A friend started hiking with me last year so for Christmas I bought her a eno double hammock after she showed interest in hammocking. It seemed like a fun and simple winter project to make one for myself so I went to the fabric store and bought three yards of poly taffeta that was on sale for $2.00 a yard and some thread. I got the DIY information from here, The Ultimate Hang and Just Jeff's.
I asked a friend if I could borrow her sewing maching to hem it, but after seeing me try to figure it out she just sewed it for me (female intolerance for male incompetance for the win). 15 minutes later I had a rectange, I gathered the ends and tied them off with some stout cord I had laying around, then it was on to the straps.
In the garage I found two nine foot 1" straps I had laying around, I tied them directly to the hammock with marlin spike hitches (with the hammock acting as the spike), and tied them to two tree's in the back yard with timber hitches (I'm an old hand at knots, mostly because I'm old. It worked great, was quick to set-up, easy to adjust, solid and quite comfortable.
For less then $10 I'm pretty happy with it, but after reading what people here are saying about longer hammocks I'm thinking about making a second one with 4 yards of materiel to see what the difference feels like. After I compare the two I may make a final one out of ripstop and see how I like it compared to my tarp and bivy set-up, and my various tents.
I was having lasik eye surgery a few weeks back (cheaper in the long run than bifocals) so I put two eye bolts in my bedroom wall figuring the hammock would force me to lay more or less on my back while my eye's healed. It worked out well and the hammock and straps have held up no problem.
I was thinking after this that it might not be a bad idea to ditch the heavy cord and biners in my friends eno hammock by threading good 1" straps through the channels and tying them off with a bowline. Then she'd just have to tie the ends to a tree with timber hitches. If she doesn't like it it's easy to change back to the stock set-up.
Thanks for having such a great forum for us who are new to hammock to get started
Tim
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