Huh.

Inspired by swtjemz musing that all three of the Japantowns/Little Tokyos in the USA are, in fact, located in California (which is really not that surprising when you think about immigration patterns... Asian immigrants have always historically entered the country from this side, as opposed to European immigrants who of course tend to enter from the East coast.), I went to BookOff's site to see where their stores in the USA are located. One in Hawaii (of course), one in New York (been there once), and... the other three in Southern California.

Wait... there are THREE in Southern California??

The one in Costa Mesa is quite close to me, the one in Gardena I hit once in a while... but there's also one in Torrance on PCH that I didn't know about! *a gleam enters K-chan's eye* And, as opposed to the other two which are listed as "small sized," the BookOff site lists it as "medium sized".... Not today, not tonight, but soon, I shall contrive to end up there.... O:)

Reasons It Pays To Read The Ingredients List ^_^

Today's snack: Mango Mousse Pocky*. Quite tasty. A peruse, however, of the ingredients list, reveals the following gems: "cheese powder" and "paprika." Not things I would ordinarily expect to find in my desserts. Still, I don't think this manages to top the "herring extract" listed in a particular brand of cream puffs....

*For the curious, yes, the ingredients do indeed list "mango extract powder."

On the Fine and Noble Art of Quilting....

As pretty much anyone who reads this journal has figured out by now, I sew. It is one of my main hobbies (the others being embroidery, cooking, gardening on occasion, reading, writing, and watching anime and these days Japanese live action shows; neither my husband nor my cat count as hobbies).

One of the sub-hobbies under "sewing" is quilting. Unfortunately, I'm rather better at the "assembling quilt top" portion of it than at the "quilting said quilt top" portion. I've done it, both on machine and by hand, but it's something that I currently lack enough time and patience to devote myself wholly to. Thus, while I have a stack of quilt tops to be quilted, I realistically know that I'm not going to get to them anytime soon. Flipping through this month's Quilters Newsletter Magazine, I hit on the ads section in the back and realized for the first time that there are ads for people who will quilt these tops for me if I give them money! (I'm a bit slow; please excuse me.) Most of them are for machine quilting, but there are a few ads for quilting by hand as well. My personal preference is for hand quilting--but then my personal preference would be to quilt them myself, too.

So I end up eyeing the box of quilt tops tucked neatly away in the closet and wondering if paying someone else to quilt them for me counts as "cheating." Does a gift mean as much if I only do part of it myself? Part of me says no, but part of me says yes, especially in light of the fact that it may well never get finished otherwise. Anyone have any thoughts about it?

(For reference--I don't think anyone who reads this quilts, but I could be wrong; one never knows everything about one's friends--the two sites I'm looking at thus far are here for machine quilting, and here for hand quilting.)