Long time no sew

Well, no sooner did I write that last post promising my imminent return to regular blogging than my life was shaken up rather dramatically! After a rather disheartening few months on the job market last year, I had finally made peace with the idea of spending another year in Ithaca (and in grad school) when I got a job offer in September. The job was fantastic but required me to be able to start in January, so I kicked it into high gear and started putting the pieces of my dissertation together to get ready to graduate.

Between writing, revising, preparing to move and other things, I had basically no time for any of my usual hobbies. I did manage to make a few things in the precious few days off that I had, like this houndstooth skirt:

After sending the full draft of my dissertation to my committee, I headed straight to the sewing machine and whipped this skirt up while I was waiting for their feedback. I wore it to one of my defenses (yep, that's right, our department has multiple exams!).

I intended to make a new skirt to wear to the final defense as well, but unfortunately I was too exhausted by that point to make it all come together. Even though I didn't have a snazzy new outfit, I got the most important job done: I passed! You can now call me Dr. Biketopus :)

The other big news is that my SO and I got married in a lovely, low key ceremony in Ithaca. Since I was rather stressed out with other things I had initially planned to just wear something I already owned, but about a week before the date I decided I really did want to sew something. A lot of late nights were spent making this dress come together, but in the end it turned out quite well!


I've already started my new postdoc position in the fabulous city of Montreal while my SO remains behind in Ithaca to finish up some of his work at Cornell. Since I'm now free from dissertation writing and alone with my sewing machine, I hope I'll have some new things to post in the near future!