daniel

There are very few gluten-free cake mixes that aren't chocolate or "yellow." Almost everything I've seen between Sprouts, Walmart, Target, Publix, and a few online, are all divided between yellow, chocolate, or "white" cakes that are actually NOT white cakes. Or they are, quite simply, fucking awful. These companies KNOW that people with Celiac disease are common (about 1 in 100-115) and cannot pick an alternative. There is no such thing as a "gluten friendly" diet. That means they can make the absolute worst product possible and a whole customer base will have little choice but to buy it.

Simple Mills white cake is a caramel colour that tastes more like a spice cake than a white cake.

Winn-Dixie just released one- a few weeks after altering Aldi's yellow cake mix. I haven't tried it yet. I don't eat cake very often.

Miss Jones' has various cake mixes, but oh my god. Look, NO cake mix is "healthy," okay. Miss Jones' mixes START with sugar as the first or second ingredient. They are disgustingly sweet.

Kinnickkinnick made one I liked quite well, as well as a line of frozen donuts, but they have been discontinued over a year ago. They will not start reopening until the end of 2025. Cool.

Pillsbury makes a confetti white cake that is absolutely fucking terrible. It is DRY, like made from stale puffed rice, if a rice cake had attempted to morph into a cake. Fresh out of the oven, even with the oil, it tastes several days' stale.

I've seen two or three more appear in the past few months. It's heartening! But they aren't very widespread here. I can get them online from various brands' websites but at a much higher cost than any in person. This same problem happens with a lot of GF websites: I can get item from (local store) but it's easily $3-4 MORE per item directly from the brand's website AND I usually have to buy $50-80 worth to get free shipping. A "regular" box cake mix might be $2.50, and they're often buy one-get one free. So $1.75-ish each. A gluten free one easily costs $6-8 each in the stores. And the direct brands' website wants up to $12 each?

Thanks but not worth it in the slightest. GF food is ALREADY 2-5x the cost of what a "normal" version is. I am not paying MORE when SSD (while it exists) pays a maximum of ~$965/mo, which is supposed to cover ALL of my expenses: food, utilities, rent, medical costs (which yes, I pay for. Hundreds of dollars a month just on prescriptions, not in mandatory doctor's copays.) No, I am not in fact going to pay "just" $2-3 more per item. If anything, shipping directly from the brand's website should be cheaper. Don't advertise it as a sale and a great deal when I know I can get that exact item more cheaply at regular price... at Whole Foods.

Aldi's finally opened near-ish to us and their gluten-free pancake mix is actually pretty good. It's probably good as stated on the box. I say that because I change the mix a lot.

Most GF food is bereft of nutrients and fiber, which is one reason people with Celiac disease have a skyrocketing incidence of diabetes. By the time someone gets a Celiac diagnosis, it's usually because the ability to digest foods like most vegetables has already broken down. No, most of us cannot, in fact, just start eating whole foods. That's kind of the problem here. Also, diagnosis tends to ride on the tails of much worse diagnoses, many of which prohibit the ability to cook meals from scratch. Thus, the need to be able to just put something in an oven, a microwave, or my go-to's, macaroni + cheese or cereal. I hate milk but it has the nutrients I often lack.

Adding things to "basic" mixes like a pancake mix can help with customization. I know that if I'm having a shit day, I can use minimal brain power and make something as directed on the box. If I have any higher capabilities that day, I can add half a banana or half a scoop of Isopure (a flavourless protein powder intended for baking) or some ground almonds or flaxseed for fiber + nutrients, whatever. Sometimes it comes out well, sometimes those experiments don't. I should be writing them down more often. Would help me a lot. If I, say, remembered to do that AT THE TIME I was making food... but usually I'm so tired, the only thing I'm thinking of is ... food.

With this in mind, Aldi's cake mix is probably decent, too. But I didn't want yellow cake.

What does a dumb bitch with autoimmune problems have to do to get a single white cupcake that doesn't cost $8 from some little trendy local bakery that isn't even OPEN most of the time? Or that doesn't have SO MUCH SUGAR that my teeth actually hurt, and it leaves this weird nasty aftertaste? I was specifically craving white cake with strawberries and buttercream. Preferably, I wanted to magically be able to safely eat an entire Publix chantilly cake with an extra two pounds of fruit. But.

Pile on some fruit. It's healthy! :P Right? Slice up some fresh bananas, eat cake with a cup of berries, idk. Don't abstain from the delicious cake. Just add something to it.

This weekend-ish, I completed a few small projects. I have so many "little things" to do and untreated ADHD means... everything is partially done. Almost never fully completed. Or lots of things are made with no particular use in mind, just to keep my hands busy.

