Green Tomato Pickles
(Della): First task for today: Cooking up the green tomato pickle. Miserable weather outside keeping me out of the garden is the perfect backdrop! The finished product. Yum.
Tucktek Folding Kayak
Lots of people live in flats and don’t have anywhere to store a normal kayak. It may be they don’t have a car with roof racks either but they still want to go canoeing on a beautiful silvery river on a hot summer’s day – as who does not? The folk at Tucktek have come
Miniature Whelen Hammock Tent
A tent for two that is also a (two-person) hammock tarp which weighs 150 grams in cuben. How good is that? During this coronavirus lock down we are very busy here on the farm building several kilometres of new vermin-proof fences just for example. I also need to spend hours each day on share market
Flat-Felled Seam Alternative
If you have sewn a couple of tents or similar projects you will no doubt have encountered this well-nigh compulsory seam. It is awkward to do. The cutting is tedious, the folding over is really difficult when you have ‘hands like feet and feet like No 10 shovels’ as I do, and the results are
DIY Stuff Sacks
I needed to make a stuff sack to finish off my Hammock Tent anyway so I thought I would post some instructions and photos showing how I do it. This may help you get into sewing your own gear – as I do. As you can see the completed tent with floor, all guys, line
Jeeralang Social Distancing
(Della): Social distancing is pretty easy where we live: Our afternoon walk.
Silnylon Hammock Tent
I have completed sewing a silnylon version of my 10 x 10 tent (actually 3 x 3 metres) out of some 1.25 0oz/yd2 (43 gsm) silnylon I sourced from China for US$2.50/metre. The key to understanding how it works is where to put the tie-outs. The photos below show it erected as a tent (for
From Dawn to Dusky #1:
New Zealand’s Dusky Track a wonderful challenging 8+day trek in Fiordland. My post from this day in 2014: ‘Expect a break from me: tomorrow I am off for ten days’ hiking in Fiordland. In the unlikely event that I capture a photo of a live moose, I will come back $100,000 richer as there is
How to Make a Tent Pole
I made a sub one ounce hand saw for this purpose, but this is even easier than sawing a branch to length: You can cut approx 10″ (25 cm) of 1″ (25mm) poly pipe to join two hiking poles like this. I used standard ‘rural C’ grade poly pipe because we have it lying around
Lighting a Fire in the Wet #2
‘It is no trouble to light a fire with a large magnifying glass when the sun is shining in a clear sky, but it is a different matter if the lens is small or if only brief, occasional gleams of sun come through gaps in the clouds. It can be done quite easily, however, by