PLARNING

I made this set of bags for a Letterboxing Gather I will be attending next weekend..."Summer Is Here". I also sent one out to "Live And Breathe" last fall. I am hoping the hosts will use them as part of their raffle. I am also hoping there will be tickets in the cup for them. :-).

The crocheted bags are made of PLARN. For those of you not familiar with that term, I shall be happy to explain. It is the combination of two other words. PLAstic and yARN. Pictured below is a "ball of PLARN." not sure why, but that phrase suddenly strikes me as funny. *Maple Leaf Red chuckling to herself*

As you can plainly see, that ball of plarn is a little smaller than a standard sized basketball. I cut plastic bags into strips, knotted the strips together, rolled the strips into a ball, then crocheted a pattern using the PLARN. I roll a ball as big as my hands will allow. If you have rolled yarn before, you will know that the ball just becomes unmanageable after reaching a certain diameter. I stop winding when that ball gets too big for my one hand to hold. My plarn is made from "virgin" plastic bags - if there is such a thing- These plastic bags have never been used. They are leftovers from a Boy Scout project - "Scouting For Food". I have 2 boxes of them. That's about 2000 bags. Sheeez...I really need to get busy, eh? LOL.

I made all three bags from one ball -size shown above- of PLARN. One bag, the smallest, is big enough to hold a gift card. I hope the winner, should they use it as a Gift Card Bag, will let the recipient know that this bag should be "regifted" over & over again. Add a ribbon or a bow or a flower or a button & one has a unique bag every time it gets reused. The middle sized bag is big enough to hold 2 1-liter soda bottles. Personally, I would use this bag to carry around current yarn project. And the largest is well, the largest. Perfect for the grocery store.

Also, please note, I did say CROCHET here. I know others knit (and I do know how to both knit and crochet) with PLARN. I, myself, cannot imagine knitting with this stuff. It is not the most easiest of materials to work with. But hats off to you folks who can manage to knit with it!

One last thing, last year I gave a couple of gift bags to the 3 Blind Mice family as a thank you for hosting a Gather. He wrote to me earlier this year saying coworkers of his saw the bags & took the idea back down to New York City to share with some kids down there. Perfect! An inexpensive craft anyone can learn to do, the material is abundant & commonly found in just about every household. Keeping kids busy is not a bad thing, either.

For more information regarding how to make PLARN, peek around the Internet. There are some really great You Tube video's & some very easy & crafty patterns as well.