We held my in-law's 50th wedding anniversary at our house Saturday night and with all the prep work I scored some points with the family. This means one thing. Get out and hang!
So, I went out at about 1pm to an area called The Watershed in Pennington, NJ and did a little hike to the Mount Rose Area trails. It was nice and quiet and a beautiful afternoon. The sounds of spring were certainly in the air.
I had with me my SL DIY 1.9 ripstop hammock, Te-Wa UQ, warm-weather sleeping bag as a TQ and a blue pad just in case. The weather was in the low 50's and after preparing for the party all week - cleaning and redecorating a room from top to bottom - I was in need of a little nap. It only took about 15 minutes before I went out and awoke to sun quickly fading.
I use 1" webbing around the trees and a Marlin Spike Hitch with a toggle. I attach the adjustable end of my whoopies to the MSH and the fixed end to a Nano biner. The Nano biner serves as the attachment point for my ridgeline and I have a small piece of spliced rope (soon to be amsteel) larksheaded (is that a word?) to the whipping of my hammock. I've gone back and forth with removing the biner but I can't seem to get a flat lay when I just have the ridgeline and whoopies larksheaded to the hammock. Anyone else run in to this?
I did have a problem with my Te-Wa UQ though. I picked this up from another member here while on a business trip and immediately thought it was a summer quilt because it was just way too light and thin so I put in on the back burner until spring/summer. I sent Te-Wa a PM asking about the temp rating and he told me it was a winter UQ. I was pretty sure he didn't remember the exact quilt as there could be no way this would hold up to winter temps. Well, the problem with his quilt was it was too damned hot! I woke up to the sun setting and my back sweating with no top cover. Again, it was only in the low 50's and I couldn't believe how much warmth this thing produced. I'll have to work on dialing it in for venting but I can attest to the warmth but also to the quality of his quilts. Great stitching, nice attention to detail like the way he does his darts and it fits my 11' hammock perfectly. Thanks Te-Wa.
This was great 'alone' time and I spent a little of the afternoon splicing Zing-It for my tarp tie outs. I use the ^shane^ setup but discovered one of my line-locs was missing. Not sure how that happened... I did see set of tarp guy outs at a group hang and decided I'd give it a go.
I'm more of a "feel" kind of guy so I took an 8' piece of Zing-It and on one end I created a locked brummel with a 7" loop and 7" bury marking points at 7", 14" and 21". On the other end I put a 2" loop with a 2" bury. I was out in the field and couldn't stitch the loop but will during the week. I threaded the locked brummel loop through my tarp loop and then used a hollow toggle to create a prussik knot. I then threaded the end with the 2" loop through the toggle and removed the toggle. This resulted in the prussik being tied back on the same line. The other end gets larksheaded (I guess it's a word because I like it and keep on using it) on to my stakes. But... I received some gutter spikes from another member and decided to truly emulate some Vargo Ti spikes best I could. I sand them down and drilled a 1/8" hole about a half inch from the top. I de-burred the holes and then put a continuous loop of mason's line through the hole. I wasn't sure about two things. First, if I like this kind of setup and second, I don't pack my stakes with my tarp. This allows me to easily remove them and if the mason's line wears out, It can be replaced for about $.03. Knotty mentioned that that Zing-It was very resistant to wear and I could use it instead of mason's line but I already made the loops so no harm no foul.
All in all a great day that ended with me eating some leftovers from the party.
Thanks for reading.
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