It's a pretty enough oval tin with a hook, which, at the time of buying I thought was pretty and cute. However, over the years I have come to realise it is not really practical for the job in hand.
For starters you can't keep it attached to your person, so you have to keep hanging it on the line and then as you peg more and more clothes up, it gets buried and lost and you have to dive under layers of clothes to retrieve it.
I have dropped it more times than I would like to admit, spilling pegs all over the grass.
It is not big enough for all the pegs I have, so I have to peg some pegs all the way around the edge which both uses up some pegs and makes the bucket taller to house more pegs inside, but it takes longer then when you unpeg your washing to clip them all back on again.
It rusts if you leave it out in the rain.
It hurts when it falls off and lands on your foot.
In short... it is no good.
I started thinking that if I could create some sort of bag that had a shoulder strap then I could put it on and have the pegs with me wherever I went around the washing line and not lose them. They would be close at hand and I could pull them out like a revolver from a holster to peg up the washing, quick and easy. Quick and easy too, to put them away again in the midst of a rain storm when you rush out to get your washing in.
So I started looking at tote bag patterns and thinking about how I could make one with some kind of hook on it too, so that I could hang it on the washing line while the washing was out.
Then I stumbled upon this lovely pattern for peg bags made with a child's coathanger from Just Jude Designs I love the hole for putting pegs in and out and love love loved the applique washing line.
I started wondering if I could adapt this pattern to include a shoulder strap? How hard can it be, I thought to myself...
So I bought the pattern and yesterday spent a very merry couple of hours making up the peg bag. So proud was I at the end when it looked pretty much as it ought, much better and neater even than I had imagined possible.
My husband came home from work and I showed him my bag and said look look, see how beautiful it is... look what I have achieved today!
And he said... "That's very nice dear, where is the shoulder strap?"
Ah... oh yes... that was sort of the whole point wasn't it... I wanted to add a shoulder strap so that I could have it with me as I peg out the washing and pull out pegs revolver style... remember?
Ooops.
So I leave it for a day, and today I have another look, pull it all inside out again and hum and haw about whether or not I can face unpicking my beautiful neat stitching to add in a strap...
I did in the end, and of course it got twisted and some of the seam ended up poking through as well and it is not quite perfect but... I do now have what I set out to do - a lovely new peg bag complete with shoulder strap!
Now I just need to go do some washing...
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