I have to say that lately, I have no idea what I want to eat. I am not, by nature, a fanatic about anything. I lean strongly toward vegetarianism, though I don't mind eating meat occasionally. I do feel strongly the ugliness and suffering of factory farming. I pick up a package of meat in my local grocery store, and it feels like I'm lifting a couple of pounds of blood, loneliness and misery of the cattle coupled with the psychic scars experienced by the people who work as knockers, and the misery of the assembly line butchers. I'd like to go buy good local meat from the farmer's market - the misery is on nowhere the same scale - but after a few visits, I have to come to terms with the frugal side of my life. I once bought a chicken at the farmer's market, and it cost $25. That's not sustainable for most family's budgets.
I have to submerge myself in other writers' fanaticisms if I have any hope of maintaining something like the Paleo diet. For the past few months, I just have not had the time or the interest or the patience to keep up with Mark's Daily Apple, and Grant is sporadic enough with posting on Eat Bacon Don't Jog that I forget to check over there. I'm not a great blog reader, (or blog writer as you can tell), to keep up.
I am, however, trying to maintain two things: severely limit the amount of processed sugar I eat, and I'm still fermenting vegetables, kombucha, and yogurt.
My weight has gone up a little bit from its low of 178 after my summer backpacking trip, though that low was largely a result of a deficit of calories in my diet for the week. I was using backpacking recipes for a home dehydrator. I was eating a breakfast, some snacks, and a dinner each day. The writer of the book also added in a hot lunch and a desert. (Desert? Dessert? which one do you eat?) I was eating rice, polenta, and other non-paleo type things, like putting white sugar in my tea, during that trip, and I still lost ten pounds over the course of a week. That makes me think that it's not strictly elimination of grains and limitation of carbs, and I loosened up quite a bit afterward.
I haven't been weighing myself - I think I'm probably back up to around 190 - but I have been checking my blood pressure. At last check, it was 103/72. That's still quite a bit better than the 150/85 average I was running before I started this blog.
I was really thinking about my children when I sat down to write. They both celebrated birthdays last month. That involved birthday cake. Actual birthday cake, from the Chocolate Maven here in town. It also involved a lot of pizza and Chinese food, because that is what they wanted. Our daughter is now 16, and our son is 14.
I'm not particularly happy with the day to day eating habits of either of them. I'm not good at absolutes. Yes, I put 4 teaspoons of brown sugar in the Pad Thai that I make each week. Occasionally, I'll eat a sandwich on, gasp, bread. But if I could magically make any given idea blossom in their minds, it would be to severely limit the amount of processed carbs they eat. My family has a history of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Sugar is clearly addictive.
My son, who is one of the most wonderful people I know, can put away more sugar than I would think possible. I keep white sugar in the house for making kombucha. I've seen him put 4 or 5 teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee. If I hide the sugar, which I do, he runs through the honey at about the same pace. We sat on the couch the other day to binge watch the "Back to the Future" movies, and he ate a package of sour patch candies, (not the tiny bag from the front of the store, but a big bag), and an entire bag of flamin' hot potato chips. At one point he said, "I don't understand it dad, I've been eating all day, and I'm still hungry." I pointed out what he had been eating, and he rolled his eyes at me.
Watching your children make mistakes is the thing that sucks the most when it comes to parenting. I love my children soooo much. Why did I think they would hang on my every word when it came to dietary, (and other life), advice? I sure as hell didn't listen to my parents when I was growing up. (I tried to get my son to watch the documentary, "That Sugar Film", that we had rented on Amazon. He will not have any of it - no Dr. Lustig YouTube videos, no documentary movies on food, no blogs or books on the Paleo diet. I know he would feel so much better both emotionally and physically if he ate better. But he refuses, and it's painful to watch what he is doing to himself.
And I don't mean to pick on my son's diet. My daughter is very fond of baked goods. She would do much better without them. I just don't see her on as big of a sugar-fueled emotional and physical roller coaster as I see my son on. He drags himself around the house like a Zombie until he has a sugar-infused cup of coffee, a box of jelly beans, or a handful of cookies, and then he bounces around smiling for a while, and then I see him collapse. Yesterday he left the house with a quart of Cranberry Apple juice in a water bottle. One serving is 8 ounces, so that's four servings, 30 grams of sugar a serving, so he had 120 grams of sugar - that's a little over a half cup of sugar. A half cup! He hates it when I point out these calculations. I doubt that juice lasted very far into the morning. (N.B. I try not to have juice in the house, but we bought some for a party my daughter was having on Halloween.)
