The Curtain Caper...

Many months ago, we found "a buy" at Zellers. Silk drapes. We bought 'em and brought 'em home. Yuck! They looked awful. So I repackaged them and took them back to Zellers for a refund. Next stop...Sears Catalogue. Wow, look at these! Cotton duck with grommets - just what we want. Well, ok says Sears, but you will have to wait until July 31st because they haven't killed the duck yet - "don't call us, we'll call you...when they come in". And on July 31, we got "the call". Off to town with much anticipation we went. Instead of two panels to a package, as I thought I ordered - only one in a package apparently. Noooooooo! What to do? We checked out the store display and could only find three similar. So we bought them, too. Maybe they will go together...

NO, they didn't. The three panels from the store - perfect. The catalogue panels were a mess. The sewing machine operator must have been having a bad day...sigh...These panels have to go back. Perhaps there will be more of the panels we bought in the store...

Another trip to town...Back to Sears. While I was standing around looking I realized I had left the panels to be returned in Kathleen's truck and she was off doing another errand. Humph! Oh well...Hey these panels here look good..."Excuse me ma'am." A burly man stepped in front of me and picked up the last remaining panels and headed to the cash register lady before I came out of shock. The nerve! Time to give up on Sears. How about WalMart??? Could I be any more disappointed?

OKaaaY! Six panels of a faux suade that I think will be perfect. Snapped them up in a hurry, 'cause there could be another burly guy leurking about. When I got them home one panel was the wrong size. About 2 feet too long. Not to panic, I can fix that. I have Linda's handy dandy sewing machine...

Back to town...To really return those unacceptable panels to Sears. Then off to Home Hardware to buy 20 feet of copper pipe. Frank is going to fashion a drapery rod out of it...

So pipe is up, another of Frank's innovative inspirations! So perhaps the panels should be ironed...off to Linda's to borrow her iron and board. First, one panel had to be shortened. Then ironing. 3 and 1/2 hours later, TA DA. ( A half hour into the task I remembered why I hated ironing... Don't ask how I did it but I burned the first panel at the bottom. Negative Ions? )

We put the burned panel in the corner - Ta Da!

The next morning, we woke up to find that George had sharpened his claws on a panel...Just call me lucky!