Trying to bring a community together.

Hello everyone!

Not sure if you know but I am Portuguese. Portugal is a small country which has been deeply affected by the recent economic crisis to an excent IMF has to interveen for a while. We are now supposed to be recovering and people are struggling a lot, that includes everyone. Salaries are low and at the same time despite food still being somewhat affordable things like electricity and gasoline etc are super expensive. I think in terms of gas we have some of the most expensive prices in Europe? Something like that. 

On the other hand despite it all tourism is blooming and the country still has many monuments back from when we were big in Europe (discovery age and whatnot) and the food is super rich and diversified. Alcool is affordable and we have amazing wine. Because we needed EU help in pretty much everything our transportation services, airports, some concert halls, football stadiums etc are somewhat new and modernized. Because of the crisis people had to try to survive in other fields and have opened new and exciting restaurants, cafes, shops a bit around (at least my town) even though there are still a lot of stores closing and empty.

We have a gigantic amount of music festivals all year but mostly in the summer and they always sell out despite the expensive (for a portuguese citizen) tickets. I always find that amusing. I make more than min wage and cannot afford them the way people go to them at least. The average music festival attendee goes to more than one and usually buys the most complete ticket version.

Fashion is also blooming here with interesting new designers and people apparently caring more about what they are wearing. Its nice to go out and see everyone bringing what it is for them, their a game. But despite all of this and despite lolita numbers growing in the world and all the events and all the buzz around lolita everywhere in Europe and despite the efforts, in Portugal, lolita is close to dead. Numbers do not increase (people leave and then sometimes someone new comes around) but the level of committment and support surrounding a community and events has fallen. I suppose we can't blame ourselfs for that, society is changing but it seems like other countries have managed to obtain some number growth so this is disappointing. After being here and in the fashion for 10 years or more I cannot help but feel a sense of ... failure while at the same time I am fully aware that there is little I could have done/can do more than what I did and still do (not as much I am not afraid to admit). 

So how does all this rambling fit with the post itself? Well as an effort to cater for the community we do have and knowing some people are not able to move to attend meetings (because traveling for an event is not something we do here, trust me, even tried that "give away free stuff" technique and it still did not work) I decided to arrange for an online national meeting on the 18th of July.

People seemed excited and we got a wooping! 17 participants enrolled. Wow, imagine that, 17 people. I bet you feel excited for me heh? 

The problem was that on the date apparently only around 5 people remembered to attend and those 5 experienced some kind of tecnical difficulties with tinychat which is unfortunately the only platform I know that is free and enables multiple people chatting with a mic and camera at the same time. Out of all those 5 people I am not sure how many were wearing lolita. So it was a bit of a fiasco which is sad. 

Well I did feel pretty which is good considering I've been very sick which is something I will not bother you with in detail. 

I was inspired by Carmilla's style I think. One gets inspiration from what we have in our memory bank without realizing. I went to a local store the other day when I was still healthy and I saw this floral crown I've been in love with for a while. But now it was on sale so I finally got it. It is the hugest flower accessory I have ever worn and i think that's what reminded me of her. Also I got that underskirt as you know and I was dying to use it and Carmilla's dresses are sometimes on the longer side so that sealed the deal. 

 Anyway this is also not new because I have posted about Paris but I am really proud of the way it ended up looking so here it is in a bit more detailed. It took a couple of hours to make because its all hand sewn and I used things I had in my crafts box which was great! I really like it but it matches almost nothing else. Its a bit like that pierrot hat i made for the Lver btssb outfit too. There's something about Paris that just makes me wanna go crafty.

Anyway I hope this post doesn't get misunderstood because this is my personal diary and I do want to be honest but I do not want to be too negative or anything, I always see myself as someone who is just honestly speaking her mind and usually very strongly based on reality other than my opinion.
It can be seen as a positive thing too, at least when you hit rock bottom there's a place to... improve? Maybe now the local community will reflect with what's been going on lately and for a bit and move? I don't know, I hope so. Not sure if any of the people involved read or even care but ya know. One does what one can.

