Please excuse my delinquency.

End temporary blog stasis

You know how it is when so many things are happening that you don’t know where to start in telling people about them? Especially when most of them aren’t that interesting to anyone but yourself? I think that’s why I’m so bad at keeping this blog up-to-date. In my defense, goings-on since I last wrote have been unbalanced in the kimono-to-cupcake ratio, so maybe subconsciously I was waiting for things to balance out before I updated.

Anyhoo, cupcake action to date has gone as follows: 2 successful recipes (Elvis & Magnolia Bakery’s chocolate cupcake) and 1 successful semi-experimental recipe in Ohio, and 1 since back in Japan that was a semi-failed experiment; extremely tasty, but awful-looking. The original recipe was a lemon cupcake with berry filling, and they would’ve turned out great, had I not become overzealous with my “adjusting” of it; the problem though, was that the sugar used even in the batter was powdered sugar instead of granulated. Though it makes for a wonderful batter, powdered sugar in Japan is, there’s no other way to say it, Hella Expensive. Like, 4 dollars for 100 grams. OOOH, how I wish for the 99-cent box of Domino! Subsequent baking episodes have called for pie & cookies, so there are no other cupcakes to mention. I do sometimes toy with the idea of making cupcakes out of Slim-fast, but that seems awfully tricky. Imagine though: have two cupcakes per day and a sensible dinner. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

As for Kimono, the photo at top is, I’m pretty sure, the only time I’ve worn a kimono since coming back from Ohio. The one in the photo is a special lighter kind called a Hitoe (hee-tow-eh) that is worn mainly in May, June, & September, when it’s too hot for a regular kimono but not yet hot enough for a Yukata (full-on summer garb). BTW, I’ll hopefully have a yukata photo up next time; it’s just now yukata season, so I’ll probably be getting gussied up in that for some fireworks or something in the next week or so. Anyway, so the one in the photo is yet another internet auction score for me. I wore it with this fabulous obi with a hand-painted skull. I put my punk-rock pyramid stud belt overtop of it just for a little unique spin since, as I forgot to mention, I wore it for the release party of Ben’s tattoo book.

My last kimono-related note is that I finally got a pair of geta (geh-tah) sandals for rainy weather. They don’t have toe covers on them, but I can always make some of those. I picked up these beauties at Ben’s & my beloved Shitennoji Flea Market. It was damned hot. But I pretended I couldn’t speak Japanese, and I got them for 15$ less than the guy was originally asking. See how there are those two crazy pieces sticking out of the bottom? That’s so your feet (and beautiful Tabi--kind of like socks) aren’t so close down to the puddles, thus giving them a better chance at staying dry.

Ok, that’s all I got for now! I am blissfully busy with baby knitting (not for me) and Deadwood & Star Trek reruns.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Please excuse my delinquency.