Quote:
Originally Posted by lynn2000
Thank you very much for the very detailed information! Oahu is a city/town about 30mins drive from Honolulu (based on google map)? What about Big Island? I initially post my question on "Big Island" and was told Honolulu is not on the Big Island? So need to take ferry there? The life seems to be quite different there!
|
Maybe you were thinking Aiea is a city/town about 30 minutes drive from Honolulu? If you can find a day without any traffic, of course.
Oahu isn't very big, size wise, but about 80% of the population of the state lives there. So, if it is available in Hawaii, more than likely you can get it on the island of Oahu, but it is also expensive because of all the people there who pretty much want all the same things. The city of Honolulu covers up a large portion of leeward Oahu and as for government, it's called "the City & County of Honolulu". We don't get further down than County governments. Waikiki, Diamond Head, North Shore, Pearl Harbor and Honolulu are all on Oahu.
Honolulu is the only true "city" in the state, the rest of the population centers are at the level of "towns". Although as mentioned, they aren't incorporated or anything. Each island has a Mayor and is a County, although the islands of Lanai and Molokai are bundled up with Maui. Niihau is a privately owned island and most folks aren't allowed to go there, I'm not sure what it's political governance is.
There isn't any ferry system anymore, so you're pretty much stuck with airplanes to get from island to island. Airfare runs about $250 to $300 to go from Oahu to another island. And should you want to go from one "neighbor" island to another, generally the plane will stop at Oahu and then you get to pay for another set of tickets so the price would be doubled. And once you get to the next island, unless it's Oahu, the public transportation isn't all that good so generally you have rental car costs as well as hotel costs added to that fare. We don't visit the other islands all that much these days.
The Big Island is the size of all the rest of the islands combined but has just a small portion of the state's population so there isn't anywhere near the traffic or availability of general "stuff". Partly because of their isolation from each other, life on each island has it's own flavor.
Anyway, back to Oahu and craft stores, you would be able to find all sorts of craft stores if you were to join a quilting group. There are quite a few different ones, some only do the hand appliqued "Hawaiian" style quilting, some do machine quilting as well as the hand quilting, etc. But there's quite a few of them and they'd all know where supplies come from. There's The Calico Cat in Kaimuki which would probably show up under a search for "quilt shop" instead of "fabric store". Kaimuki Drygoods, too, come to think of it, if it's still there should be a good fabric shop, too.
Depending on the size of the Ben Franklin Craft store, some of them have some fabric and some don't have much at all. Last time I looked, our local BFC had very little fabric and only acrylic and cotton yarns. But, across the street is Topstitch which is a quilt shop with lots of fabrics and she's now starting to carry nice yarns, too. But, unfortunately, these are all on the Big Island, so that won't do much good for you if you're on Oahu.
Yup, you nailed it -
"The life seems to be quite different there!" In lots of little ways, but we generally like it this way.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