I really hope I can be well again soon, I honestly do not know what is wrong with me so I cannot give this health situation a name yet but i'll carry on with the testing and visits to doctors to see what is going on. I hope I don't have to go to the emergency again though, I hate going to the doctor to be honest, I feel very helpless there even when i'm being discharged.

I hope you are all well, I really do.
Love always,
Jo

Egl Portugal x Lolita en Nuncaxamais (Saturday)

Hello again!

Due to the proximity between northern Portugal and the Galician area of Spain, our community, Egl Portugal and Lolita en Nuncaxamais have established a sort of informal deal, that we would try to schedule meetings where elements for both communities would be present and alternate them between Spain and Portugal.

The last times it was the Portugese community to move to Spain for a visit and so, having that in mind, the girls from Lolita en Nuncaxamais decided it was more than time to come over to Porto for a visit.

I was in constant contact with the responsible party to get the total number of attendees and because I wanted to make sure they'd have a good experience I decided to book the same place I always book for special occasions, the Grande Hotel do Porto.

We met with some of the spanish lolitas in the main avenue of our city and then moved to the venue. I was a bit nervous to be honest, all I wanted was for them to have fun and want to come back to our lovely city.

We arrived a bit early and therefore could spend some time in the lobby, taking photos, chatting, etc.

The lovely representatives from Lolita en Nuncaxamais

Us, the Egl Portugal girls

After this, I escaped into the tea room and, with the help of the girls of course, got everything in place.
Kirarah made tickets for the girls to take as souveniers which was a perfect touch. Soon it was time to let everyone in the room for the munchies!

Have I ever told youthat i dislike my nose and my smile? I do. Welcome to "sala douro II".

The table with some of the food, the free goodies (a ring, regina chocolate,  etc).

The raffle goodies: me, two of the galician lolitas, toshio and annie all gave out things to be given away between attendees.


I really wanted to win this drawing by the talented Anniesama, and guess what luck got me! I was so happy! ^_^;

My outfit, Christina picked the color scheme so we could be matching.

You can see it more clearly here, in the tea room because of the light. I really love this dress, i wish i had it in every colorway. <3

Me and Darkmaid (Cristina) have known each other online for years, a decade! It is always so special when i can be with her in person, I think she is a great person, super open minded, super honest and just overall a great person.

After the meeting we went window shopping and then said goodbye because we were going to hit the bars later that night which we did. There are no photos of that unfortunately but I hope there were enough for you to have an idea of what went on that day.

Love always,
Jo

7, 8 of March

            I was going to post a bit more, stuff other than just this weekend but I ended up procrastinating and I'll only post about the weekend in the end. I hope you will like reading, it was a very happy time for me so hopefully you will.

7th March - Friday
Two events took place on friday, my inlaws sent a package full of food again and that arrived which is always a colorful fun event for me and my husband. Mari had fun taking everything out of the box and putting everything inside again and so on...

Later that evening, around 10pm my dear friend fla arrived from Lisbon. She wanted to come over to visit me and my familly and would stay with us for the weekend!

8th March - Saturday

We woke up at decent time i suppose but took our time around the house. We decided we should go have lunch somewhere and everyone got ready.

Me, my husband, Mari, my older brother and fla all got in the car and my husband drove us to the nearby city of Vila Nova de Gaia to go to his favorite restaurant. 

My friend fla brought gifts, yes i know.... what a nice girl! 

She got things for Mari and also made some things for both Mari and myself. <3

She got Mari a set, a H&M red dress with pink dots and she made a matching bear headdress. How cute is that? 

I keep telling her that I adore the floral headbands she makes so she made me one. She made it in red, white and gold. It is huge I wonder if i can pull it off. 

She also made me a bear black headpiece. She did it out of a sort of spike things, as a dare. I shall wear it just for the lolz. :P I wonder if i can pull it off?

I also saw her wearing these tights and i loved them. I told her so and she got me a pair. I had no idea they were from Primark. They look amazing in pictures, everyone should get a pair.  

