One Down, One To Go

I had my first cataract surgery yesterday. As the date neared, I hustled to get as many important things needing good eyesight done as I could, knowing that there would be about a month between surgery one and when both eyes were healed enough to order up new glasses. They all promise me I will be seeing near perfect but for my best vision I will need some corrective lenses. I'm already astounded at how well I can see with my right eye without glasses, but being farsighted, deciphering things up close (like words on a page) requires getting the glasses on and some squinting as now the right eye isn't seeing well through the current prescription. I know some of you have already had this surgery so you must know what I mean. I had wanted to get a new blank journal made for myself as I had few pages left in my current one (used for writing prompts and yoga meditations). Well, I almost made it. I picked out fabric (I believe this is a hand-dyed fabric from friend Susan), fused it to felt, did some minimal quilting (following the textures in the fabric) and turned the excess along the edges to the inside for fusing. This makes a very soft cover and I found myself dithering over whether to fuse another piece to the inside for a little more stability. Still dithering. If you click for a larger photo, you can just make out white dots marking where I still need to punch holes with that awl for attaching the signatures. Said signatures are all folded and punched.

Which brings me to my fancy new punching cradle, made by Jim Poelstra of Affordable Binding Equipment. It wasn't cheap, which is why I've been putting off purchasing one, but it is beautifully handcrafted of sturdy birch. Sure beats making do with a catalog or phone book, and much sturdier than the DYI cardboard one I made. Punching my signatures was a joy instead of a struggle, and isn't that what we all strive for when plying our particular crafts with the tools we use to make them?

So even though I got this far just days before the surgery and probably could have eked out the time to sew in the signatures, I'm sure I can see well enough to do it in this time before surgery two in a little more than a week. I'll probably even be able to see well enough to write in it!