Our regularly schedule programming

Modeling courtesy of my beat-up ducktape
dress form

The February round of fellowship applications is written and sent out; now the March round begins. When I finish the March round, I'll be done with this year's fellowship application marathon and will allow myself to start another dress. Round 1's dress is done, and turned out very well. Waiting til I'm done with the next round of apps to start the dress is a little arbitrary, since I'm teaching J to sew his own shirts, but at least it will make it so there's only one fabric explosion covering the house.

The dress was relatively quick and easy.  I used Simplicity 2588, but did a couple of modifications: The bodice was faced, and I added a lining, which made the back zipper trickier, and I added the pocket details and the ruffle at the bottom.  The pattern was also extraordinarily tall and had waaaay too much ease: despite my measurements matching the pattern sizing guide exactly, I had to shorten both the skirt and the bodice by an inch and a half, and take in the bodice quite a bit.  I've found out that I looooove working with piping also.  It's a very fun detail, and although I love the fabric, I think it would have been a little much without the accent.  It's turned out well, but the muslin looked like a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, I've been having this recurring dream in which Dr. Asiago emails me to ask why I'm not applying for a fellowship whose application is due tomorrow.  I've been writing these applications to the neglect of real dissertation writing, and I know it's for a good cause, but he keeps telling me to apply to these grants that are due in only a few days (in real life as well as in the dream).

I'll be glad when the spring round is done and I have a few months of reprieve to do some dissertating.  One of my other committee members, who we'll call Dr. Smackdown, has written a lot of my letters of rec, and recently wrote me that she expects I'll get so many fellowship grants I won't be able to use them all.  I think this was her way of saying she's done writing letters, because I could only hope to be so lucky.  Even getting half the ones I'm applying for would be great, as last year's grants only had a 30% success rate.