welcome

When someone walks into the shop, whether well-versed or new to the world of writing instruments, there is a moment of engagement. It is often a dance, sometimes a face-off, and almost always enlig...

A New Year

I trust you had a reasonable end-of-year break. Almost certainly, some of you were bogged down, snowed in, or missed flights. I hope the frustration was tempered by a small voice reminding you that...

December Business (And Busyness)

  Over the past 35 years, December has been, for me, a month of intense business and busyness. The intensity of activity in the shop is at once invigorating and exhausting, great fun and hard wo...

The Gift

Now that Halloween is behind us (my least favourite holiday—but that is for a sidebar conversation), I feel the pull towards the intensity of the December holidays. The changes over the last two D...

Pen and Paper

“Wow, you use a fountain pen!?”⁠⁠In our writing community, there is a shared understanding of why we love pens and paper so much. The combination of the beautiful and the haptic: the colour of ink...