It's official!

I spent much too long this morning waiting to see an advisor (confluence of mis- and non-communications), but eventually I got myself all signed up for classes for the fall!  The book list is already on line, so I ordered all my books, too.  (I was pleasantly surprised to see that I already own the book required for the Stage Make-up class.)

Unless a discussion with someone in the Theater department causes me to rethink, I'm going to be taking Acting I, Technical Theater, Fundamentals of Movement, Fundamentals of Script Analysis, and Intro to Stage Make-up.  This semester is gonna be so much fun!  

Now for Plan B

I finally heard back - the university doesn't have a space for me in this fall's class.  (The Chief wondered aloud how many transfer student spaces went to out-of-state students, who of course pay higher tuition.)  Not what I wanted to hear, of course, but at least now I know how to plan.  Tomorrow I'll work on my application for the spring semester and send my draft community college schedule to my contact in the university's Theater department to see how many of the classes will transfer.  Depending on her response, I'll get myself signed up and start back-to-school shopping. :)

The university has an arrangement with local community colleges whereby you can get university credit for community college classes.  I'll start looking into that tomorrow, too.

I'll have to commute a bit further, then deal with transferring if and when the university sees fit to admit me, but at least I'll still be going back to school.  The Chief has offered to buy me a Cinderella lunchbox in honor of the occasion. :)

Any day now...

Now that we're into mid-July, it's getting harder and harder not to check my email almost compulsively for something letting me know whether I've been admitted for the fall semester.  Yep, "wait" is still a 4-letter word.

Zucchini 1.2

The first zucchini plant died pretty definitely, so Wednesday the Chief and I put in a new one.  He took some scrap lumber and built a frame to create the mound they recommend when planting zucchini.  He also had me filter the dirt going into the hole to make sure there were no grubs.  We filtered  2 or 3 cubic feet of dirt and only found a few grubs, but at least those grubs will not be attacking the new zucchini plant.

It's probably much too late in the season to be planting zucchini, but hope springs eternal. :)

At least we don't have to worry about keeping it watered.  With all the rain we've been getting (25 of the past 36 days), I'm more concerned that it doesn't get washed away!

Not the fabric I meant to buy

The Chief and I took a day trip to Amish country on the way to a birthday party last weekend.  He wanted to look at furniture, I wanted to look for fabric for that cloak pattern I bought.  I did find some Christmas-red wool, but at $21 a yard, I decided to keep looking.  I wasn't really surprised to find that, this being quilt country, 99.99% of the fabric on offer was quilt fabric.  In one such shop, the Chief ran into Irene, a Mennonite quilt saleswoman par excellence.  She had him helping her peel back quilt after quilt in a big stack, told us the name of each pattern, pointed out all the features (different types of work, "every stitch sewn by hand") that made them special.  Funniest was that she kept warning us that if we didn't buy this or that quilt, someone else would.  She got to the Chief; we walked out of there with not just one but two quilts, when we weren't planning to buy any!  However, he did show his own shopping skills by asking if we could get a discount, since we were buying two quilts.  We didn't get the markdown he asked for, but we did get one.

We stopped at one last fabric store on our way to our hotel, where the Chief picked out some flannel for another pair of flannel lounge pants.  I also bought some lavender dotted cotton to use for the mock-up for my first Regency dress.  I figure if my maiden effort goes together reasonably well, I'll end up with two dresses - the practice model and the "real" one. :)

Getting a little ahead of myself

I'm already starting to costume myself for a Christmas caroling group I haven't even auditioned for yet, and which only asks women to provide a "Victorian" blouse.  I checked their website, decided they're going for a vaguely Dickensian look, and the hunt was on.

The first pattern I ordered, which arrived yesterday, was Folkwear #205, the Gibson Girl blouse:





I also ordered Butterick 5266, for the cloak.  I may or may not ever get around to making it, but if I want a mid-19th-century cloak, I've now got a pattern that will suit admirably.  (However, I'd probably change the closure to something a little less labor-intensive than all those tabs.)

 

But the purchase I'm most excited about is the one no one will see.  It's a corded petticoat (worn in the 1830s-50s, before the invention of the hoop, to make skirts stand out and achieve more of a bell shape), much of which is handsewn!  It just arrived today.  I'll need to add a small extender to the waist but that's a trivial adjustment, and MUCH quicker & easier than sewing one of these from scratch! Because it's used and has a couple of tiny spots near the waistband, the price was eminently reasonable.


Now all I have to do is come up with an audition recording to submit and hope my voice is what they're looking for.  If so, I'm already half dressed! :D