The untangled web: it once was blind, and now it's free again.

Random fun: one of my favorite tasks at the soup kitchen where I volunteer is to untangle the aprons.

The kitchen uses a lot of aprons, of course, and these aprons all have long straps that come together in an octopus orgy as they pass through the washing machine and dryer, and then they don't want to come apart again.  A lot of the other volunteers and staff dread untangling the aprons, so I always jump at the chance to help with this; I love the meditation that comes from patiently following the twists and turns and ins and outs of various strands.  

On what sounds like a completely unrelated topic, at home we have cordless blinds.  I had never seen these before we moved into this house, and when I first realized how to use them, it was like magic.  You pull the bar at the bottom of the blinds down, and the blinds go down; you lift the bar at the bottom of the blinds up, and the blinds obediently rise.  There's no hunting to the left and right to see which side the cord is on; no futzing with pulling to the left and the right to see which way locks the blinds at the right height; no fears of long, dangly cords causing strangulation -- these blinds are ah-may-zing.   

I've come to love the evening ritual of lowering the blinds at night, and the corresponding morning ritual of raising the blinds as the sun comes up.  At night, it's like nestling into my space, and in the morning, it's a way to greet the day.   And my husband agrees; just the other day we were talking about how much we appreciate these blinds.

And, as though the universe was listening and had a sense of humor, the very next morning I lifted the blinds in the large, front window, and they stalled midway. 

The blinds would go up this far, and no further.

I tried again and again, and the blinds kept stalling at the same height.  I said a bunch of internal "drat"s.  We've owned this home for almost four years, and I don't know how long ago the previous owners had purchased these window covers, so maybe it makes sense that the blinds would break by now, but I was nonetheless still sad to contemplate their demise.  Replacing them would cost a pretty penny, let me tell you.

But as I looked more and more carefully, I started to get an inkling of what the problem is.  It helps that I've done a lot of sewing by hand in my life: if you've done that, too, you know the experience of having your thread spontaneously knot itself into a kind of hangman's noose.  I could see the silhouette and feel exactly this kind of knot in the honeycombs of the blinds, right where they were getting stuck.

There's a knot in the cord, where that dark "o" is. 

I could even peer down through the honeycombs and see the knot there, about a foot into the blinds.  

It's hard to see in the photo,
but I could see the knot with my eye.

The knot was way too far away to reach with my fingers, and even the crochet hook I own was way too short to nab it.  So I fashioned a hook out of some bendable scrap metal that I happened to have in the basement. 

Reaching into the blinds to grab the cord . . . 

Et voila!  Pulling the knot out of the blinds!

The cord is under a lot of tension, but I gave myself some slack by winding part of the cord around one finger, and then I could use my other fingers (and maybe just a little bit of teeth, if you want to know the truth) to gently prize apart the noose that had tightened itself in the cord.  It was a lot like pulling apart apron strings -- although I don't use my teeth on the aprons!

The knot was very stubborn until all-of-a-sudden it wasn't; after about 45 seconds of gentle tugging, it just gave a little ropey sigh and relaxed out of the noose into a strand of simple cord.  Then I let go of the cord, which scooted back into its proper place, and the blinds rose and fell like their usual magic selves again.

All the way up again!

And that's how I fixed my fancy, expensive, and beloved blinds.