Making a netted toy hammock

[Mrs Glenys Chew]

Dear All

My four-year-old is in desperate need of a toy hammock, so I dug out Stewart Grainger's Creative Ropecraft, and looked up several types of netting.  But he doesn't mention in this book how you actually finish off the other end.  Has anyone done much netting, on a small, hammocky scale?

The hammock will be about 4ft long including the amount of curvature in hanging, and be netted between two 5mm thick cords using 3mm cord, creating a vaguely elliptical shape.  I have it in mind to do sets of Reef Knots started from cow htches, as I can then vary the lengths of the strands according to their position on the edge cords.  The whole thing has to fit under a 3ft shelf.  I don't want there to be too much width at the ends - say about 18", widening to 3" in the middle to give me the depth.  The biggest teddies can go at the bottom, and the smaller ones fill the remaining gaps at the top.  There might be a fair bit of experimenting, and giving away of prototypes     I'm not planning to use dowling to keep the ends open at all.  The shelf itself is only about 5" deep, and the last hammock we had (made of net curtain - I can't find where I stored it) was just bunched at each end and hung off hooks.

The only knot I can think of to finish off would be a Pedigree Cow Hitch.  This ought to at least keep the loose ends to a minimum.

A Google search for nets, home-made hammocks and the like turned me up a good many links for other meanings, but one that looked interesting was for home-made backpacking equipment: http://www.backpacking.net/makegear.html

There was also a Martha Stewart project for "braided" or "woven" napkin rings http://www.marthastewart.com/good-thing/ribbon-napkin-rings    I thought it looked like a kind of chain stitch, very similar to the Viking Fingerweaving I learnt last summer, but worked slightly differently for being in narrow ribbon.

Regards

[Mrs Glenys Chew]

Just as an update, a search on circular netting (this time because I'm thinking through ideas for both a snood and a mobile phone pouch) produced these links which might be of interest to others:

Netting in very fine thread, http://knotsindeed.com/index.html which is part of the Lace Ring of websites.

A reproduction article about circular netting (some of the characters clearly got confused by the OCR they were using).  This is again very fine work, amounting to lace.  They show a baby's bonnet by way of example.

However, that kind of netting work is definitely out of my league.  I can't get through the instructions at all.  Stuart's method looks a lot easier.

Regards
Glenys

[asemery]

To make a netted tot hammock first make a purse net
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ferreter/nets.htm
Do not add the drawstring, rather add on each side of the netting cords that go from ring to ring.  These side cords should be a few inches shorter than the netting and will give a "belly" to the netting.

Picture from "the Marlinspike Artist"

To find more information about net making go to the "Nets and Net Making Forum"
http://pineapple.myfunforum.org/index.php?c=7

[asemery]

I am glad the information was useful.  Here is a recent thread about triangle shape storage nets.  Tony
http://pineapple.myfunforum.org/about1260.html
Interesting further discussion of the triangular storage net
http://pineapple.myfunforum.org/about1265.html
and
http://pineapple.myfunforum.org/about1263.html