What makes it especially difficult, of course, is that trying to eat well is to push against the prevailing culture, and teenagers need to be a part of their culture. The outcast kid who had to eat tahini and sprout sandwiches on homemade whole wheat bread prepared by his or her hippy dippy parents has even become something of an archetype. My daughter tells the story of a health class in middle school where the teacher asked whose parents made their own yogurt and only she and one other student raised their hands.
My children love to bake. That's a nice thing. But I'm always there in the background going "no, no, no! I am not buying more white flour, white sugar, and chocolate chips." And then I think, "I loved to make cookies with my Mom. I must sound like a mad man." But neither my wife nor I eat cookies. At best, I'll eat one or two, in an attempt to model restraint, but that leaves the rest of the cookies for my children to tear through.
My son will ask me to buy him some Jelly Beans when I go to the store. "No!" I scream like a lunatic. "I'm not buying you that poison." Then I think, "you know, I sound like a crazy person, buy your son some jelly beans. One package every now and then isn't going to kill him." The only thing we have been consistent about is no soda in the house, with the exception, of course, of when they won a 2 liter bottle of soda in some contest in their elementary school. That's the kind of cultural influences we're up against.
I wish I could say that parenting and diet is a balancing act that we feel centered in. Unfortunately, it feels more like we're constantly teetering over an abyss, and I fear my children are going to find themselves overweight and diabetic by the time they are in their mid-forties. Then I remind myself that I pretty much ate the way they are eating when I was a child, and my fondness for cookies, ice cream, and danishes, continued well into my thirties and early forties. Truth be told, I could still get carried away with a box of Trader Joe's Jo Jo's if I happen to break down and buy a box, which I have done once or twice a year for the past few years. Lately, I've developed a revulsion to them when I see them in the store.
I can only hope that my children are resilient, and they'll prove to be intelligent in their food choices as they grow older, and that the culture will continue it's march toward less processed carbohydrates. The idea is certainly in the air these days, though it has not yet hit the streets of the Southwest.
Has anyone out there actually influenced their kids' diets? "Processed carbohydrates are not good for you little Sally!" "Oh Papa, you're so right! Let's have a bowl of sauerkraut instead of that ice cream!" If so, I'd sure love to hear how you did it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
My Desk
Here is my desk in the living room. I still haven't figured out how to hook the Scan Snap up to the Olivetti.
Actually, I still use the Olivetti for letter writing, and I've been writing my daughter while she's away at Camp Rising Sun in New York State. She has to sing for her mail.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Parental Internet Control - pcWRT as an alternative to Skydog
I'm writing this post basically as a shout out to pcWRT. This router seems to be a very new product with very little information out there regarding it. I ordered one as a replacement for our Skydog router, and it works well, but I was hesitant to order it because there was so little information available. Their website is basic, and the forum section is, as yet, unpopulated by users. Was it a scam? No it's not.
Here's our history of trying to keep our kids "safe" on the internet. My preference was to keep our kids off the computer for as long as possible. The school system was not very helpful in that regard. Why do elementary schools feel they need to teach children "computer skills"? That is patently ridiculous and ultimately, I believe it's damaging. Little children should be out collecting leaves, watching snails, drawing with crayons, playing with mud. You do not need to learn how to use a mouse when you are eight years old. Elementary schools should not have computer labs. That is my number one complaint about public education, (and it probably applies to private as well). My other big complaint is the amount of sugar floating around elementary schools. My little tiny kids would bring home 2 liter bottles of soda as prizes for things, and there were always cupcakes and candy around because it was always someone or other's birthday.
So our kids quickly became more screen-centric. My internet-free summers did not last for very many years, and eventually, the kids needed to be on the internet for homework, and so on. Every parent knows the story. They had iPods, laptops, Chromebooks, eventually phones. The old wisdom was to have one computer in a central location in the home where you could see what your children were doing. However, with everyone watching conflicting shows on Netflix, or streaming music videos on Youtube, etc., that just wasn't going to work. I'd much prefer having my children in their rooms reading Salinger and listening to the radio, but the digital world really rules the day, particularly if they are immersed in the culture of their peers.
