Monday, October 8, 2012

A Closer Look at Sweet Lolita

Picture from lolitafashion.org
"Fashion is interpretative. Fashion is based on a concept, which each individual forms and interprets into something visual." -Victoria Suzanne, Parfait Doll

As much as I love classic lolita, I also have a strong draw to sweet lolita. Sweet lolita is a very distinctive style. It stands out among the other lolita styles simply because it is so sugary sweet. If anything can be decked out with pastels and covered in cupcakes, teddy bears, and kittens, then by the stars somebody out there will do it.

Sweet lolita is also one of the only lolita styles I have seen to be pushed into the over-the-top category. This is where the lolita pushes everything to the extreme. Petticoats get bloomed up to make wide cupcake skirts. Circle lenses and extreme eye makeup gets applied to make them look even more doll-like in appearance. Big curly wigs come out that might or might not be pastel colored themselves to get covered with bows and frills. The dresses get covered in busy cute prints. In my opinion, it is one of the boldest styles to wear because you have to be confident to go out looking like a giant pink cupcake.

I also really like Sweet lolita because it looks so innocent. This is the style that really hearkens back to childhood for me. In fact, if my mother had made me wear petticoats, it would be really similar to what I liked to wear before frills became too "girly" for  me.

What people should know about sweet lolita is that it is not just about looking like a cupcake and it is not just looking like a pink cupcake. Sweet lolita comes in all shades of colors. The signature color for sweet lolita seems to be pink, but it looks just as lovely in shades of pastel blue, butter yellow, lavender, and if you are lucky minty green.If you go back further in history and look at shops like Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (BTSSB) you will even see that bright reds and darker shades can even be classified as Sweet lolita. The border prints a la Angelic Pretty are very popular, but Sweet lolita can also be well done if it is done in a solid color or an all over print as well.

I really like sweet lolita. I think the style is adorable and it is one of the ones I can see myself wearing because it would make me feel pretty. It is not the only style I see myself wearing, but it is one of the ones that has charmed its way into my heart. 

Friday, October 5, 2012

Culinary Temper-tantrum

Have you ever had one of those weeks where there is just nothing good in the house to eat? I have been living that nightmare for the past two weeks now. We had food in the house, but none of it was appealing. Everyone in the house would walk in during dinner time, look into the fridge, sigh, and leave without eating anything. Nobody wanted to try to figure out what to cook and that caused us to eat out or just nibble on whatever we could find.

While I do enjoy the occasional Big Mac, I got frustrated feeling like there was just nothing to eat. So, I did the only logical thing that I could think of. Have a temper-tantrum.

Instead of jumping up and down or yelling at my parents that they weren't cooking anything good, I decided to fix something that would appeal to me. After all, I am old enough that I have free range of all of the "dangerous" kitchen appliances. I found one serving of pasta hidden in the cabinet and decided that would go good with a sauce and some onions.

 I prepared the pasta according to the directions on the packet and chopped up an onion. Then I cooked the onions in a small pot with some butter until they were nice and tender. When the pasta was done, I drained it. Then I threw the pasta in with the onion and added another dab of butter, about 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese, and two tablespoons almond milk. Since I didn't rinse the pasta, the starch from the pasta mixed with the cheese, onion, butter, and almond milk to make a nice Alfredo sauce type coating.

It tasted fantastic!

This would be a really nice meal to make for my family on a larger scale. It is quick and easy, but I would make a few minor changes. I would pick up a can of white kidney beans, drain them, and throw them in when I put the pasta in with the onion. I would lay off the extra butter since I cooked the onions in butter. And I would take the extra time to caramelize the onions. Fix that and put it on a table with a salad and you can convince your family that you do know how to cook.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Tatting Saved My Knitting

I know how to do a few different crafts. The main craft that I like to do is knitting, but another craft that I like to do is shuttle tatting. I haven't done any tatting recently because I didn't like how my shuttle was working. It has a bobbin inside the shuttle that you can pop in and out to fill it up with thread easily, but the bobbin kept slipping the more I used it.

I was working on taking out my holding thread on my handspun socks so I can put in my afterthought heel and I was getting frustrated because my knitting needle was not small enough to un-knit the strand easily. I tried the small crochet hook that I have for fixing knitting mistakes and that wasn't small enough either. So I thought about my tatting and remembered that the shuttle had a tiny crochet hook that you can use to un-tat your mistakes. It worked beautifully to help me un-knit the holding thread.

I recently house-sit for my parents when they went camping. They have been going to a nice little campground with a town nearby that has an awesome yarn shop called the Gentle Arts. Last time they got me a comfy blue t-shirt with the name of the shop on it.

I was teasing them when they were leaving to remember that my favorite color was red. My mom also knits so I was hoping that they would bring me back a skein of sock yarn because I knew they would be going back to the store. Instead, they remembered that I wanted a niddy noddy that was more travel sized and brought one home to me. It is beautiful! It is made out of medium walnut and the top and bottom bars rotate so that it can lay flat in the bag. This makes it perfectly travel sized! It wraps up skeins that is 1 1/2 yards in size which is smaller than the bigger niddy noddy that my dad made me which wraps up to 1 3/4 yards. If I had it my way, I would have my Dad make me another one that had the features of this tiny one, but was big enough to hold 2 yards. That way I wouldn't get them mixed up. I can't wait until I get to use it.