Karma

A couple posts back I left off at the "test" phase of my hammock exploration project.  The hammock worked, but it had a terrible problem -- a honking big split right in the middle.  OK, it is an old hammock and nothing lasts forever, but fact is that you can never really relax in a hammock if you are constantly wondering when you are going to fall through the bottom.

I'm a philosophical kind of guy, and a believer in karma.  Jeff Bezos' karma seems to involve being the richest guy on earth.  Keith Richards' karma seems to involve playing great guitar.  My karma seems to involve fixing things.  Karma is what it is.

Now I have a great advantage:  I've spent much of my life hanging around the fringes of a tribe of fiber enthusiasts.  Knitting will be forever beyond me, but weaving is basically pretty simple in theory:  you cross two strings, cross another two, and keep on until you run out of string.  Then you have something.  And that something could be a hammock -- a hammock is kind of a woven thing.  (Note: a well informed consultant tells me a hammock weave is actually called "sprang".)  Whatever it is, I thought -- if I could repair this old hammock, then I could swing with an easy mind.  Why not try?

As luck would have it (karma again) there was a perfect piece of repair string at hand in one of the drawers here.  It looked pretty familiar -- could be we left it here last year.









First step:  prepare the surgical field for the repair process.  How?  Improvise -- use an old hand pump for big water bottles to keep the wounded hammock open and repair area visible.

Second step:  try to remember knots from the Boy Scout days of my youth.  Bowline, half hitch, square knot -- check.








Third step:  repair the split, weaving the repair string through the hammock strings.  Tricky, as the hammock strings aren't all in great condition -- want to go for the sound ones.









Hmmm, seems to work.











Final step:  retest the hammock.