We gave the kids all the standard warnings about cyber-stalkers and assorted creeps - never give your personal information out online. We were not too worried about their internet use though.
When our daughter was 11 or 12, a friend offered to give her a copy of a book on sexuality that she had sitting around. I can't find it on Amazon at the moment - I thought it was called "A Grrl's Guide to Her Body." We thought that was fine. Our friend didn't really look through it. We didn't look through it. It may have been a sloppy parenting moment. The book went a little beyond the average things you would like your young child to know, moving more into Dan Savage territory.
Shortly thereafter, I was looking at my daughter's iPod Touch's internet history, (the time-honored parenting technique of snooping), and found that she had been watching hard core pornography on her iPod. I deleted her browser, had a chat with her - discovering that she was researching some of the content covered in the book, and I installed OpenDNS and another software-based parental control program.
I kept an eye on what was being blocked by OpenDNS. With two teenage children, I expected a certain amount of unsavory internet content to be blocked, but as my son got older, there was a surge in various disturbing websites. I have a feeling that some of them came from clicking on Google Image search results, which cannot be blocked by OpenDNS or by Skydog.
I had another chat with both of them, and I ordered a Skydog router. To some extent, at that point, it had more to do with conveying to them that I cared about what they were exposing themselves to by making some effort to curate what they could see. I also really liked the fact the Skydog router could turn off their internet access at night. I know from my own experience as an adult that it is easy to keep watching Netflix or YouTube or whatever. We generally go to sleep before our kids - that was one of the biggest surprises of parenting. Knowing that the internet will be turned off is reassuring.
I won't go too far into Skydog. The product has been discontinued, though they are honoring the three year service contracts for those who bought the router before the parent company was sold. Having a router-based system of parental control is essential with all the various devices most people have. The software we had installed on their laptops, for example, would not work on their Chromebooks, nor on the iPod Touches, nor the eventual cell phones. Skydog is, or was, cloud based. You set up your schedules for each user on a web interface, and it was pushed to the modem. Skydog was acquired by Comcast a year or so ago, and they stopped selling their routers.
Other than Skydog's slide toward probable obsolescence at the end of the contract period, we were also having trouble with the connection being dropped. My son also seems to have discovered that he can disable Skydog by plugging the Ethernet cable from the modem/router into one of the outgoing ports on the Skydog router. For some reason, that would maintain the wireless signal the kids tapped into, but it disabled ours, and bypassed the router rules. I don't know if there are instructions online, or if he discovered it by happenstance, or if he is even aware of what he did, (though I strongly suspect he does). I filled in the outbound Ethernet slots with silicone, an that stopped that.
I found the pcWRT router while searching for a Skydog replacement. I've replaced the modem/router (from our ISP) combined with Skydog with a standalone aDSL modem and the pcWRT router.
You configure the pcWRT router directly. I actually like that better than having a cloud based solution, and you can configure it over wifi, but you have to be on its network. It does basically the same things, but as an additional bonus, it can enforce Google Safe Search. If you have young children, get this router and get them used to using safe search on their own devices. I haven't experimented very much, but I think it will block a lot of the objectionable Google Image searches.
Unfortunately, it also blocked most of the music videos on YouTube my 13 year old son likes to watch. He was very unhappy, and very snarky, about the curated results he was getting. (He's very fond of "Carry On My Wayward Son" right now. With Safe Search, all he could get on YouTube were people learning to play it on the guitar). I agreed that it was a bit extreme and turned it off for him. But I wish I had started using Safe Search when they were 5, and that was all they knew.
pcWRT also blocks the use of proxy servers, so they can't do an end run around OpenDNS.
The calendar works backwards from what I expected. You block off the times things are allowed, not the time things should be blocked. I had set time for them to sleep by making a calendar with no sites listed, and then blocked off the night, but that banned all sites during the daytime. I had to go back and change the selected parts of the calendar to the daytime. pcWRT allows you to do that textually, and I found that easier than dragging the slider.
Another good thing, at the moment, is that the pcWRT router has no identifying marks on it. So far, I have refused to tell my son what the router is. There's no way to know it is a pcWRT router, and so you cannot search for a way to bypass it. (My son may find out on this blog, but that's OK). It is also so new, that searching "pcWRT bypass" does not bring anything up.
