Socks, sight, Spring and Sister Ida....not in that order...

It is a glorious day outside... sunny, a little breezy and temperature of 65 degrees...in February ...in Ohio... what is going on???  This isn't the Ohio I grew up in... with temps like this (a forecast of almost 70 for Monday and a 60 day outlook of above normal temps) I'm going to have to  return the snowmen decor to their plastic bins and break out the Spring stuff...I've never put my snowmen away before March but it may happen this year. I'm not complaining... I LOVE the sunshine... makes me want to work in my flowers, but it is waaaay too soon for planting... around here I've always stuck with the date of don't put stuff in the ground till Mother's Day

The last  couple of weeks have given me lots of sitting around waiting time and that has translated into 2 finished pairs of socks. This is the first pair, basking in the sun...

wider stripes done with some of the mini skeins from my Opal Advent Calender and some tonal Drops Fabel from Nordic Mart which you can see here.

And this is the second pair I finished, also taking a nap in the sun...

these are even prettier in person... the blues and corals remind me a sunset in the desert...ohhhh I'm am waxing poetic here...LOL  I used 4 different mini-skeins from the Opal Advent Calender. I have had sooooo much fun with that calendar...can't wait to do it again...and I had a thought to take my Opal stash and make little mini balls myself to play with.... that could keep me occupied until next year's calendar arrives!

I've cast on one last pair of socks from the Opal Advent Calendar...the last 4 pretty skeins...there are 3 skeins that I think are butt ugly and they are being banished to the basement storage room.

As for my sight... WOW... it has been 3 days since I had the cataract surgery on my right eye and I am stunned how well I can see. My distance vision without glasses is unbelievable... I have NEVER seen this well in my entire life!!!  I've worn glasses....thick glasses... since the 5th grade. Conceptually I knew trees had leaves but I had never seen them...they were just big brown sticks with balls of green at the top.

I went to parochial schools and back in the olden days the nuns had the shorter kids sit up front (and I was ALWAYS a shorter kid...actually THE shortest kid in class)... in 5th grade the boys in the class were holy terrors and Sister Ida moved them to the front of the room and since I was a "good" kid I got moved to the back. That's when I realized I couldn't see the blackboard. Now I find it interesting that Sister Ida, who in retrospect had many psychopathic personality traits , did me a favor....who knows how long I would have gone on without seeing well?  Remember this was the late 50's ...no one did in-school eye exams and you don't know what you don't see.

As for Sister Ida...OMG... she was tiny but the meanest nun I ever came across...she would torture us with homework assignments that were impossible, even when parents tried to help us with them . Her favorite punishment was to diagram an enormously long sentence and you'd have to do it over and over and over  and over every night till she declared it 100 percent correct. My friend, Wanda's mother was a high school English teacher and she tried to help us out and Sister Ida would still mark the sentence incorrect.

To my dying day I will have this mental picture of Sister Ida..short, belligerent, in a full wimple (Benedictine order of nuns) with a bit of a 2 day shadow of beard...really... she obviously had some hormone issues which perhaps accounted for her classroom behavior...she was a screamer and always had a ruler in her hand... yikes.  Thank goodness I also had some sweet nuns too...to keep me from being totally scarred for life...

Anyway... back to my vision... I am totally surprised how well I can see. Now I'm going to have to use reading glasses for close work, but I can see to drive without glasses!!! I can't wait to get my left eye done...end of February. Right now my vision is kinda wonky as I need my glasses for my left eye but not for the right eye. I had Costco poke the right lens out of an old pair of glasses and I use them sometimes, but I find myself more and more walking around with no glasses on.... my face feels naked!!!

Well I hope you have a lovely 3 day weekend... I've got no big plans and that suits me just fine. Perhaps a little sewing and a little knitting and a little napping in the sun...

happy  knitting...

carol fun