July 25, 2016

Moldavite exhibit in museum

Me and my friend Tairesia went to a museum exhibit! 
 

This is our South Bohemian Museum. Since the exhibit was about moldavites, I dressed into a space-themed Cosmic JSK in cream color. It's more toned-down and although still counts as sweet, its quite on the subdued side (and it has pockets!)


Moldavites are created upon asteroid impact. The asteroids are huge rocks flying around our Solar System, they can be as small as a boulder or as big as a mountain. Sometimes they hit the Earth and when the impact is stronger, they melt the ground they hit. The melted ground is trasformed by the heat and pressure of the impact into glass and the glass droplets are ejected into surrounding area. These droplets become the moldavites and can be found million years after the impact which created them!


These are moldavites. There were hundreds of them in the exhibit, from different places across the world.


We saw more moldavites that day than .. well, honestly, more than anyone would probably want. The sheer amount was overwhelming. One final photo in front of the wall panel you can see in the back of the exhibit room, and we were ready to go home and rest!


July 7, 2016

Strawberry roll cake

I've come across this step-by-step sponge roll with strawberries recipe, a sweet common in Japan, at least judging from the photos I see around the internet. I decided to give it a try!

Strawberry roll cake

Ingredients:
4 egg yolk
1/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of flour
4 egg whites
1/2 cup of fresh cream
1/4 cup of corn oil
8 strawberries
sugar to taste
a few drops of vinegar



Put egg yolk into a bowl. Add oil, milk, sugar (I used 3 spoons of powdered sugar) into the bowl and mix until water and oil blend together (I used a blender to mix them very well, until the mixture started to take on pale yellow color and bubbles appeared). Next sift in flour (I used self-rising cake flour) (for czech readers: hladká mouka a kypřící prášek) and mix until there are no clumps.

In to another bowl, add egg white with vinegar and beat until stiff with peaks. Put one third of the beaten egg whites into the batter and mix evently. Put the rest of the beaten egg whites, fold gently.

Pour the batter into a parchment lined pan and spread it evenly across the pan. Gently knock the pan down a few times to get rid of bubbles in the batter. Put in 180 C preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes. Take the cake out and let it cool.

In the meanwhile, beat the cream and wash the strawberries. Then take the cooled cake and flip it over on the parchment paper (I flipped it into another paper I put on top, rather). Spread the cream, put the strawberries on one end. Roll the cake (it was surprisingly easy to roll it!), wrap it with the parchment paper, and put it into the fridge to cool for half an hour.

Here goes the result! It was delicious, I'll be making it regularly for sure.


July 3, 2016

Handmade wristcuffs

I made my first handmade lolita fashion item! It's a simple classic inspired wristcuffs in ivory color. After a lot of obsessiong about what best lace to use and how to sew it together, I bought a couple of lace of an ebay shop, but the shades turned out to be very different from each other in person!


I used the top lace, soft and wide with embroidery on both edges. I folded the lace in half, then adjusted it so both embroidery is visible. Then I gently sewed them together under and above the line where elastics would go. That created a tunnel for the elastics. After adjusting its lenght I sewed the end of the elastics together, then the end of the lace. Then I prepared bows for the wristcuffs using this simple method!


As a finishing touch, I sewed the ivory bows on top. The wristcuffs turned out better than I expected!