I know this is not a thorough review. The router's controls are not as fine-grained as Skydog's, nor does it have a reporting function or a bandwidth limitation function, but it does the basics very well. We have not had any dropped connections with our new setup, and I'm very happy with the product.
Here's our history of trying to keep our kids "safe" on the internet. My preference was to keep our kids off the computer for as long as possible. The school system was not very helpful in that regard. Why do elementary schools feel they need to teach children "computer skills"? That is patently ridiculous and ultimately, I believe it's damaging. Little children should be out collecting leaves, watching snails, drawing with crayons, playing with mud. You do not need to learn how to use a mouse when you are eight years old. Elementary schools should not have computer labs. That is my number one complaint about public education, (and it probably applies to private as well). My other big complaint is the amount of sugar floating around elementary schools. My little tiny kids would bring home 2 liter bottles of soda as prizes for things, and there were always cupcakes and candy around because it was always someone or other's birthday.
So our kids quickly became more screen-centric. My internet-free summers did not last for very many years, and eventually, the kids needed to be on the internet for homework, and so on. Every parent knows the story. They had iPods, laptops, Chromebooks, eventually phones. The old wisdom was to have one computer in a central location in the home where you could see what your children were doing. However, with everyone watching conflicting shows on Netflix, or streaming music videos on Youtube, etc., that just wasn't going to work. I'd much prefer having my children in their rooms reading Salinger and listening to the radio, but the digital world really rules the day, particularly if they are immersed in the culture of their peers.
We gave the kids all the standard warnings about cyber-stalkers and assorted creeps - never give your personal information out online. We were not too worried about their internet use though.
When our daughter was 11 or 12, a friend offered to give her a copy of a book on sexuality that she had sitting around. I can't find it on Amazon at the moment - I thought it was called "A Grrl's Guide to Her Body." We thought that was fine. Our friend didn't really look through it. We didn't look through it. It may have been a sloppy parenting moment. The book went a little beyond the average things you would like your young child to know, moving more into Dan Savage territory.
Shortly thereafter, I was looking at my daughter's iPod Touch's internet history, (the time-honored parenting technique of snooping), and found that she had been watching hard core pornography on her iPod. I deleted her browser, had a chat with her - discovering that she was researching some of the content covered in the book, and I installed OpenDNS and another software-based parental control program.
I kept an eye on what was being blocked by OpenDNS. With two teenage children, I expected a certain amount of unsavory internet content to be blocked, but as my son got older, there was a surge in various disturbing websites. I have a feeling that some of them came from clicking on Google Image search results, which cannot be blocked by OpenDNS or by Skydog.
I had another chat with both of them, and I ordered a Skydog router. To some extent, at that point, it had more to do with conveying to them that I cared about what they were exposing themselves to by making some effort to curate what they could see. I also really liked the fact the Skydog router could turn off their internet access at night. I know from my own experience as an adult that it is easy to keep watching Netflix or YouTube or whatever. We generally go to sleep before our kids - that was one of the biggest surprises of parenting. Knowing that the internet will be turned off is reassuring.
I won't go too far into Skydog. The product has been discontinued, though they are honoring the three year service contracts for those who bought the router before the parent company was sold. Having a router-based system of parental control is essential with all the various devices most people have. The software we had installed on their laptops, for example, would not work on their Chromebooks, nor on the iPod Touches, nor the eventual cell phones. Skydog is, or was, cloud based. You set up your schedules for each user on a web interface, and it was pushed to the modem. Skydog was acquired by Comcast a year or so ago, and they stopped selling their routers.
Other than Skydog's slide toward probable obsolescence at the end of the contract period, we were also having trouble with the connection being dropped. My son also seems to have discovered that he can disable Skydog by plugging the Ethernet cable from the modem/router into one of the outgoing ports on the Skydog router. For some reason, that would maintain the wireless signal the kids tapped into, but it disabled ours, and bypassed the router rules. I don't know if there are instructions online, or if he discovered it by happenstance, or if he is even aware of what he did, (though I strongly suspect he does). I filled in the outbound Ethernet slots with silicone, an that stopped that.
I found the pcWRT router while searching for a Skydog replacement. I've replaced the modem/router (from our ISP) combined with Skydog with a standalone aDSL modem and the pcWRT router.
