John Adams wants to remind you of our free shipping code* to use at check out: FLIPFLOPS. Offer lasts through Monday, 5/28.

Why is this cute calendar puppy named “John Adams”? Earlier this year, our graphic designer, Alexis, gave this dollar-store Dashund puppy calendar to Mel, our marketing and digital coordinator. Mel never really had a pet before (fish don’t count), so she uses this desk calendar to make up for the void. Alexis and Mel take turns naming the pictured pups. “John Adams” stemmed from Memorial Day—a huge stretch, we know.

But look into his sage eyes and allow your patriotic heart to melt.

*Free shipping offer excludes customers shipping to HI, AK, or outside the US.

Click the pic for an even closer look:

We applaud your stamped answers, Alexis (zombie Alexis?). And if we ever cross paths with Willie Nelson, we will shout your name. Also, please show us the Pat Benatar dance some time. Thank you.

We're teaming up with Paula, the List Producer, for our first Pinterest contest!

It’s nearly a month until the official start of summer (June 20th!), which means it’s time to finally shake off any remnants of procrastination. As in, finally spring-cleanifying your personal space!

To jump-start your efforts, we’ve teamed up with Paula, a longtime FOKKer whose compulsive list-making skills make us very, very happy. Paula’s site, List Producer, is chock full of helpful tips and tricks on how to make your to-do list work for you—lessening the stress and upping productivity. She’s also an Emmy Award-winning producer, so it’s safe to say she knows her stuff!

With our powers combined, we’re hosting a “Spring Organizing” contest on our new-favorite web time suck—Pinterest. We could easily spend all day on Pinterest, and you probably can too. So why not kill two birds with one stone and enter?

The prize is a “Spring Organizing Kit” to help assist in your tidying up. It includes:

1. Things to Do Around the House Pad
2. Utility Task Clips
3. Stuff/Docs/Bills File Folders

Enter and you could win this "Spring Organizing Kit!"

To enter:

1. Please read our contest’s Official Rules page.
2. Follow @KnockKnockStuff Pinterest boards, or go to pinterest.com/knockknockstuff and click the “follow all” button.
3. Create a pinboard and title it, “Spring Organizing.”
4. Pin the following to this board.
• At least 5 product images from Knock Knock
• At least 5 post images from List Producer
• Anything else that’s under the “organizing for Spring” theme
5. You must pin at least 15 items.
6. Hashtag each of your pins with #springorganizing, so your entries are searchable.
7. Send an email to paula@listproducer.com with your first name, email address, and link to your pinboard.

The contest starts tonight at midnight (Tuesday, 5/22) and will close 11:59 p.m. PST on Tuesday, May 29th.

Paula will judge the winner based on creativity, composition, and unique/assortment of pins. She’ll announce the winner on her site on Tuesday, June 5th.

Postpone the cleaning no more! Get a head start and happy pinning.

For the gift-givers: finding an original present for new graduates can be as tough as the current job market. We get it. Sure, you can slap a cap and tassel on a teddy bear and call it a day, but that cuteness will wear off.

Instead, how about reassuring him or her that life after crossing the stage isn’t so bad? It can actually be pretty great. (However, the amount of douchebags you encounter daily is much more apparent.)

Here are a few items to assist in his or her solace:

1. Deal With This Stamp. This stamp shows who’s boss, especially when its owner’s timid ‘tude is in need of a boost of confidence.

2. Hey Asshole Pad. A pad for the workplace. He or she will soon understand the true meaning of “asshole.”

3. Travel Log and Pack This! Pad. Life after graduation is all about backpacking through new places and confronting new endeavors. These aids won’t assist in “finding” oneself, but at least he or she can make detailed notes on the trip and won’t forget to pack an extra pair of underwear.

4. Pro/Con Journal. Now is the time for him or her to make meaningful decisions. Present this to the giftee with a welcome sign pointing to the real world.

5. Corporate Flashcards. To prep for the white-collar worker’s first day on the job. Huzzah!

For more ideas, check out our “Grads” section on our site!