For example, I have a stack of 6.5 x 6.5" muslin squares that I cut some years ago, which are easy to take anywhere and I can stitch down fabric scraps to them at any time. If I want to, say, practice an American embroidery stitch or something, I can (Victorian crazy quilt style.) I have no particular plans for these. They can be made into... whatever? later. Pieces for a small blanket, scraps for an interesting bag, textile art, whatever.

I would source bags of scrap and remnant fabric from local sewists and crafts people who usually sold on Etsy, so these are all different shapes, sizes, colours, etc. I prefer secondhand materials, including thread. Most of my needles are also from thrift stores or other people. I use as many reclaimed or secondhand items as possible.

The stigma on using thrifted or secondhand items is still quite strong, with people imagining that these items have "something wrong:" smoke smells, stains, dog urine, mildew, I don't know. Only recently, the past few years, has this eco-friendly thrifted fad become something widespread. Many of us Old People from the 90s and early 2000s can tell you that thrifting was second-class, if you weren't one of those people considered to be these granola crunchy hippies who smelled like they'd been at a festival for a week. If you were, that was just expected. Not always liked outside your subculture, but expected.

We had a local store (accessible by bus!) that sold exclusively secondhand art supplies of all kinds but it rapidly closed. I miss them quite a bit. That might have been around 2012? Another one has opened about an hour away and has been successful despite some MASSIVE setbacks, like devastation and flooding from Milton/Helene. They are now opening another location only around 45 minutes away- but the route is much, much easier. This is a place where ... I have to say... for "secondhand" supplies... a LOT of them are NEW. Piles of skeins of yarn that people bought and never used, piles of remnant fabrics in cubes far outmassing JoAnn Fabrics, a shoebox of just buttons with little packets you can fill for a flat rate... it's quite nice.

Last night, I had so many important things I absolutely need to do, including some with looming deadlines. Did I do ANY of those things? No.

Instead, I got annoyed by this half-size pillow I have which was sold without a pillow case, and there are no pillow cases available for that half-travel size. If I put a "standard" (US) size case on it, it's fine, if I fold it in half first. For some reason that bothered me. I have metres of fabric and a drawer of different threads. Surely I have things that will go together.

Annnnnd... this is where the ADHD usually shuts me down.

I can SEE the items. I know the steps. I have the skills. The perceived effort in completing those steps is suddenly So Exhausting and Boring, it is almost a physically painful sensation. Like a creeping migraine paired with the aching of shoulders and neck from doing too much lifting. It isn't even HARD to make a pillowcase. It's a rectangle.

oh but the rectangle has to be perfect, and the cotton fabric isn't "squared," and even if I did it wouldn't matter because the pieces I have are literally like 20 years old now and the fibers... ::sighs:: jfc just do it. Also my cutting mat is... 14", I think? So I have to be pretty careful about measuring longer sections and whatnot. But I got the basic rectangle done, hand-sewn. It went fairly quickly using a combination of running and back stitches. Then I folded one edge and blanket stitched the raw sections to keep it from unravelling. I didn't fell the edge. I was going to stop there and pick it up today, since it was about 10pm and my computer was dying.

::sighs:: And yet. I knew that if I stopped when I was ALMOST done, my brain would keep telling me I could finish it "later" and it was SO easy and I only had to do a little bit on that, but I have to do a lot on this other thing, so get the other thing done and then I'll get back to finishing THIS...

or just finish it. ugh. i had to 'transition' from comfortable sitting to going to another room, setting up the iron, waiting for it to heat, folding and measuring the edge that got turned, iron it, finish it, iron it again... ADHD doesn't like 'activity transitions' and will resist them. This is another point of being a neurological condition. If it were possible to just Think Your Way Out of It, it wouldn't BE a problem. Would it.

Once that was finished, I cleared supplies and a few things here or there that had been left out. I didn't actually put things away fully.

Today, after poor sleep and lots of waking up periods, I eventually got around to sewing again. I have some patchwork pieces going. It just feels boring and like I'm wasting time because there's no finish point and I'd really like one of those today. Some kind of accomplishment.

Tried to wind more silk embroidery thread (from Zelkova) but it was such a Task, my brain wouldn't let me continue. I cut the thread I had on the spool already, bound what was left of the skein, and put it away.

Went through the drawer of half-finished projects. Found a small scrap of patchwork done ... probably some months ago. Figured a needlebook would be easy to make. All straight lines, finished in an hour at most, and I have all the stuff I need for it already. ~ 7 x 4", 6.5 x 3.5" when done and turned for the needlebook cover. Cut scraps of felt to 3 x 3.25" max.

