Send Me Your Plastic Bags!

I'm kidding. I have plenty of my own. Well, at least I had plenty.  That was before I got on this kick of using plarn. In case you hadn't heard, plarn is "plastic yarn," more specifically, yarn made from plain old plastic grocery bag type of bags.


I tried the plarn ideas around the internet, but they all turn out a fine plarn that's more suitable for table cloths or baby bibs, maybe. I tried knitting with it, but it's not very yielding and my old hands began to hurt after a little while.

It took awhile, but I figured out what to do. If you make the plastic bag strips much wider - about four to five inches instead of one - the plarn will be fatter. Okay, so that didn't take a lot of brains to figure out, but if you've tried using the one or two inch strips like the youtube videos show and found them hard to work with, try again with much wider strips.


It will take more bags, but isn't that the idea, anyway?

Don't stop with plastic grocery bags, though. Plastic bread bags, produce bags and any other clean plastic bag will do. Thinner plastic just needs wider strips.

Why not use plarn to knit or crochet? It's free. 

KIP week

Do you knit? This week (June 12 - 18) is the worldwide "Knitting in Public" week. Take your yarn and needles with you to the bus stop, the doctor's office, a concert, a picnic... wherever you happen to be in public. Let them know that knitting is not a dying art! Some people make it a demonstration, knitting on the library lawn or in front of a yarn shop, in a shopping mall and so on. Get some knitting friends together and have a "knit-in."

Frugal? It can be. Reuse yarn, buy at super sales and be creative with what you have.

Related posts and articles:


Mug rugs and quick gifts - A free pattern and some frugal thoughts about it

Frugal toasty toes - Recycle an entire sweater to keep your feet warm this coming winter.

Frugal toasty toes

I wear knitted slippers around the house a lot - at least in the winter - and with the recent cold spell we had, my feet got downright cold. I started dreaming about felted inner soles, but as a rule, I won't buy anything that takes special care so I didn't have any yarn that would felt or shrink.

Thrift store to the rescue! In one of my forays, I found a wool sweater marked "Dry clean," which means that it will shrink if I wash it in hot water, which is exactly what I was looking for.... for $2.50.

I think I'll unravel the arms and save the yarn for a future felting project, but felt the rest. There will still be enough to make felted inner soles to last through several winters' of very frugal toasty toes.