Laid Back and Sidetracked

You may have noticed a shortage of blogs lately and I have to say that I have been a little bit sidetracked what with overseas visitors and the mad scramble to get my new storage system up and fixed before our departure for foreign lands.

I am hoping to see some new places in the world this year, but in the meantime have been seeing a little more of Australia. This photo was taken on Melbourne's Southbank.



This is our visitor outside the Shrine of Rememberance the day before Anzac Day



Iconic Brighton Beach


William Ricket's Sanctuary is a really good start to any visit to Melbourne



Ballarat Wildlife Park .... one of the best places to take visitors



Trash and Treasure in the Sunday Market at Bentleigh


Looking down on the Casino from the top of the Rialto Tower


The Block Arcade in Melbourne's city centre


This old man is a banksia nut in Cheltenham Park


and this is the beautiful babysoft banksia flower



OK - enough now. Sorry about the lack of pegs in this posting, but I will be back on track soon - I hope!

Getting Things in Order

I am always amazed when I see other people's collections and I wonder how they manage to catalogue them in order to know exactly what they have got and what they have not. This doesn't just apply to pegs of course, I recently saw a television program about a guy collecting dice ... he had thousands and thousands and I cannot begin to imagine how he knows what he has or hasn't got in his collection.

I am a systematic kind of person and when my collection began to grow, I had to come up with a way of recording the pegs and this is what I do:

As soon as I receive a new peg I check to see if I already have it by comparing it to all my other pegs which are displayed on racks. With my cataloguing system, I only have to check it visually against half a dozen others.

Once I am sure it is a new one, I give it the next number that is available and attach a label to it with it's identifying number on it. The photo shows an example of each spring type.

I categorise them firstly by their spring design and these are the designs I have:-

CONVENTIONAL...................... see Peg No 1368
WIRE CLIP........................ see Peg No 1345
LEAF SPRING....................... see Peg No 48
BUTTERFLY SPRING................. see Peg No 436
SELF.............................. see Peg No 854
RING.............................. see Peg No 873
WIDE CLIP......................... see Peg No 187
COIL COMPRESS.................... see Peg No 478
COIL TENSION..................... see Peg No 293

By the way, I have no idea why I choose to call one of them a "butterfly" spring but there must have been a reason.

Anyway, I have already measured the new peg accurately using vernier callipers so I now enter into a database, the details of when and from where I acquired it, then the weight, cost and length of it.

The new peg is then clipped into it's correct spot (by length) in the rack holding those of its spring design.

The racks run down the entire length of my hall and there is plenty of room for more pegs, but I must say that I am rather pleased that I am not collecting dice!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone. I thought I'd take this opportunity to show you a few of my Easter pegs .... hope you like them. They were a present from DB's sister.

I have more easter pegs to come ... but have to rush out now as we are having an Easter Barbie in the hills with some friends.


p.s. .....

I'm back now and here is a virtual Easter Egg for you!!

Pegs aren't Boring . . . . . .

Who says Pegs are boring? Well this posting is all about a boring matter.

Just in case some of you were thinking that I was so obsessed with pegs that I couldn't manage to think about anything else, I would like to share a recent experience with you.

The other day DB and I went to a local timber yard which sells old railway sleepers and garden timber. In the corner of the yard was a steel cage containing off-cuts and scrap bits to be sold as firewood. The bits were all kinds of shapes and a number of them had been severely attacked by grubs which are known as "borers" in Australia. Initially, I had wanted to make a small box, using this interesting wood, but as you can see by the photograph, the borer had eaten most of the wood presenting a bit of a challenge.

We selected about ten pieces of red gum, paid the Japanese owner her $10 and I returned home with my treasures.

Back in the shed, I had doubts about making a box from something which looked like a sieve, but DB had a brainwave ......

She looked at the grub eaten brick shaped piece of red gum and said ....."Go and slice it like a loaf and keep the slices in order". I thought she had lost the plot a bit but never one to argue, and being quite an obedient chap, I did as I was instructed and attacked the wood.

When I returned, with 24 slices of grub eaten loaf/wood, she divided them into six groups of four and opened them out .... a bit like butterflies .. and placed them in symmetrical patterns. After a bit of shifting around, she finally settled on three groups of eight which I then glued to backing sheets of thin plywood and sanded them level.

At first DB thought they looked a bit like brain scans, but then (fortunately) she had the idea of rock pools and with the aid of a little acrylic paint, some liquid glass, and a bit of co-operation, we ended up with an artistic triptych. The photo shows the three panels together with a lump of wood filled with borer holes and also a grub .... it isn't a real one - DB made it from clay.

I know that all this has absolutely NOTHING to do with pegs, but I am so pleased with the resulting artwork that I wanted to share it with you.

........ what do you reckon we'd get for it on E-Bay??

Stop Press ......

Those that know me will be aware that I talk a bit. Well, to be honest, I talk quite a lot. Some of my blogs are a bit lengthy too, so I have devised a cunning plan for those of you who want to see the photos but don't want to plough through all the words.

If you look to the right of my page underneath the archives list, you will see that I have added a photo album.

Just click on the picture of that handsome fellow there and you will be transported to an album of all my blog photos.

But wait ............

there's more .............

I've also added a few photos of pegs not yet featured in my blog.

I won't keep you .... I can tell you are really excited ....

Bakelite Sniper Comes Good

As an avid collector, I naturally watch for clothes pegs and pins to be listed for sale on EBay.

Some years ago, I was doing my daily search and "6 Art Deco clothespins plastic or bakelite" came up for auction. with a starting price of US$25.

I was hugely excited by these pegs and kept a very close watch on them during the following week. Nobody bid on them at all and the auction was due to finish at 3 a.m. Melbourne time.

I waited until I was just too tired to stay up any longer (2am) and then put in a ridiculously high bid of US$50 and went to bed confident that they were mine.

The next morning, I was up early and eagerly logged on to EBay to confirm that the prize was mine.

Shock, horror, Oh No! Another bidder had waited until the last few minutes of the auction and had captured my pegs for $51 - that's known in the trade as "sniping" and I must admit to being a sniper myself on occasions.

But I was devastated - what could I do?

After a lot of thought I illegally wrote to the winner and asked if he was prepared to sell just one of these precious pegs to me. I told him I was quite happy to pay whatever he asked and quite understood if he wanted to make a profit.

Back came this wonderful reply "I collect bakelite items and I only need one so tell me what colours you would like and I'll post you a couple for free".

How about that - what a lovely guy.