Smashing the Glass Slipper

Sometimes (not often) the Japanese do produce romantic dramas that I like, and falling squarely in that category is Cinderellas of Midsummer, which has a trio of interesting love stories that don't slither down the usual depressing/arty/everyone dies path that so many other J-dramas do.

The eleven episode series is lead by beach girl Natsumi Aoi (Nana Mori), who works hard to teach paddleboard surfing, run her family's tourist cafe and take care of her younger brother and her mostly useless father. Mom left seven years ago, so Natsumi has had to shoulder a lot of responsibility, and doesn't really have time for romance. The same could be said of her two childhood friends, fledgling hair stylist Airi Takigawa (Ai Yoshikawa) and single mom dry cleaner Risa Ogura (Sawa Nimura). Naturally three princely guys appear on the scene, led by Kento Mizushima (Shotaro Mamiya), a busy construction company executive who stands to inherit the business from his dad. Natsumi and Kento are complete opposites, so of course they have to fall in love.

The usual problems with Japanese dramas are pretty sparse in this series. Everyone is excessively polite, of course, and the romance is Victorian-era conservative, but the three intersecting storylines were interesting. I didn't quite buy the love story between the leads, especially considering the lethal attractiveness of both characters' competition. It was fun, and yet there were some real nail-biting moments with the leads (especially when Kento's co-worker decides to interfere.)

An interesting fact came up when I recognized one of the secondary characters (in the photo, the guy on the left end of the bottom row) as Kenshi Okada but was listed under a different name. I did a little research and he left his old agency and decided to work under his real name, Koshi Mizukami. He's excellent in his role and quite convincing as a pediatrician who falls for the single mother friend. The resolutions of all three romances were fairly satisfying, too, so I'll recommend this one. Available on Viki.com.

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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