Paired it with another piece of thicker cotton, which I normally overthink. Colours, patterns, all that stuff. It has to be "perfect," whatever that is. Feel coordinated "best" out of the available things I have- which are hundreds of pieces that might work. Normally paralyzing. I was able to just Pick One today.

Found a button, which I normally also overthink and give up on, and something to tie it shut with. A piece of cotton yarn is used for the tie. The button is a shiny grey plastic, acquired from Bottom of the Bin in Seminole, FL.

I have a large ziploc bag of felt scrap pieces, which is perfect for a patchwork scrap this small. They're all slightly different sizes but the colours coordinate with the patchwork. Because they are all different pieces, they had to be bound together first, then attached to a "spine" sewn in using 6-strand embroidery floss. There were a few inches left over so I wound those into the binding, too.

I haven't filled the book with anything. I'm not planning on keeping it. That's the harder part of 'being creative': I need to make the money for basic stuff like medicine, but also no one else has any, and also I don't have a "point" in making these things. They go nowhere and everywhere I know of is saturated with mass-made $1 needlebooks anyways. Nothing seems important or useful. Not compared to the efficiency and features that anything factory-made can offer. I try not to let myself think when making things or I'll end up stopping. What does anyone else do?

Now that I've accomplished Something, maybe my brain will let me do other boring things, like sorting this endless pile of paper around me. Or organizing the tiny things in the crafting closet. It'll be difficult. Eris the Destroyer is on my lap, purring up a storm. She gets aggressive when disturbed. Hoomans were made to serve cats.

This is about cultural expectations when buying kimono online. It is also a gripe about people who think they're exempt from engaging with another culture when buying cultural items from another country.

I found a new-ish seller on Ebay who sells "estate sale"-style lots of kimono. He works directly with those looking to sell them, just as it happens with auction houses in America. These lots are of groups of like-items, so there may be a mix of male and female garments, summer and awase (three season) items, etc. which may not be worn together when creating a traditional outfit. These items are often sold on a secondhand market for adding to a collection already, crafting, or for informal mixing with yofuku (American or 'European style' clothing.)

Americans in some of my kimono groups have had... Issues with these kind of kimono sales. Some of it is a divide in cultural expectations. Some of it is Americans being Especially American, and why we are sometimes so fucking hard to deal with outside of America.

in b4 "but I'm american and I don't act like this!" good for you!!! here's a cookie! #NotAllAmericans

American attitudes as a culture

It's because we want allll the things but do not want to PAY for them. This is not a new trend. It has been around for at least 50 years. It is literally the reason so many Americans were enthusiastic about starting factories or locating offices in China: we get more and pay less.

Especially problematic, the worst offenders feel like they deserve "better customer experience" (ie, getting their way) and do not consider others' needs at all. They blame the seller if the seller does not cater to them, because the seller is an asshole and shouldn't be doing business. They blame the seller if the seller does cater to them because the seller shouldn't be selling if they're going to lose money/time/whatever on the deal. In the end, these people view the problem as the Seller's Fault.

The Cultural Divide

Lots of kimono like these are often sold with little description and few measurements. The items themselves may not be worth a lot on the resale market in Japan. In Japan, many secondhand kimono are purchased for fabric for crafting, for making new things like bags or hats, or for brief outings.


In Japan, many places give discounts if you wear a kimono for a week or so, especially during festivals and things like this. Most people do not wear kimono very often. Some never wear them at all. It has not been "common" to wear kimono, except for yukata, in probably 60 years. Yukata are the cotton kimono reserved for summer festivals and certain events, or for explicit use at onsen, hot springs. It is easy to tell the visual difference between the two when you see them. It is expected that, just like in America, you can get secondhand kimono at many pop-up temple sales (like community garage sales) or thrift stores for dirt-cheap but the quality may also not be great. Most in the past 50 years are synthetic or semi-synthetic. Survivor bias means that very small or unusual sizes will last forever but normal sizes get worn out fast, so something that fits you better may have more small damages. In person, there as here, there are no measurements attached to these garments. Bring your own measuring tape and flashlight.

Online, kimono shopping is very much expected to be a similar experience: most people are not buying something to fit them perfectly or to be in excellent condition at very low prices. Many people are not expecting to buy a wearable garment at all, or are buying something for a few hours, take some photos, be done.

Just like here, it is expected that you get what you pay for.

