DAY FORTY ONE

They say the simplest jobs are the hardest - at least I've heard it said, and it has been proved true more often than I would like to recall.
 
It was proved again just now while I was putting up a curtain pole. What could possibly be simpler? 

I'd been in a rush to get this job done all day as I wanted to put up a curtain across the back door to try and insulate things a little more. And to rush is the first of many mistakes which can be made while doing a 'simple' job. Often it's practically inevitable - one is lulled into a sense of false security by the word, or the thought, 'simple'. One approaches it, if one is foolish, without the usual degree of planning and forethought. 

And so first, I couldn't find the brackets to support the pole; I knew I'd put them somewhere 'safe' a few weeks ago when I first thought of doing the job. Twenty minutes later, brackets found, pole in hand, I go to my stash to find some suitable screws. 
 
Of course none of those in my proper, that is organised stash are of the right type. I needed flat-head screws and all I had were countersunk which although they would have done would have been a little ugly. I could of course used them for now and replaced them with some flathead tomorrow, or some other day when I'd bought some. But no, this was a 'simple' job, and should be simple, I should not have to faff about changing screws, I should have some somewhere. So it's off to the secondary stash - i.e. old jam jars full of odds and ends -  to hunt down four flathead screws. 

I found them. Four mismatched but uniformly overlong screws. More suitable for holding up a bridge, say, rather than a door width sized piece of deal rod, but they'd do, for now.

Then of course the curtain I had in mind was way too long. So it's out with the sewing machine (not my favourite tool) to take them up. Apart from the thread jamming in the machine and needing to dismantle the bobbin holder thing and strip out lots of twisted threads using tweezers, that all went well.
 
Brackets up, pole inserted, and having opened the packet decide I should have bought the larger pack of curtain rings after all, of course, I didn't have quite enough curtain rings and the whole thing droops rather disappointingly.
 
At least I can console myself with the few hours of taking photos earlier in the day. The above picture is of frost covered holly in my local woods.
 
Onwards...simply.
 




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