Because we (like most other people) love looking at vintage things, we couldn’t resist rolling up our sleeves, digging through some really dusty books for ideas, and adding some old school flair to the shop.

Here are the results: three very skinny exercise booklets, each filled with 25 blank pages of sugarcane paper. The pastel paper covers are printed with our original designs pairing vintage images with sage quotes from The Science of Culture (a stuffy book on etiquette from1923). Each set comes wrapped in a recycled kraft paper package. Available now in our store.

Working on these new designs yesterday afternoon was a really welcome break from the big three-(now four)-month-long project I’m still up to my shoulders in. Somewhere in the midst of this, we are also working on the spring/summer collection of our signature photo-cover journals. Please do continue to check back in during the coming months to see what new things we are adding to Five and a Half!

We’ve sent so many of our journals westward, you’d think we’d get them into some stores there a bit faster. We’ve been working on it and now, finally, we are thrilled to say, they are making their official California debut as part of the spring stationery collection in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Museum Store. Yay!

And in case you’re wondering why we’ve been so quiet over here, we’ve been working hard on some new stuff and we hope to be sharing the results with you really soon.

“We went to Red Hook, Brooklyn to look for a community farm built on an old asphalt field. The farm was closed so we went to the pier nearby. There was a gigantic cruise boat floating and two families fishing. On our way back we saw a beautiful dusk sky. It was the first chilly day after an unusually long summer.”

A new journal in the winter collection, we debuted this one at Design Within Reach’s ModernMart event in December and couldn’t help noticing how many people were drawn to it. The colors are richer and darker than our other cover images, but there’s a certain quiet grandeur about it that makes it one of my favorites. It’s now available in the store.

During our stay in Asia, we took a weekend trip to Hong Kong. Towering buildings, crazy traffic, streets packed with shoppers, and an occasional moment or two that reminded me of the old Hong Kong I grew up in. I also remembered the pet bird I had when I was in elementary school, a little blue budgie named Wendy.

Sightseeing aside, we ventured out to a less touristy area, Tin Hau, in search of a shop called Kapok. We followed our map to the hillside, up a winding cement staircase, and found the store on a sloped, tree-lined street that carried the light scent of incense from the temple nearby. The minute we stepped inside, we were all smiles.

Kapok is part storefront, part gallery space, part design studio, carrying products by Asian and European designers. We spent quite a while there, looking over all the things in the store and chatting with the owner, Arnault, who told us about a great teahouse that we headed over to later in the afternoon. We left the store with a bunch of things from Postalco - marbled journals and notecards, postcards, a wallet, and two booklets, sheets of silkscreened wrapping paper from Bob Foundation, and Print’em’s Shift Calendar 2008 (we’ve been so picky about calendars and this one seems to be just what we’re looking for, except it’s missing a hole at the top to hang it by, so I’ll have to use my hole-puncher).

Seeing Kapok makes me wish I had a big first floor studio with a big glass window so that I could turn half of it into a gallery and storefront ~ how fun would that be! It’s a lot of work though, and right now, I’m perfectly content to be back in our sunny and quiet third floor studio!

Our studio is closed for our winter vacation. You can still order Five and a Half journals online, but you’ll have to be patient about receiving them, shipping is on hold until the week of January 20th, 2008.

If you’d like to get some journals before then, here is a list of retailers whose shelves we’ve recently stocked with a fresh supply of journals. Remember, each store carries a different selection, so if you’re looking for a specific cover, be sure to call the individual stores to ask if they have it.

U.S.

Cog and Pearl
190 Fifth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.623.8200

Composition
7180 W. Alaska Drive
Lakewood, CO 80226
303.894.0025

Edith and Edna
51 Exchange Street
Portland, ME 04101
207.761.2800

Greenwich Letterpress
39 Christopher Street
New York, NY 10014
212.989.7464

Laumeier Sculpture Park Museum Shop
12580 Rott Road
St. Louis, MO 63127
314.821.1209

Orange Lola
330 Main Street
Wakefield, Rhode Island 02879
401.284.4333

P.A.D.
804 North 2nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19123
215.925.4005

Pulp | paper & art
418 North 38th Avenue
Omaha, NE 68131
402.319.7857

International

Beautiful on the inside
45/322 Bourke St.
Surry Hills, 2010
Australia
61.2.9360.7733

Nouvelle Nouvelle
209 Abbott Street
Vancouver B.C.
V6B 2K7, Canada
604.644.3912

Magma Bookshop, London
117-119 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1R 5BY
44.0.20.7242.9503

We’ll be back in the studio in mid-January, with a fresh supply of ideas and new work to share with you. Thank you for all your support throughout 2007, we’ll see you in the new year!

We finished off the year at Design Within Reach’s ModernMart on Wednesday night. It was such a great evening, thank you, thank you to all of you who came! 

Above, a photo from when we were setting up ~ we got to play with all the super cool furniture in the store as part of our display ~ all around, the other designers were also busily unpacking, arranging, and rearranging.

Being a part of this year’s ModernMart was such a learning experience for me. I tend to be on the quieter side, but I was determined not to let that get in the way of meeting lots of people ~ while we were all setting up, we went around and chatted with the other designers there, then once the doors opened and holiday shoppers started streaming in, it was about spending time with customers, new ones who wanted to know more about the journals, and old ones (those who have bought Five and a Half journals online) who I finally got a chance to meet in person (which was so awesome). Another round of thank you’s from Shawn and I, to all of you who came on such and cold, snowy night ~ we appreciate it so much!

For all of you who don’t live in the U.S., you’ve been on our minds. Thank you to all of you international customers who have ordered journals and patiently waited as they traveled across continents and oceans to reach your homes. We know that buying from abroad is always a big leap of faith.

With that in mind, we’ve added a couple more international stores to our list of retailers: Nouvelle Nouvelle in Vancouver, and Beautiful on the Inside in Sydney (thanks to the storeowners for getting a hold of us, they’re the ones who have brought Five and a Half journals into shops outside the U.S.).

With that being said, we’re thrilled that the journals are there. The shelves are stocked and ready, waiting for those of you in the neighborhood. Enjoy!

I have a question for you, dear readers and owners of Five and a Half journals:

Would you prefer a journal with 75 pages (like the current ones) or 100 pages? 

I’m trying to decide whether we should make thicker journals, so that they’ll each be filled with 100 pages instead of the current 75. But I keep going back and forth on this. 75 pages means a slimmer journal, lighter to tote around, quicker to finish (which is both good and bad), while 100 pages feels more substantial, takes up more room, and is quite a bit heavier.

I think your answers will help me make up my mind. If you’d rather not answer in the comments section, you can write to us(at)fiveandahalf(dot)net.

Thank you so much, your suggestions and comments would be so helpful in making this decision!

For those of you who are in New York City, here’s something to get you started on your holiday gift-shopping: ModernMart 3, an evening sponsored by Design Within Reach and curated by the all-new Supermarket. It’ll be a night of gift bags, chocolate, music and champagne, a stellar selection of independently designed goods, and you’ll get to meet the guest designers (including us, Judy and Shawn, of Five and a Half) in person. So if you’re in Soho that evening, do swing by and say hi!

Hurry, hurry, there’s one more week left to order journals from the store if you want them to arrive before Christmastime! The last day to place an order is November 25th. All orders placed after that date will ship on or after the week of January 20th, 2008. Happy shopping!