If you want a secondhand kimono made of good quality materials, or that is fairly new, or that fits well (or all three!) you will pay a lot more money. In Japan, that is easily hundreds of dollars USD, on the secondhand market. In some districts, like Kyoto area, you will pay a lot more.

but
Americans buy kimono almost entirely online. We have to. There are extremely few in-person opportunities in this country. This means kimono are a luxury item. Yes, even the cotton yukata from 20 years ago. That's one of those facts I need to smack people in the head with until they internalize it.

Online, the expectation is that every single detail of the item will be shown, up close, in photos which are taken with specific lighting, in extremely specific ways. We demand measurements of all aspects of the item. Sometimes this is necessary, such as buying a desk, or pet stairs, or a brand-new piece of clothing.

Moreover, we expect that the seller (whoever it is, in specific as in one person, or in general, like the business) is being paid something to do this. Probably hourly.

That is NOT how small businesses work, not even in America. Most people have no fucking clue. When I ran my own shop on Etsy, I easily worked 80+ hours a week and STILL needed to hire help. Did I get mommy and daddy money to help me start up or pay others? lol no. Did I get grants to do anything? lol no. People think those are magically easy to get, and they are absolutely NOT. Plus, no one is going to get a grant for a freaking pagan shop, Karen, go back to huffing DoTerra oils. My story is not uncommon. It is pretty well-known that if you are self-funding a startup, even "just" on ebay or etsy, this is your reality. In fact, it is well-known that you may LOSE money for up to the first two years before your name gets established enough to turn a $1 profit. That's why most people don't do it at all. We do not have the money to lose. It is safer and more profitable to work part-time at 7-11.

I can assure you, the guy selling kimono on ebay, who might have like 2-3 people helping list stuff, is not getting endless cash for the extra effort of making listings to American expectations. The owner might be spending what could/should be retirement money until a decent return is made.

americans are entitled as shit. a lot of us just don't THINK we are.

Again, what few Americans seem to appreciate, or even understand, is that it takes hours of labour to create the kind of sales experience they want. That labour is worth money and SHOULD cost money.

If someone posts general photos and little description, in a culture that expects little when buying secondhand garments from an auction site, it will cost less money to buy most items. Less effort = low price. That is very normal for Japanese expectations. This is a Japanese seller, in Japan, who is natively Japanese, selling traditional Japanese items. We could be so lucky that this person went through the extra effort to do their best on putting all details of their listings in English. (but nope! Americans demand perfect English before someone dares speak to us, too!)

If someone posts a dozen photos with great lighting and makes effort to identify flaws, describing them in text, editing photos, taking measurements, and telling about individual items, that means EACH ITEM can take 1-2 HOURS to post. That labour should be paid for. More detail = higher price.

If you want a kimono that you "know" is only about $20USD in Japan, but it's listed for $50 + SH, and $20 including shipping is the most you want to pay... move to Japan.

People get pissed off when I tell them that, but I cannot be nice about this anymore.

You are basically telling me that you do not respect other people. You do not respect their labour or the part of their lives they traded for making that listing. You do not understand nor do you care about the costs of running a business, what Ebay charges, what your equipment costs, etc. You are telling me that you want to buy an item which cannot be gotten easily or readily in America, and pay almost nothing for it.

You want something really cool for less than free.

If you cannot afford $50 + SH (or whatever it is) you should not buy that kimono. It is not food or shelter. It makes people very unhappy and angry when I tell them this. Don't bitch at me about it. Y'all need to be aware of your audience. For example, do not ever tell the very, very ill disabled person who lived in their car WHILE working TWO jobs, that not being able to afford a fucking kimono is some major personal affront. I do not care. Is the US economic system wrecked? Yes, it is. I would know, wouldn't I. AT THE SAME TIME, is it some other person's fault that a luxury item is not in your budget? Yeah, but probably not the one you're upset with. Now stop taking it out on people. Unless they own Amazon, Microsoft, Proctor + Gamble, or some other giant corporation that is underpaying their employees, chances are, they have nothing to do with you and your resources. Stop making small business owners feel guilty in an attempt to get a discount. WE need to live, too.

which reminds me, shipping is a BITCH compared to American expectations

Americans expect free shipping or dirt-low shipping on everything. Someone bitched this week that THIS kimono seller has $5 shipping. All these OTHER kimono sellers who charge $30 an item are RIDICULOUS.

no, that $5 shipping is drastically, artificially low. the listings of theirs that start at $1 often go much higher, and when they don't, look at the full shop. Most items are actually $40-200. That is because those $5 shipping items with a $1 starting bid are "loss leaders." Also, this is a shop well-known (to buyers) to have very inaccurate measurements, which may list an item as silk when it is a semi-decent synthetic, which may have an item covered in very pale age stains but which may not show it in photos. YES, *that is the trade-off with very weirdly cheap items.* So stop getting angry about it.

