For the second year in a row, the KuroKiiro Cafe is participating in Tekkoshocon’s Charity Auction! Maids Amaranth, Rin, Melody and Miyu, as well as Hosts Kaikyo and Teru will be participating to help raise money for a wonderful cause. We hope to see you there, and don’t forget to bring your wallet! <3

Feel free to print out the above picture and color it in however you’d like! And if perhaps anyone would like to send their colored version back to us, we could maybe see about setting up a picture gallery to display them all? :)

But we also wanted to remind you that the KuroKiiro Festival starts tomorrow! It’s at the Boyd Community Center, north of Pittsburgh, and we’ll be there for all three days. We’re dancing at Opening and Closing Ceremonies, as well as running the cafe on both Saturday AND Sunday mornings!

For more information on KuroKiiro Festival – as well as the schedule of events – hit up the website at http://www.kurokiiro.com .

All of us are thankful for all of you, and we hope we get to see you this weekend! <3

That’s right, only two days left until our big Child’s Play marathon! Now, we’ve been saying that we’ll be playing for 24 hours – which we are certainly still going to do! – but we neglected to mention that it’s actually a total of twenty-five! Since Daylight Savings Time adds an extra hour on Sunday morning in our little area of the world, we’re tacking on that extra hour when the clocks roll back…and we’re planning on changing things up a little bit during that hour as well!

We are so excited to be doing this – it’s not just fun and games, it’s a chance to give back to the gaming community. While we play a small selection of games at the cafe, many of us enjoy a much wider variety, from console gaming to collectible card games to tabletop roleplaying games! This is an opportunity to raise money and pass that joy to those who really need it.

Keep an eye on this space – we’ll post the link to the video stream, the donation information, our gaming schedule, all of it, as soon as we know it. We can’t wait to see you there! <3

We recently took an afternoon to brush up on our chess and serving skills (which are completely related, by the way) down at the lovely Dormont Park. What a gorgeous day it turned out to be! <3

Maid Melody takes a moment at our recent photoshoot to play us a fairly popular tune!

Name: Miyu
Sign: Cancer
Cafe Generation: 2nd

What’s your favorite food?
Sushi, french fries, creampuffs, anything with mayo! ;o;

Coffee or tea?
Tea, coffee makes my stomach hurt!

Tell us about your hobbies!
I enjoy playing video games, watching anime and movies, dancing, and cooking.

In your totally unbiased opinion, what’s the best thing about the KuroKiiro Cafe?
The best thing about the KuroKiiro cafe is being able to work and interact with people with interests similar to mine! It’s so easy to make friends and have a good time with everyone!

What are you looking forward to most at the cafe?
I am looking most forward to working with everything and serving/getting to know new people.

What’s your favorite part of your outfit?
My favorite part…is definately my eyepatch. Second is my nurse headdress and syringe! I love running around and injecting people, hehe.

Who would play you in a movie?
Probably Chiaki Kuriyama (Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill). XP

Say a little something to everyone reading this interview!
Hihi! Thank you for reading this, I’m Maid Miyu and am new so…please say hi to me at the cafe! I hope to meet you all and wish you have a wonderful experience at the cafe!

We might still need a bit of practice at chess, though!

The maid outfit comes in many different variations, but to be quite honest, the style really did stem from French maids in the Edwardian era (1901-19). The maids would work as servants in English homes and dressed rather conservatively, in black dresses with long sleeves and skirt. Overtop they would wear an apron, which one must admit is a fairly understandable practice for a housekeeper, even nowadays!

The Edwardian era was one of refined lines and silhouettes, at least as far as fashion goes. A new type of corset came into fashion, with a straight front that tilted the chest forward but pushed the…well, rest of the figure towards the back. As respected and well-sought as those lines were, however, it would have been fairly ridiculous for a servant to wear a corset of that type – after all, these were the girls who scrubbed the floors and cooked the meals. They didn’t have time (or, likely, the wallet) for high fashion!

There came a point in which the traditional French maid uniform became something of its own creature entirely, intended more towards accenting a woman’s features than allowing her the ease of movement necessary to complete chores around the house. Over the years the uniform seems to have lost more and more fabric, while gaining more laces and ruffles, eventually becoming the costume that we so typically see in stores today.

But for those maids who work in a cafe, their purpose is far closer to the original purpose of the French maid: to serve their masters as best as possible, while maintaining a neat and clean image. After all, one could very well judge the quality of the master by the appearance of his servants, and the last thing we want is for our customers to look bad! <3

~Click here to read more about Edwardian fashion~