In the afternoon we had scheduled a Lolita meeting. One of the local girls, Isabel, had scheduled it before fla even knew she'd come over. It sounded like fun but we had other plans so we knew we could only stay for a bit. Still we got dressed and went. We had decided to wear the same dress since we both own Metamorphose temps de fille room print in the white colorway. Of course for fla that means her confort zone: sweet lolita and for me quite the opposite. It's fun thought and i think i pulled it off.

 We ordered one cake and shared. It was ok, i think the presentation is better than taste there but the kitchness of the decor of that place won me over.

We had to leave a bit earlier (aroung 5.30) because we had a classical music thing at 6pm. We got in the car and off we went. Unfortunately that weekend there was a ton of traffic and, in the end, we could  not get there on time. So that means no show and leaving the meeting earlier for nothing! We decided not to let it go to waste and stopped in a nice spot for some shots.

So I guess since we got nice shots I cannot complain but i'm still sad because i wanted to take fla to the show. Oh well....
We both wore the same print (fla wore the op version and I wore the jsk), the same shirt, the same lace socks in different colorways, flat shoes, ankle socks and the exact same bag in different colorways, same accesories etc. I think it was a decent twin experience and it was a lot of fun!

Soon, the next day report. I wonder what we both wore.... :P

I hope you liked the post, i miss her terribly!
Love,
Jo

Random post

Hello again,

I'm at work at the moment, it's the last work day before my vacation period and I'm so glad too because I am tired. There's so much work to be done though and when i come back my working life will have changed dramatically since I'm taking on new reponsibilities. Exciting, scary, overwhelming... i have very mixed feelings about this. I'm going into it with a 2 year experience promise because they are aware that me adapting will take time. Hopefully it won't and i'll be perfect in every way. One can dream right?

Anyway since life's so chaotic at the moment i can't seem to be able to place things in a timeline anymore so this post is going to be messy as well.

Sunday the 30th June
I visited my dad the other day, went to his place on a weekend to get those car race shots and videos to him. He lives by the sea and his living block has a swimming pool so its a fairly agreable place to be in.
He always cooks things he knows we like too and he is a fantastic cook so that's a plus.
We decided to go by train as opposed to using the car all the time which sounded like a good idea. We got our tickets and got in the train... and found out that the train didn't stop where dad lives so we had to get off somewhere else. The next train would only be there 45min later so I decided to call dad and ask him to come pick us up.

When we arrived my older brother was already there and soon lunch was served. Dad decided to make Rojões à moda do Minho which has tripes, meet, potatoes and lots of blood. It's the sort of typical dish some people might refuse to eat. My husband admited he wasn't a fan of the tripes because of the animal smell but he had to admit he liked it this time because of dad's cooking skills.

We went to a local café to eat some typical portuguese Bola de Berlim which is a version of the German Berlinger cake. They claim to have the best ones and they are good indeed. I hate half of it and drank an expresso.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and having some familly quality time.
Dad's passions include cooking, cars (alfa romeo as you know) and also other things like music and cameras. I took a shot of some of his cameras for you guys.

 Every time i visit dad i want to snatch this for my Ball Jointed Doll, Aléxia. ;_;

We checked the train schedule and went to the station, this was the train that took us home. It was a great day and extremely relaxing!

Saturday the 6th
Our national community got an invitation from an event organizer to attend a japanese music related event (Audiofilia) and they asked so nicely we couldn't say no.
It was ridiculously hot like its been the last month and some of the girls complained about having to wear lolita but i managed to get them all to wear it anyway he. After all when would we get together again, not soon for sure!
When we arrived at the place it was cooler inside and the architecture and decoration was perfect! I hope you can tell from the photos.

Apparently its a bar at night but sometimes host cultural events during the day. What a lovely bar, it made me wanna go at night too!

I had a hard time picking something to wear i must say, i never know what to wear in the summer, lolita or not, i just hate it THAT much. So I just went with the obvious op + ankle sock combo for confort and i am happy I did, it wasn't as painful as it could have been.

Everyone wearing summer outfits. We were all dying a bit. hehe. I wore a MmM op, MmM bag, etc shoes and offbrand everything else.

