Simple Pleasures

My dearly departed husband has been gone for eighteen years. When he was alive he could do most anything, but had the patience of a three year old, so if something needed doing around the house I would do it, if I possibly could. I hung shelves and window treatments and traverse curtain rods, but I was afraid of using power tools, especially a drill. I'm not sure why. So if a hole needed to be started to hang that plant hanger from the ceiling or shelf bracket I would get out my trusty ice pick. Actually it came to our marriage with my husband and it was old then. It had originally been painted and although most of the paint had worn off, it worked just fine.

When I moved to this house after he died I took a nice Makita drill with boxes of bits, a little saber saw and of course the trusty ice pick. I made window treatments on boards, screwed them to a board and put up the shelf brackets with a drill to start the hole. Magic!! What I had been missing.

Fast forward to today. Now I mostly use them to make hanging rods for my quilts. I am getting ready for a solo show (more about that in another post), so the tools came out again.

On the left is a terrific little portable vise, so handy for holding my rods as I cut them to size and drill a very small hole in each end to start the screw eyes. You will notice the aforementioned ice pick in the foreground. I still use it to turn the screw eyes to their desired tightness. You may also notice that my temporary workshop is the top of the washer and dryer in my laundry room, a perfect place with electrical outlets and easy clean up with the newspapers on top. What more could I ask for?