How Good it is to See.

After a week of rain, yesterday was sunny and today ditto.  So I was able to get out and do some proper walks.

A hungry bunny.  I don't walk for speed or distance,
necessarily, but try to pay attention around me.

Clear blue sky - verdant vegetation.

This tree fell over a long time ago, and I
enjoy seeing how new life springs from it.

There are some creeks and streams that the path
crosses, and I love to watch and listen to them a
bit when the water is like this.  Too bad I
haven't figured out how to upload a video.

One thing that I love about walking is just looking around and seeing things.  The bunny might have been overlooked by somebody who was just walking.  I also saw birds, earthworms, a fuzzy caterpillar, a feather gently float onto the grass - so many things.  And I revel in being able to see in part because my vision has been so terrible for most of my life.  As my mother often said, when two high myopes (extremely nearsighted people) have children, the effect is multiplied.  At least in our family it is.  Then add in astigmatism and cataracts, which show up very early for us, and vision is a challenge.  Hurrah for modern medicine and surgery - when my cataracts (first seen in my early 20's) were "ripe" for surgery a decade or so ago, it was a straightforward procedure.  What I did not realize beforehand is that when they put in the artificial lenses, they can correct your vision - or some of it.

At the time, my vision was around 14.5-15 diopters off.  I don't know how to explain that to a normally sighted person.  I'd first tested as legally blind in the second or third grade; my mother told the school nurse to have me retest with my glasses in place.  Most people talk about being "20/50" or "20/200", meaning that what you see at 20 feet, a normally sighted person can see at 50 or 200 feet.  There is no way to translate over about nine diopters into that sort of metric.  I literally could not see clearly anything beyond the end of my nose.

So they only corrected 12 diopters, which is the maximum possible.  I am now to somewhere between 2.25-3 diopters in each eye.  This means I have vision I cannot remember having.  I can move about my home without glasses, and actually see things.  There is a crispness to the world again.  And I still have the wonder and amazement at how much I can see, even well more than a decade after my surgeries.  It's a gift, it's a blessing, and I am forever thankful.

😎👀😎👀😎👀😎👀😎👀😎👀😎👀😎👀😎

Since it is very warm out, once I got home I mostly stayed inside.  I finished four scarves - all the knitting or crocheting was done, but ends needed to be run in and washing tags added.  These go to Warm Up, America!

The pink-and-purple one is a made-up design in seed stitch.  The turquoise one adapted a cowl pattern by not sewing the ends together, and it is reversible because the middle is K1P1 ribbing.  The four at the bottom are all from Caron Latte Cakes, and since only one of the rolls had a label, I copied it for the other three.  I've found it's very simple to take the washing instructions from the yarn band or tag or whatever, and attach that to the item, if there is enough information.  The Cascade Yarns "Swaddle" I used for the pink-and-purple had just two images, which isn't enough for those who don't know how to decipher them, so I printed a tag of some generic instructions (in three languages) that I've made and used in the past and attached that to the scarf.

I also returned to something started and stalled several years ago.  I decided to make a blanket in pinks and purples in honor of a fellow fiberist who succumbed to cancer.  These were her favourite colours.  So I had a bunch of yarns that I'd collected and put together with that in mind:

I had a few ideas but never got more than a bit done.  So I pulled out the yarns and figured I would just doodle and see where I got.  In the photo below, the pink square was all I'd had done, so I added another of the Bernat Stripes, then started an overall border with the Sweet Roll.  The photo shows it pulled apart when I decided to frog part of the border and add a bit more of the pink at the other end, on top of the inner border, to make the proportions longer:

I am now past the addition and have finished the rest of the Sweet Roll, and am working side panels of the Dark Horse yarn.  At the moment it is a very scrunched lump on a long circular, so not much to look at or figure out how it looks.  Current plan is to do the sides evenly, then corners of the Gedifra, then another border bit, then longways around with the Bernat Stripes, and then we'll see.

I also made some soaps:

I do just simple melt-and-pour, and was intrigued by a kit, which was on sale.  You put pinches of dried flower petals in the mould, add some clear soap, and then scented white soap for the majority.  A friend in Texas goes to a ladies' retreat with her mother each summer, and usually makes facecloths for their collective gift bags.  (Everybody makes or brings something to contribute.)  A few years ago I made a bunch of soaps for her to include with the facecloths, and they were popular.  So I've continued, even shipping a box when I wasn't ready to travel as the pandemic unwound, but they were holding a limited-attendance version.  I thought these would be a very pretty option.  I probably won't have enough of the scent to make soaps for everybody to have this type, or maybe I'll switch to a different scent.  I'm not much for floral scents but I think I have some carnation in stock.

Time for me to do homework.  I am taking a class called "The Emergence of Science Fiction" and we're finishing Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein".  One thing I didn't mention above about the surgeries is that when you get your cataracts removed, they can adjust for nearsighted or farsighted vision.  My ophthalmologist was very surprised when I said I wanted to be nearsighted because, he told me, almost every other patient wanted to be farsighted so they could see for driving and outside things.  No, I explained, I love to read, and I really wanted to be able to read without having to wear glasses or hold the book on the end of my nose.  What I didn't tell him was that part of the reason is that too often I would fall asleep reading and my glasses dented the side of my nose!

I love being able to read without glasses, and being able to hold the book far enough away that I can see the whole page, and not have to keep moving the book - or my nose!