Our amazing customer services and operations team is sending lovely Fall 2012 product samples to over eighty reps across the nation. Exciting indeed.

Our customer service rockstar, Jazzlyn, with the new catalogs. Cheesin' for the cam.

Gil and Paul, team operations!

Carboard boxes Instagrammed. That makes it instantly intimately beautiful, right?

The digital girls, moi on the left and our e-commerce manager, Sara, on the right. They barracaded our space with wheelable chairs, so we made it into a half-assed fort. Secret password required!

It’s their “Organizing the Small Stuff” issue, and one you probably won’t want to miss out on. People overuse the cliché, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” as if it’s oh-so easy. But these insignificancies inevitably add up to colossal proportions—and who wants to deal with all of that?

Issues of "Slake" for sale.

As you know, we at Knock Knock are passionate lovers of pencils, paper, and printing presses. I was therefore thrilled last Friday to attend a party for Slake, a new Los Angeles literary quarterly that proudly exists only in paper form. That is, it exists only in real life.

Slake started in summer 2010, and is currently on its fourth issue (“The Dirt”). The journal is new, but has already won several awards (and hit the Los Angeles Times’ bestseller list) for its content—which combines visual art, photography, poetry, long-form journalism, fiction, oral history, and memoir. Its founders, Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, were formerly the editors of LA Weekly. (On a personal note, I worked with Joe and Laurie for years as a writer and editor for the Weekly, so the party was a homecoming for me.)

"Slake" founder Laurie Ochoa, taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her, because it's just so fucking meta.

Slake is all about fostering a community of writers and artists who are deeply rooted and in—and in love with—Los Angeles, and it’s also about staking a claim for paper as a beautiful and viable medium. As their website proclaims, “Slake sets a new template for the next generation of print publications—collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table instead of the recycling bin.”

As previously mentioned, paper is something that exists only in real life. You know something else that only exists in real life? Free beer.

Quantities of free beer were available at this party; the evidence of this is in the blurry, slurry photos I managed to either take or pose for. It may or may not be worth mentioning that free pie was also served by Suicide Girls.

A blurry, blinky shot of Joe and me.

Besides live music and dance performances, other stuff on offer included an exhibition of beautiful photographs of the Occupy L.A. encampment; video footage from the LA riots; and a station where people could create album art for the new vinyl LP by Detective (a musical project from Guided By Voices member James Greer, who is also a Slake contributor).

Laurie Ochoa says that Slake is meant to be enjoyed slowly, in bed or otherwise in a state of repose—and then kept. It should be noted, another advantage to the print-only format is that after inevitable disaster strikes, taking down the “grid,” and we are all shivering in our homes with candles and limited water, Slake will remain to provide us survivors with hours of meaningful, thought-provoking, mind-enriching entertainment. Hey, it’s L.A. Anything could happen.

People making album covers for Detective, the musical project from "Slake" contributor (and ex-Guided By Voices member) James Greer.

Free-pie porn.

Check out our Mother’s Day section, or read gift ideas for every type of mother in your life.

Get to shoppin’, peeps and procrastinators!

How did Rees get into this rare profession? Check out the video below from Paper magazine. It’ll make you want to become best friends with him.

Rees’s quotes to note:

“Once I got into no. 2 wooden pencils again, it really made me kinda despise mechanical pencils and the people who use mechanical pencils, and the people who brag about how their mechanical pencil never needs sharpening. I mean, fuck you. Fuck you.”

“I thought it would be cool to use the Internet to send people pencils in the mail. Because pencils are really kind of the opposite of the Internet, anyways. So I thought it was cool to combine those two technologies, like a really old method of communication, the pencil, and a really new method of communication—social networking and the Internet.” It’s like he gets us.

We’ve always been ardent supporters of the no. 2 pencil. You may have even seen this logo on our products:

Rees also just penned a book about his craft, How to Sharpen Pencils, and is wrapping up his book tour. Sadly, he just came through Los Angeles and we missed him. If you have or do get to see him in action, lucky you!

Click the pic for an even closer look:

Great self-portrait, Panda Paul. You’ve received three coins!