We sat in the bar for a bit too, everyone behaved and drank water but i wanted to try the new Sagres Radler.

The bartender said "if you want a beer, this is not what you were expecting for sure" and he was right, it tastes like... an odd cocktail. It's not bad though.

We then said goodbye to everyone that was still upstairs and left. Some of us had arrangements, some others had to catch a bus or train... Me, my brother, Duarte and his friend and Vânia went back through the same route so I took this change to take a photo at one of my favorite tourist spots in Porto, Igreja do Carmo.

In the end me and my older brother were left and decided to go to the downtown Costa café. He fell in love... its all very tasty but a tad expensive so that's why I do not go more often. It is usually very crowded but it was actually slow that day which was nice for a change. And of course extra points for the air conditioner.

I am going to Vigo tonight, i'm going to catch a plane there.

It'll be:

Vigo - Madrid - Amesterdam - Osaka

It will also be Mari's first plane experience. 

I hope she'll be a quiet behaved baby as usual but one never knows.

I apologise if any of you is on one of these flights and a baby is crying non-stop in advance.

I will be there until the 27th of August so if you have any photo requests, just let me know and I'll try my best to comply!

Thank you so much for the constant support guys. A big hug to all of you,

Jo

Latest Frill report

Hello everyone,

I have been a bit busy lately and end up not being able to post as much as i'd like here.

On the 4th of May there was a small event dedicated to Japanese culture in the nearby city of Vila Nova de Gaia. For the second year in a row, the Portuguese Lolita Community (egl portugal) has been present at the event with small contributions which match the size of the event. It's so a small event but at a fabulous place and it is always an honor for us to receive such invitations.
Last year there was a workshop, this year we set up an "introdution to lolita" room.

The gorgeous miss Ana and Claudia setting things up

Group photo. I love this photo because everyone's laughing and nobody is paying attention to the photographer

 I wore gothic lolita to match my friend kirarah who was in egl in the same colors.
Moitie dress, headdress, accessories, chantilly socks, juliette et justine bolero, etc

I love this shot first because my brother's in it but also because me and Ana are wearing the same sort of outfit without discussing what we'd wear.

 It was a fun day but I admit I was very tired when it ended. I hope people got to know a bit more about the style and that more people will join as a result. That's why we do this afterall. <3

I haven't been able to buy things regularly anymore. Portugal is going through rough times now. But I am still receiving things I got the previous months and that I forgot to share.
I ordered the newest Gothic and Lolita Bible of course and I algo got another Muchacha mook. This bag is even wackier than the previous one.

On the 17th of May the Portuguese Lolita Community celebrated its 7th birthday. It is really a pleasure to see that all my hard work ended in a community that still is able to survive. We arranged for an online and offline meetup on the 19th and me and some girl gathered at my place where we had an afternoon snack, chatted online via webcam with the rest of the comm and also celebrated the soccer championship victory of our town's soccer team. It was a lot of fun.

Part of our afternoon tea table.

 This is what I wore. It's the second time I wear this dress. I wish it was a bit longer but i think its adorable anyway. Dress and bag are from Innocent World, bolero is Mary Magdalene, boots are Queen Bee and the rest is offbrand.

As for last buys, well these are a bit old but i ended up getting a dress i already owned back and an offbrand winter top that i won't be able to wear for months because summer is coming soon.

 Btssb trianon chiffon op in white and offbrand velveteen red top with lace colar.

Lastly I was surprised with a package this last week. A former Portuguese lolita and friend sent me a couple of things she found in the back of her closet that fits the lolita look but doesn't quite fit her current style.
This is what the content had:

Shoe pink clip on bows, black clip on bows, a lovely letter, fake eyelashes, and some puffs.

She also sent a Fernando Pessoa postcard for my husband because he's the biggest Fernando Pessoa fan I have ever met. Actually he is the reason why he started learning Portuguese and why he ended up in Portugal hence the reason why we met. I owe him a lot. <3

And that's all that happened lolita-wise lately. I hope you enjoyed reading.
A big hug to all of you,
Jo