This was Ariel's idea, and it turned out to be a curse! Her idea was simple enough: she wanted to be tied on her knees, kept on knee-point (almost suspensded) by ropes going front a back, her arms in strappado behind her and a tight crotchrope going to the ceiling in front of her.

So why did it turn out to be cursed? Well, the first attempt at rigging it (which isn't this set by the way) the rope rigging just turned out asymmetrical after she got up into the position, and we'd done it with her kneeling on cushions but on a peculiar rough hemp carpet in the house in France which had really hurt her knees after a while... so I couldn't really stop and adjust the tie.

"Well" we thought, "It was OK, but it wasn't really the tie we had in mind. Let's try again." So foolishly we had another go.

Why foolishly? I'm ashamed to admit it but it was totally my fault and it was one of the few times I've really come close to injuring someone when rigging.

I'm not proud of this, but I thought I owed it to everyone to explain what happened and show how even a fairly experienced rigger needs to ALWAYS be on the ball and watching out for safety. I had the crotchrope tied on Ariel and needed to attach it to one of the ceiling beams. The beam had a nice space above it to feed the ropes over, no problem. But the rope was rough hemp, and the beam was rough unfinished wood, and when I tried to pull the rope through, it didn't go. Without thinking, I pulled harder to get it to move.

It suddenly went, and Ariel suddenly screamed because I had pulled the rope a lot harder and it was suddenly far, far too tight, and it was pure luck that it stopped short of causing actual injury.

I can't even remember whether we let her down for a bit afterwards or carried straight on with the rigging. I'm thinking she probably told us to carry on- after all, once the rope was loosened it wasn't going to do any more harm and having got her most of the way into the tie I think she wanted to actually get the set shot! One thing I am sure of, it would have been Ariel who insisted we carry on- at any sign of serious trouble you must get the person out right away. Left to my own devices I'd probably have got her down ANYWAY, but probably allowed myself to be persuaded that once the rope was the right tension it was safe to continue. You'll note the chest harness and other ropes are actually capable of taking Ariel's weight, so if for some reason she had slumped or slipped to one side, neither the crotchrope nor the strappado on her arms would have taken weight or been pulled in a way likely to cause injury.

I guess it isn't such a bad safety record. Bondage is a bit like an adventure activity like diving or climbing: there's a certain measure of objective risk that one has to minimise but can never totally elminiate. But you really must do your utmost to eliminate as much of it as possible.

I've had a handful of scares like this when doing rigging for the site, and I've shot over 2500 sets in the seven years the site has been running, so I'm 99.8+% safe. Each incident kinda haunts me with what-might-have-beens, and I dread to think what might have happened if I wasn't generally quite safety conscious. So, although I know it isn't sexy, here's a plea to anyone who ties up anyone else for fun... safety first. Always, always think about what could happen if the person you are tying up falls, slips, faints, can't stay in position, or whatever. For rope ties have safety scissors on hand at all times. And never, ever tie anything around anyone's neck that could possibly apply pressure if she were to fall or faint because that's a one-way ticket to the morgue. And don't ever be tempted by breath play, no matter how much it might turn you on. The anecdotal evidence from friends in the medical profession is that breath play is the sort of sex play that all too often ends up with someone in a very bad way in hospital, rather than maybe someone injured or embarrased and it is just not worth it.

I promise to make the writeup for parts two and three of this phenomenal strict and sexy tie a lot more erotic... but for part one, I just had to unburden my mind a bit of what went wrong when we started tying it.

Incidents aside, when Ariel got up into this position she loved it. It was super-tough and very challenging, but if you have read her posts on the forum you'll know that she does like to shoot things which are a significant challenge for her. So she wondered if we could make it even more severe... a rope gag seemed to do the trick!

Notice that I've tied the rope gag rather loosely, especially the rope that goes back to the chest harness. It is still totally effective, but that slack is there for safety. The rope gag is in principle a rope around the neck area, and if Ariel had slipped I wanted to make sure it was not going to exert any pressure.

The finishing touch to Ariel's fantasy was to have nipple clamps applied. As if the tie wasn't already strenuous enough, with her semi-suspensed on knee-point, a killer crotchrope to the ceiling, a rope gag and her arms behind her in strappado! But the final devilish innovation was mind- at the end, I threaded the nipple clamp chain through the crotchrope, so every little shift in her position was instantly transmitted to the nipple clamps. Mmmmm!