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A knotty problem
The two back bedrooms have been finished and now the p and d has started on the front two. The finished bedrooms look good apart from the mess in them; they are each filled with the contents of two bedrooms. I am now paranoid about touching the walls and skirting boards in case I mark them.
Yesterday evening I thought I'd just hang up the curtains in the spare bedroom. What I expected would take me a few minutes took me two hours. The strands in the rufflet tape for bunching the curtains were not fastened at one end and so had pulled through. I decided to thread them along their channels bunching the curtains in the process. After much effort I managed to rethread the strands in one of the curtains and rehung the curtain. Having done this I realised that the strands had probably been pulled through deliberately; the curtain was now too short for the window and covered less than half of it. All that effort for nowt.
Not to be defeated, I thought I'd try to lengthen the strands with pieces of thin string. However, the thinnest string I found was too thick to pass along the channels for the strands as it was effectively double at the eye of the needle.
I had a rethink and tried a piece of plastic string that seemed thinner. This was also too thick. In the process of threading it onto the needle it had frayed so I pulled off about half and the plastic string then passed along the channels. Success.
My next hurdle was to attach the strands to the plastic string. Knots would be bulky and stick; binding the two together would be difficult and would give no guarantee of sliding in the channels. I decided to use knots; uneven bunching would be better than nothing. The knots I thought suitable were sheetbends; reef knots would slip. I searched for my copy of The SAS Survival Handbook (a book popular in the early 90s) which had a diagram of how to tie a sheetbend.
Could I follow the diagram and tie a sheetbend? No. I struggled. I went this way; I went that way. All I achieved were slip knots. Meanwhile the strands and plastic string frayed more and more.
Eventually, after much frustration, I managed to tie knots that didn't slip, though whether they were sheetbends is another
atter.
Thought for today
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. (Aargh)
English proverb
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