Anyone who knows me knows that I like my share of shopping and bargain-hunting. (Hey, it was the way I was raised. Some people were raised playing sports and games, in my family we were raised shopping. Kind of embarrassing to admit...) But it takes a lot of energy to brave the crowds for holiday shopping, energy I'm not sure I have (especially after we finish closing out issue 8, any day now). I don't know about you, but I plan on taking care of business online. Even better, I'm going to try to buy local when I can and to buy from independent stores and designers.

In the next issue of Hyphen, coming out in December, we'll have an expanded Take Out section -- that's our products review section where we share some of the fun goods we like, all of them made by independent Asian American artists/makers of things. Lots of good gift ideas there. If I'm feeling up to it, I might put up some links to some past goods that we showcased in Take Out.

For now though, you should check out the following folks. They are advertisers with Hyphen (for that we're very thankful). Just like the products we write about (and just like Hyphen), they are also all independent small businesses. So think about where you spend that dollar this holiday season. Do you really want it to go to a mega-chain-store?

70six.com. T-shirts for men and women with original designs. My fav is the "Soob 360," an outline drawing of subaru's first car.

Rebecca Overmann. Rebecca makes very classy jewelry.

Quennie 4 Ever. T-shirts and other girly goods.

Shy Siren. More handmade jewelry. Fun and flirty. Plus, you get 15% off if you use the code HYPHEN. Yeah, a sale.

And don't forget the gift of Hyphen. We're running a special on subscriptions right now.