I get it, the anger comes from an American reading a description that is presumably there for a reason, and then the description didn't match the thing. Yeah, I know. For lots of items, I would also have a problem. Certain categories of items are an exception. Buying kimono at weirdly low prices is one of them. I'm with Judge Judy: "If it doesn't make sense, it's NOT. TRUE." Correct. Those prices do not make sense. Something isn't true. The shop is real. It has been established for years. Ah, in context, that description information is often very hit or miss. I've had some very good experiences with buying from that shop- but also, I have a wide margin of "error" expected.

$5 shipping is fucking weird. This is likely a textile mill taking advantage of some kind of tax breaks. I don't know enough about Japanese law to say. But I DO know that Japanese shipping is extremely high. It's a tiny little island country, smaller than California, literally on the other side of the world from me. Shipping will be $$$.

This week, I paid $30 in shipping for a mid-range postage option on a handful of embroidery thread. Yes, that is right: less than a quarter pound, or 1/8th kilo, cost me $30 USD.

The cheaper option was ~$20, which did not have any kind of real tracking in case of loss. There was a $15 option by sea mail, which can take several weeks, no tracking of any kind, and often is damaged in transit. This is the cost for ~.15kg.

A single modern kimono can easily weigh 2lbs, or 1kg. A single fukuro obi can be 2lbs; a little lighter for a less-formal nagoya style, or 1lb/.25kg for a hanhaba, often the cheapest costume-quality synthetic kind.

People who buy kimono from Japan need to know and respect that.

Americans expect free shipping. Outright. No matter HOW heavy or fragile an item. No matter who is comes from. No matter if it's a big business on Amazon or some guy selling old postcards from his garage.

(on a side note, I paid almost $17 to ship one kimono from Florida to another nearby state via Priority Mail, which has insurance and tracking. via Standard Mail it still would have been ~$12. And some of you complain that a heavier kimono... from literally the other side of the planet... from a tiny little island with not that many resources, actually... should get here to Florida for $5-10. what drugs are you on.)

This was a problem almost 5 years ago on Etsy- the great push for us small artisans to act like we have the giant shipping deals that Chinese factories do. Etsy de-prioritized shops that did NOT have free shipping enabled, while also allowing actual factories to spring up. A regular person, or a small business of all of 5 people, cannot offer free shipping in the vast majority of cases. Etsy suggested hiding a small shipping fee in the price of the item. First of all, no. Second of all, that's not fair for customers. If you buy one item and it costs me $4 to ship to Virginia but $6 to ship to Oregon, I have to HOPE that I sell enough to balance that out. AND if you buy more than one item with "free" shipping, that means you might have just paid $10 shipping for something that would only cost $5 to ship. No matter what, Etsy racks up money by charging me fees. Clearly I did not switch to "free" shipping. And I got shoved down the search for it.

In China, there are (or were? idk what Drumpf is doing this week) huge trade agreements. Shipping something here is free or so cheap on our exchange rate, it's easier for these factories to just include it in the cost. And so much of our stuff has free shipping now, it's an expectation.

Here's the thing: MOST COUNTRIES do NOT have "free" shipping agreements. MOST. OF. THEM. MOST COUNTRIES also do not have artificially cheap postage. They are small countries and do not have the sheer tax revenue or wealth that America does. We *could* spend less money on bombing children in other countries and maybe trade that for a post office that doesn't run almost as bad as the one my dad used in Bolivia? But... lol naaahhh

It's easier to get mad at local sellers on Craigslist in the US, and the 50-something year old woman in Japan, for the audacity to *charge for postage.* And yeah, I've gotten a lot of messages for my own shop, demanding that I give free shipping Or Else. Or else, they'll report me (a real problem on Etsy, where they can just close your whole shop,) or else they'll leave bad reviews (this category already purchased and thinks I will give them a refund because it shows if I cancel too many orders,) whatever. No, I don't have to give free shipping. USPS does not give me a discount for selling 200 items a year. There is no "free shipping with FL state tax ID." That is not how anything works.

When you demand free shipping on kimono, or anything from Japan, you tell me something.

Either:
- you believe things should be free because you are special and American
- you don't understand how it works when a seller hides the shipping price in an item and says "free shipping."

When you demand super cheap kimono with top-quality listings AND free shipping, you are telling me that you do not give one single fuck about the other person and have no respect for them, their labour, their time, or their products. You actually have no respect at all. Don't try to hide that ugliness. Do something to become less shitty. You have choices. You can just practice choosing something else.