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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Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

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.

Valerean

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