Just got a pair of CraftOptics lenses. Wow these are cool!
They are naturally a bit more to wear than just normal glasses, but the soft silicone nose piece makes it really comfy. There's also a little light which works off a small battery pack that clips onto your pants or whatever, like a cell phone would. The light slides right onto the optic part for targeted illumination. Clever! The light cord runs through a clip on the arm of the specs, and has a small spring action clip to attach to your shirt so it stays out of the way. VERY nicely engineered. (My lenses look lit up in the photo but it's just a reflection from my laptop screen.) AND they come with croakers, the soft cords that slide onto the arm ends like the kind of eyeglass cords surfers wear, with a button that slides on the cords to adjust the specs to stay put or let them hang down.
The magnifier part flips up to reveal my personal prescription. The glasses are nice and large so it's easy to look up through the top part to see normally, and then look down through the optic part for magnification, as you need. It's all very well thought out the way these work.
Great for my eyes and especially my craftsmanship! I expect to be using these on Beads, Baubles, and Jewels segments taping soon, so you'll be able to see them in action–rather, see me in action using them–when the episodes go on the air. I'll let you know when they're on!
And yes, mine are purple.
Leslie, I just saw this post. How do you like these after using them for a while? I have them on my to-buy list. :)
ReplyDeleteDiana Welte
To be honest I do not wear them all the time, but when I need them-- wow, I sure am glad to have them! I like them especially for working with beads that are crystal, silver-lined, metallic, or have a surface that otherwise would have me squinting to find the bead holes, and to see the stitching with great clarity so I don't pierce my thread in stitches that have many passes through the same beads. Flipping the mag lenses up and down is a great feature, and they are pretty comfy to wear for stretches at a time, though like anything else you should give your eyes a break. @CraftOptics work best for me in pieces where my field of focus or staging area has small boundaries: on an area of beadwork where I am directing my needle through a complex pattern or thread path, or anything with hard-to-see materials like light thread colors, for instance. It takes a while to adjust to looking through the mag lenses and then at something not so close--say, from your beadwork to your bead mat, but it's not much different than when you first get bifocals. Plus, I have to imagine that if you work with really small beads (11 is my smallest) or intricate wire work they would really be invaluable. Hope this is helpful Diana!
ReplyDeleteI am loving my CraftOptics now as I finish off a piece of loom work. I need to rethread a needle multiple times and follow a very tight thread path, and I COULD NOT DO IT WITHOUT these amazing CRAFTOPTICS glasses. It makes it So much faster, more accurate.
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