You configure the pcWRT router directly. I actually like that better than having a cloud based solution, and you can configure it over wifi, but you have to be on its network. It does basically the same things, but as an additional bonus, it can enforce Google Safe Search. If you have young children, get this router and get them used to using safe search on their own devices. I haven't experimented very much, but I think it will block a lot of the objectionable Google Image searches.
Unfortunately, it also blocked most of the music videos on YouTube my 13 year old son likes to watch. He was very unhappy, and very snarky, about the curated results he was getting. (He's very fond of "Carry On My Wayward Son" right now. With Safe Search, all he could get on YouTube were people learning to play it on the guitar). I agreed that it was a bit extreme and turned it off for him. But I wish I had started using Safe Search when they were 5, and that was all they knew.
pcWRT also blocks the use of proxy servers, so they can't do an end run around OpenDNS.
The calendar works backwards from what I expected. You block off the times things are allowed, not the time things should be blocked. I had set time for them to sleep by making a calendar with no sites listed, and then blocked off the night, but that banned all sites during the daytime. I had to go back and change the selected parts of the calendar to the daytime. pcWRT allows you to do that textually, and I found that easier than dragging the slider.
Another good thing, at the moment, is that the pcWRT router has no identifying marks on it. So far, I have refused to tell my son what the router is. There's no way to know it is a pcWRT router, and so you cannot search for a way to bypass it. (My son may find out on this blog, but that's OK). It is also so new, that searching "pcWRT bypass" does not bring anything up.
I know this is not a thorough review. The router's controls are not as fine-grained as Skydog's, nor does it have a reporting function or a bandwidth limitation function, but it does the basics very well. We have not had any dropped connections with our new setup, and I'm very happy with the product.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Backpacking with a Giant Jensen
I'm getting ready to leave on my nine day backpacking trip tomorrow with my new Giant Jensen from Rivendell Mountain Works. I took it out for a three day trial last weekend, and I have to say it is easily as comfortable as the Danas and Ospreys I've owned. Not bad for a design from the late sixties. Hating the term retro, (I know you probably would apply that to my phone Kent), I would not call it by that name. With its lack of a network of cinches and straps, I would call it simple and effective. I'm glad Eric Hardee is keeping the pack design alive. Nine days worth of food fits easily in the twin tubes of the pack body. I may need more room when I start to pack everything, but I can always lash a stuff sack to the top. I'll try to report at some point after my return.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Random Shoes
It doesn't mean anything. I just took my shoes off while I was talking to my wife on the phone who is off vacationing with the kids and her family on the outer banks. I looked over from the kitchen and liked the composition of the shoes.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Sewing Ridgepulls on a Silnylon Tarp
Here I am sewing webbing onto the ridge line of my silnylon tarp. This project has been easier than I thought, but it is taking more time than I imagined.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Sewing a Ray Jardine Style Backpacking Quilt
On Saturday morning, I pulled all my supplies out from Ripstop by the Roll and set to work putting together my backpacking quilt. There are other sites carrying both ripstop, silnylon, and insulation. Ripstop by the Roll was an arbitrary decision - I was most likely won over by the alliteration - and it seems to be a fine company to deal with.
Ray Jardine also sells his own kits on his website. The new version of his book, (my edition is called Beyond Backpacking, and the new edition is called Trail Life), is available there too. Curiously enough, Mr. Jardine inveighs against corporations and consumerism, yet his Ray Way brand seems to be quite extensive. I intend that as a friendly jibe. I know he is just one guy and not the Dupont corporation, but most of the big backpacking brands started out small, and maybe many of them still are small. My Osprey Silhouette backpack has a label that says "Made in Dolores Colorado." Are they still made there? My Jansport Supersack was made in the U.S.A. I'm certain the makers of backpacking gear should not be lumped in with the likes of Monsanto.
I have to say that I prefer building things from scratch without a kit. If I mess up on a kit, I feel like I've really done something wrong. When I'm starting from scratch, any result that holds together seems like it's a step up from the raw materials I started with.
I'm working on my living room floor most of the time. The material picks up a lot of cat and dog hair, in spite of my attempts to sweep. That's OK too.
A finished solo backpacking quilt, according to Beyond Backpacking, should be 45" wide. I found some other folks on listservs, (Backpacking Light seemed to come up the most on searches for questions I had, but there are also some hammock forums), who make their quilts wider, but I thought I would go by the book.
