As a mum of a rather new person, laundry has taken over my life. I expected extra laundry because I chose to do washable nappies, but I forgot about the increase in my own wash. Not only do my clothes get dirty from spit-up and Samantha’s other bodily functions, but also from food I drop on myself whilst feeding her and myself at the same time. So, my current job is feeding the baby and doing the laundry.
I was at the pound shop a couple months ago and bought a “smalls” dryer. It’s a little plastic thing with a bunch of clothes pegs on it for drying one’s socks and underwear. Except for the odd stop of rain here and there it has been beautiful hanging wash on the line weather. I left it outside on one of the washing lines for Tyndale House community use. It struck me that we needed one for each of the two drying areas out in the garden. So, a couple weeks ago I went back to the pound shop to buy another one, and alas, they were no longer carrying them.
Of course, I thought that there must be a homemade solution to this problem. I found industrious fern’s Map of Australia sock hanger (http://industriousfern.blogspot.com/2009/02/map-of-australia-sock-hanger-how-to.html), but I don’t have a cool wooden map of Australia or a drill. The wheels started turning in my brain and here’s what I came up with….
4 wire hangers
wooden clothes pegs/pins (I used 14, but realized after I finished that I could probably could have fit twice as many.)
thin wire
wire cutters
pliers
plarn (yarn made from plastic bags) see: http://www.myrecycledbags.com/tutorial-for-making-plarn-yarn/
crochet hook US size H/5mm
I took two of the wire hangers and attached them at the neck and where they crossed at the bottom with the thin wire.
I attached some of the clothes pegs along the longer side of each hanger with the thin wire
I started at the attached necks of the hangers and single crocheted with plarn around each hanger and back to the necks. When I got to a clothes peg, I single crocheted over the thin wire, right up to the peg, then ch2 and continued single crocheting on the other side of the peg.
I then cut the bottom wires off the other 2 hangers and the 2 side wires from one of them.
I attached the long wires opposite each other and the short wires opposite each other making a rectangle at the bottom.
I attached more pegs to these wires with thin wire and crocheted around the rectangle with more plarn.
I bent the hooks in such a way that it would be less likely to fly off the washing line in the wind.
I think this is clever and fun and will stand up to the elements. As my husband is nearly finished with his dissertation and has a job at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in the fall (scary), I will be leaving Cambridge at the end of July (sob). I leave it with my plarn clothes peg bags to Tyndale House as a reminder of the crazy, crafty lady who lived in flat 3.
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