A (Semi)Completed Project

Gareth loves reading, especially in his bed at night. Which I'm totally fine with, except that we were ending up with piles of books strewn all over the floor. A few years ago a friend posted about a book sling thing she was making for her kids' room, and it seemed like a good way to get the books up off the floor. I shared the idea with my mom, who found a pattern for some bags that could perform the same function. When she was here after Malcolm was born we went out and bought some fabrics to use. She wisely realized that with a new baby around the chances of me actually getting around to making the bags were pretty slim.

A few months ago she sent the finished bags out to me:

And a couple weeks ago a friend and I finally got around to hanging them.

They're not completely balanced at the moment, but also very adjustable still because we used some fairly simple knots. And the upper tier is held in place simply by wrapping the rope around the dowel a couple times. Maybe at some point we'll try and get them more permanently mounted. But for now it seems very stable and seems to be working. I'd like to figure out how to get the lines of the ropes mirroring one another better - not sure if it a problem with how the weight is distributed or just with how we have the dowels positioned or what. But, like I said, it's very functional for now and we'll see if we ever get around to figuring the rest out. Gareth uses the smaller bags for his flashlight, pencil, and other small toys. The other four bags work well for various sized books.