I was worried about what I would use for a pattern, but it turns out that a sheet of newspaper is 24" wide. Originally, I made a pattern that was 23" wide to allow for a half inch seam, but then I thought, since I have the fabric, I might as well use the full width of the newspaper and end up with a wider quilt. That ended up being a good idea, because after struggling with the insulation, I ended up far enough away from a half inch seam allowance as to end up with a 45" wide quilt.
I folded the two layers of fabric in half, traced the pattern, and cut it out. Sewing the two layers together went fairly easily.
I next put the two layers of fabric on the insulation and cut off the excess.
5.0 oz Climashield is rated to 20 degrees fahrenheit. I'm not sure I trust that. It's not very thick. I didn't measure it, but I think it's around an inch, inch and a half. I wanted to build a quilt because my old 20 degree down bag, which is around 30 years old, is becoming a little chilly on below freezing nights. I hope the Climashield lives up to its rating, but if I had known how thin it was, I would have ordered enought to add two layers.
One layer is probably fine to start with though because sewing the Climashield to the fabric was one of the most difficult things I've attempted so far. You are supposed to use the line of stitching on the bag as a guide to sew the Climashield on. I found that the Climashield wanted to push itself down while it was compressed under the sewing foot, so when I started, I ended up with a loop of insulation underneath the fabric between one place where I had pinned it on and the next. I took it off and added more pins, but it didn't seem to help, so I just sewed on in the blind faith that it would pretty much work. It pretty much did. I sewed any gaps flat, and it didn't look like I had a mess when I was done.
Because I was using the original line of sewing as a guide, I couldn't sew down one side, bartack the stitching, turn it over and sew down the other. I tried that, only to find, obviously, that suddenly the insulation was on top instead of the fabric. I had to try to bunch all the quilt in between the foot and the body of the sewing machine. I had my doubts that I was sewing things correctly, but when I finished sewing, everything was OK. Is there some other way to do this people? It was very awkward.
Remember to separate the fabric at the head and sew the insulation to only one layer so you can turn the whole thing rightside out.
I sewed an extra line of stitching across the head because it didn't seem to me that the insulation was held very firmly by the first. After sewing the head of the bag together, I sewed a robe zipper to the foot section. That did not go easily, but it worked. See my previous post for the photograph. I have no advice for making the sewing on of the zipper easier. If I build another one, I might contemplate sewing the zipper on before adding the insulation, but that might cause unforeseen trouble during the insulation phase. I also have seen references to a drawstring foot box. I'm also not clear why I should not have sewn the foot box together rather than adding a zipper. It's just a little pocket at the bottom of the sleeping bag. If my feet get too hot, I can just slip them out of the pocket. I really don't foresee unzipping it, unless the bag is soaking wet, and I want to flatten it out for better drying.
Here is the length of the quilt photographed from my napping perspective. It's light blue on top, theoretically to reflect heat back, and forest green on bottom, for faster drying in the sun.
The makers of Climashield claim you do not have to quilt the material to keep it from shifting, so I didn't. My backpacking quilt has not quilting.
I did sleep on the back porch one night. It seemed to offer adequate coverage, but I think I'll use it with my old bivy sack to help hold the sides down in the wind, since I will be using it with a tarp. I was a little too warm, which seemed a good sign for colder nights, but I've also been battling a flu/cold, and I think I was running a fever. I'm going to sleep out again this week, now that I'm feeling better.
Ray Jardine also sells his own kits on his website. The new version of his book, (my edition is called Beyond Backpacking, and the new edition is called Trail Life), is available there too. Curiously enough, Mr. Jardine inveighs against corporations and consumerism, yet his Ray Way brand seems to be quite extensive. I intend that as a friendly jibe. I know he is just one guy and not the Dupont corporation, but most of the big backpacking brands started out small, and maybe many of them still are small. My Osprey Silhouette backpack has a label that says "Made in Dolores Colorado." Are they still made there? My Jansport Supersack was made in the U.S.A. I'm certain the makers of backpacking gear should not be lumped in with the likes of Monsanto.
I have to say that I prefer building things from scratch without a kit. If I mess up on a kit, I feel like I've really done something wrong. When I'm starting from scratch, any result that holds together seems like it's a step up from the raw materials I started with.
