Yoko Trading’s Blog

We hope this finds you well and enjoying your summer (winter down-under). We’ve been busy beavers so wanted to update you on what’s up at YokoDana:

1. Well, we’re busy getting ready for the Otakon 2009 convention in Baltimore, Md., to be held July 17-19th at the Baltimore Convention Center; We will have our usual fine array of vintage kimono (haori,michiyuki) and vintage fabrics, but we’ll also be bringing more hakama, yukata, sashes and a bunch of new accessories we’ve made from vintage kimono fabrics; Also, unlike our other shows (quilt and cultural festivals, etc.) we’ll be bringing some surprises from Yoko’s collection of vintage jewelry & accessories — things we know that otaku are fond of.

PS: We’re considering changing our dba (doing-business-as) name to “YokoDana”, as that is what so many call us anyway,instead of “Yoko Trading”, which would still be our formal biz name.

What do you think of this one?

Possible New d/b/a

strongA Reminder:/strong

Our next venue will be a href=http://www.njquilts.org/2009_convention.htm NJ Quilt Convention 2009, June 11-13/a   “Fancy This Fancy That, which is presented by the State Quilt Guild of New Jersey, Inc. June 11 – 13, 2009 at the a href=http://www.njexpocenter.com/maps-directions.html NJ Expo Center/a in Edison, New Jersey. We will have a full supply of vintage fabrics and kimonos, as well as some new wonderful accessories hand-made by Yoko’s sisters, one a professional kimono maker, master level in embroidery and brocade and the other a winner of national awards in quilting competitions in Japan. To see some of what we’ll be bringing to our venues please visit our a title=venues, yokodana.com href=http://yokodana.com/venues/venues page/afont style=position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0a href=http://vtsc.info/en/publication/carrier to noise ratio/a/font.

Reminder also to check here before going to the Festival, or, print out this page to present at time of checkout for our ‘web discount’.
PS: We’ll be in booth strong#215/strong

Surely only the oldest of our readers will know that reference to bananas<smile>; anyway, it connotes that we say we have something but we really don’t — namely, Dana is not yet caught up the fabric section so alot are marked ’sold’. Yoko gave him a pile of neat fabs to put up, and he promises (ha) to get them done very soon. :} Will note here and on facebook/twitter for the sohshnet-inclined (social networking on the web). Still have alot fabric pieces, a few rolls/bolts and some kasuri / ikat left.  In case you’ve not visited there (ever or recently), you can click HERE to check it out.

Thanks to all who came out to see us at the WilmingtonFlower Market. We met more new Japanese textile enthusiasts and even a few yokodana.com site visitors stopped by to say hello. We love that.  Anyway, aside from the  mud the first day(from the preceding week of rain!), the weather turned out fine for most of the festival. We really liked the event and they raised alot of $ for their Childrens Fund, to which we gladly contributed a percentage of our own sales. We’ll probably do this again next year.

Fabric Section Status: We have a good number of folks who have emailed us that they are in need of this or that fabric (design etc.) and so we want to update all on where we are with our most recent fabric section update. We recently added more deadstock vintage kasuri (ikat), cottons, silks and some whole bolts of cotton; We had some pieces sell over the weekend so hope to have them removed from the fabric section today. Also have a few bolts which we’ll be adding, and some other pieces over the next few days.

VENUE INFO: Our next venue will be the NJ Quilt Convention 2009 “Fancy This Fancy That“, which is presented by the  State Quilt Guild of New Jersey, Inc. June 11 – 13, 2009 at the NJ Expo Center in Edison, New Jersey. We will have a full supply of vintage fabrics and kimonos, as well as some new wonderful accessories hand made by Yoko’s sisters, one a professional kimono maker, master level in embroidery & brocade and the other a winner of national awards in quilting competitions in Japan. To see some of what we’ll be bringing to our venues please click here.

Schedule info due to flower market (see yesterday’s blog), we will not be able to ship anything until next week. Will be checking secure order logs and emails in the evening but no shipments can go out until starting Tuesday, May 12th.

