Chanthaboune and I were talking yesterday about the B-list feeling. Feeling like you’re on the B list doesn’t mean that you don’t get invited to parties, just that you suspect that you don’t get invited to the coolest ones. It’s not that you aren’t appreciated, but that you aren’t appreciated as much as you want to be. Not that you are excluded, but that you are included with less enthusiasm or thoroughness than you hoped for.

It’s hard to get sympathy for this feeling. There you are, telling your sister how lonely you are and He hasn’t called, and you have to end the conversation because a passel of frat boys is at your door wanting to take you to dinner. Or you turn down most invitations because you are too busy and then feel slighted because you didn’t have the chance to turn down one you noticed you didn’t get. It just isn’t rational, is it? It’s hard to get sympathy even from yourself for this kind of feeling.

I was checking in books at work yesterday and read one of the new ones: I Am the Turkey. In it, a kindergartner is chosen for the part of the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. With the help of his older brother, he feels pretty B-list about this. He was wanting to be a pilgrim. There is of course a crisis in the play and the turkey saves the day. In children’s books about the B-list feeling, this is invariably what happens. In real life, you don’t win everything, you don’t get invited to everything, not everybody likes you, and you have to just put on your big girl pants and get on with life. (I’m not sure where the expression “put on your big girl pants” originates, but The Princess uses it and it stuck in my mind.)

This weird looking thing is the Third Hand. I love it. It allows me to put jump rings on consistently.

As you can see by the splashes of solder all around it, it has not turned me into an expert solderer.

However, I feel sure that practice makes perfect.

 

Here are the slides I have soldered, arranged with the ones that must be used as tree ornaments hidden inside the branches or on the side next to the wall at one end. At the other end are the ones that have reached the level of skill that we might call rustic, or engagingly primitive. They could be put on cords and used for bookmarks.

In fact, I like these well enough to show you a closer picture.

 

All the Christmas catalogs that have been arriving are showing these things.

This allows me to see mass-produced professional store-bought ones and notice how mine do not have the high bead that good soldering brings. Some of mine are practically just tinned. They also are mostly not smooth and jewelry-like, though they do have cooler collages than the store-bought examples. I do not aspire to the store-bought smoothness, actually, but I am hoping to reach folk art before I begin doing the ones for Christmas gifts.

I am running out of microscope slides, too.

The background for these pitiful objects is my summer table runner.

The other side of it is my Autumn table runner.

Seeing it reminded me that I had wanted to make a table runner for The Princess’s wedding gift. I had resigned myself to buying her something, but her mother told me yesterday that she was so excited about the handmade gifts she had received that I am now thinking I could make the gift I had originally planned back when there was plenty of time. It is still 23 days till the wedding, and 73 days (that information courtesy of Lostarts) till Christmas. I could do it.

I have looked back in my xanga to see how long this one took to make, and I find that I did it in a week. And it has a lot of handwork, as you can see from the in-progress picture below. I could make the one I was planning in 22 days. Well, 21, since I can’t very well carry it to the wedding.

The rule actually is that you can give a wedding gift any time up to the first anniversary, but I think the day before the wedding is the real-world deadline for people you actually see regularly.

Spanish class ended last night. In six weeks, I learned how to say that I have things and am things, and then where I and the things live and hail from, and what color these things are.

This is not how I would have arranged the class. Still, it has ended and I now have that extra half hour on Wednesday afternoons into which I can perhaps fit some knitting or table runner sewing. Not soldering, because then I would be late to choir practice and smell of solder when I got there. Knitting can be picked up and put down easily and doesn’t even make you smell of sheep.

I am continuing with the second Log Cabin sock, and working on Pipes when I need something less demanding. Many people dislike doing the second sock, because they have a Been There Done That feeling about it, but I like it. I may make another pair after these. However, once I finish this particular sock I will swatch for #2 son’s sweater. We are expecting a frost tonight, so the days of fires and sweaters are now upon us.

This morning I have a dental appointment and must take #2 daughter’s Pumpkin Ale to Dr. T and pick up a paper from Partygirl and get a copy of the transcript form for #1 daughter and contact solution for #1 son, so I will not be making anything at all.