I'm working on my living room floor most of the time. The material picks up a lot of cat and dog hair, in spite of my attempts to sweep. That's OK too.
I ended up pulling out my framing square to try to get an approximately straight cut across the bottom of the bag. I don't think you can see my chalk marks in the photo, but I sketched in two or three until I arrived at a line that looked square to me. Once again, I found that scissors were easier to work with than the rotary cutter, not to mention that I didn't want to score up our Pergo flooring. I did end up, in making this particular cut, cutting only the upper sheet of fabric. After that, I worked more carefully. I had ordered three yards of fabric. Ray recommends 80" for length. I believe I measured to 81" to allow for half inch seams.
A finished solo backpacking quilt, according to Beyond Backpacking, should be 45" wide. I found some other folks on listservs, (Backpacking Light seemed to come up the most on searches for questions I had, but there are also some hammock forums), who make their quilts wider, but I thought I would go by the book.
I was worried about what I would use for a pattern, but it turns out that a sheet of newspaper is 24" wide. Originally, I made a pattern that was 23" wide to allow for a half inch seam, but then I thought, since I have the fabric, I might as well use the full width of the newspaper and end up with a wider quilt. That ended up being a good idea, because after struggling with the insulation, I ended up far enough away from a half inch seam allowance as to end up with a 45" wide quilt.
I folded the two layers of fabric in half, traced the pattern, and cut it out. Sewing the two layers together went fairly easily.
I next put the two layers of fabric on the insulation and cut off the excess.
5.0 oz Climashield is rated to 20 degrees fahrenheit. I'm not sure I trust that. It's not very thick. I didn't measure it, but I think it's around an inch, inch and a half. I wanted to build a quilt because my old 20 degree down bag, which is around 30 years old, is becoming a little chilly on below freezing nights. I hope the Climashield lives up to its rating, but if I had known how thin it was, I would have ordered enought to add two layers.
One layer is probably fine to start with though because sewing the Climashield to the fabric was one of the most difficult things I've attempted so far. You are supposed to use the line of stitching on the bag as a guide to sew the Climashield on. I found that the Climashield wanted to push itself down while it was compressed under the sewing foot, so when I started, I ended up with a loop of insulation underneath the fabric between one place where I had pinned it on and the next. I took it off and added more pins, but it didn't seem to help, so I just sewed on in the blind faith that it would pretty much work. It pretty much did. I sewed any gaps flat, and it didn't look like I had a mess when I was done.
Because I was using the original line of sewing as a guide, I couldn't sew down one side, bartack the stitching, turn it over and sew down the other. I tried that, only to find, obviously, that suddenly the insulation was on top instead of the fabric. I had to try to bunch all the quilt in between the foot and the body of the sewing machine. I had my doubts that I was sewing things correctly, but when I finished sewing, everything was OK. Is there some other way to do this people? It was very awkward.
Remember to separate the fabric at the head and sew the insulation to only one layer so you can turn the whole thing rightside out.
I sewed an extra line of stitching across the head because it didn't seem to me that the insulation was held very firmly by the first. After sewing the head of the bag together, I sewed a robe zipper to the foot section. That did not go easily, but it worked. See my previous post for the photograph. I have no advice for making the sewing on of the zipper easier. If I build another one, I might contemplate sewing the zipper on before adding the insulation, but that might cause unforeseen trouble during the insulation phase. I also have seen references to a drawstring foot box. I'm also not clear why I should not have sewn the foot box together rather than adding a zipper. It's just a little pocket at the bottom of the sleeping bag. If my feet get too hot, I can just slip them out of the pocket. I really don't foresee unzipping it, unless the bag is soaking wet, and I want to flatten it out for better drying.
Here is the length of the quilt photographed from my napping perspective. It's light blue on top, theoretically to reflect heat back, and forest green on bottom, for faster drying in the sun.
The makers of Climashield claim you do not have to quilt the material to keep it from shifting, so I didn't. My backpacking quilt has not quilting.
I did sleep on the back porch one night. It seemed to offer adequate coverage, but I think I'll use it with my old bivy sack to help hold the sides down in the wind, since I will be using it with a tarp. I was a little too warm, which seemed a good sign for colder nights, but I've also been battling a flu/cold, and I think I was running a fever. I'm going to sleep out again this week, now that I'm feeling better.
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