As there may be some showers during the show, we wanted to give an FYI to those fans travelling any distance that We will be there no matter what –under a larger merchants tent so are on no matter what the weather.

Please bring a print out of this blog (or our twitter or facebook references to the Market) to get discount, just remember to give it to us before checking out.

We are both going through for quality & condition check– for one last time — our newest acquisitions of fabric and haori (jackets) and are very pleased with what we’ll be bringing to the Flower Market. AND…15% of all our sales go to serve the children of Delaware via the Flower Market’s non-profit.

Last…Yoko’s sisters in Japan – one who makes ceremonial kimono for a living,the other a nationally acclaimed quilter in Japan — have made some outstanding accessories for us to showcase starting this show. Both their skills and training show in the lovely scarves, pins, brooches, kanzashi and other items, whose detail work are exceptional.  (To see some click HERE. )

 So…in addition to a new crop of haori and vintage Japanese fabrics, we’re adding these accessories, definite eye candy IOHO (in our humble opinion). Depending on customer response we will decide whether to continue with these at our venues.

Hope to see you in lovely Rockford Park, Wilmington, Delaware.

• (Note, added May 3: Meisen Silk & other silks also posted) Short note fyi for those watching our fabrics-by-piece section: just put a bunch of cottons & silks(including meisen) up on page 7, to see just click HERE.
• Venues coming up:
  

  1. Wilmington Flower Market, Wilmington DE, May 7-9,2009; loads of new silks and haori etc.  We first talked about this earlier this month…. .

  2. 2009 New Jersey Quilt Convention, June 11-13, Edison NJ.

If you go to see us at either of these, please check here before you leave for word on discounts.

And, more fabrics, including some nice silks, heading for the fabric pieces section, so check  HERE soon.

Note to Japanese Indigo Cotton Lovers: FYI, Nice bunch of kasuri (ikat) and others just put on page 7 of fabric by-piece section.(Also, go backwards to page 6  earlier for a few other kasuri pieces). We have a bit more kasuri to put up as soon as Dana gets around to it… :}

What a weekend! In DC there had to be easily 250,000 people at the DC Cherry Blossom Festival — and alot of them visited us! Had a great day — aside from the gales that kept blowing things away — met alot of web site visitors and a few members, and hopefully made other new friends. Then…off to same event in Philadelphia which surely cracked its own attendance records.

Aside from the gales at DC (where tents and more went flying during set up) it was a sunny day and perfect temperatures on Saturday. Sunday in Philadelphia was even better, there was a bit of a wind but it was simply gorgeous in Fairmount Park!

The only thing we felt bad about was that all the children’s kimonos we had collected for a year (specifically for the Cherry Blossom festivals) completely sold out at DC, leaving us none to offer our Philadelphia patrons.

Any way, though we’re exhausted, it was a great weekend and we were happy to see some of you whom we hadn’t seen in awhile, an intangible bonus for us as we sell our vintage Japanese fabrics & kimono. But now, Dana is beat so taking the day off; Yoko, she’s the energizer bunny — keeps right on running ;} . Thanks to all who have supported us — especially in these hard economic times —  we appreciate  your patronage and support over the years.

We’ll be also doing the Subaru Sakura Sunday Cherry Blossom Festival run by the Japan American Society of Greater Philadelphia (JASGP) . Events of this festival run for 2 weeks, with the Sakura Sunday being the the final main event.

Festival is at the Fairmount Park Horticultural Center, near the Shofuso Japanese House & Garden :

Shofuso (shofuso.com)

(A lovely place; if you’ve never been there spring is a perfect time to visit and it’s so close to the Festival).

Directions etc are at the Subaru Sakura Sunday Cherry Blossom Festival web page.

Again, if you come see us, please print this out in order to get a web visitor discount; please present before you check out.

We have set aside ample fabrics and kimono for our Philadelphia customers, but we suggest coming early, as the last few years we’ve found that alot of the nicer things were taken by 2PM.

Weather for both days this weekend are supposed to be great so hope to see some of you either in DC or Philadelphia.