Make something! How about a new craft using plarn?
What is plarn?
It is plastic yarn, usually made up with those excess grocery bags that some of us that forget our environmentally-conscience bags at the grocery store end up getting.
I had LOTS and LOTS of them.
I also had quite a bit of other types of plastic bags stashed for recycling/reusing---now they look like crafting supplies to me!
I decided to learn a new craft this year and thought the prospect of working with plarn would be a good opportunity to finally learn how to crochet. I am a life-long knitter and think people are usually mostly knitters or mostly crocheters and, being a fan of knitting, I've had a resistance to learning how to crochet.
Time to let that (and other things I resist) go.
So I found a couple of videos (here is a good one on how to make plarn):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EnR6JMe1Jc
and set out to making a mess on my kitchen table.
(I did practice FIRST on actual YARN before taking my newly acquired crochet skills to plastic. I was surprised how easy it was to learn, but then I'm not doing anything fancy either....yet!).
I decided my project should be a large shopping bag, which would be both ironic (making a shopping bag out of bags that are already shopping bags) and practical and I wanted something that was big enough and sturdy enough to use during the summer months at our local farm market (oh I am missing the farm market right now!).
Making the plarn is fast and easy and I ended up just attaching the loops as I went, finding that to be a nice rest for my hands/wrist from crocheting and also allowing me to select colors as I go (vs. doing a bunch of them ahead of time and creating a ball of plarn).
Take ordinary store bags (or other plastic bags) and fold the bag into quarters lengthwise and snip into desired widths, trimming off the end of the bag and the handle area. I made my strips about 1.5 inches wide (for firmer plastics, like the outer bags that carrots or household items come in, I cut the strips more narrow for ease of crocheting and to minimize bulk).
You can either attach as you go or make a long strip of the loops and roll into a ball like conventional yarn.
I didn't use a pattern but followed the basic instructions on a few youtube channels I watched. There are many ideas out there using plarn. (Here is a channel with several projects https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbDk5kccvZngIc99bD0_d-4cIoMK6NiZ9 ).
I started by chaining 32 stitches to get to the desired length of the bottom of my bag and then single crocheted to get the desired width of the base of the bag. I turned the work at each end, chaining one chain stitch, before turning.
Here the bottom of the bag is beginning to shape up.
After I got the size I wanted, I began single crocheting around the edges to build up the sides. (Double-crochet would produce a more 'airy' bag, but I wanted something tighter and more solid and also wanted more practice with single crochet).
As I began using up all of my 'stash' of regular plastic bags, I began seeing potential everywhere! A brussel sprouts bag from Trader Joe's, the huge outer plastic that the t.p. I purchase in volume from Costco comes in, and so on. I never realized just how much plastic I do add to the trash even when I avoid using the regular plastic shopping bags.
As I previously mentioned, working with these thicker ply plastics is a bit harder and stands out a bit on the bag, but I soon figured out that some of this tendency can be minimized by simply cutting those plastic loops more narrow, about 1/2 inch worked well for me. I don't mind the way it looks as to me this is more about finding a use for these plastics than anything else.
I used this same process to construct the handles.
One strap ready to be attached:
I attached the handles/straps by "sewing/weaving" them into the inside of the bag using the cording and some thinner strips of the plarn. It seems to be relatively sturdy but time and use will tell.
Happy plarning!
Sue in cold, cold Ohio
