PLARN

A quote for today: "Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again." Dorothy Day

I've been making a lot of PLARN lately (PLastic yARN). I go through spurts where I convert plastic bags into a form that I can crochet with, and then I don't feel like it for a while. There are a variety of tutorials on line that show how to make PLARN from grocery bags. A friend of mine made this one on YouTube

This is a picture of some of the PLARN balls I've been making:

The red, clear, and bright blue balls are made from newspaper bags, the rest are made from a variety of grocery bags. Sometimes I sort the bags by color, other times I combine a variety of bags. The brownish ball on the right was made from a variety of dark bags; I think it will make an interesting pattern when crocheted.

Many of my friends know that I use plastic bags to create PLARN, so they save their bags for me. I am often greeted with "I have some bags for you". Following is a picture of the plastic bags I have that are waiting to be transformed into PLARN:

In addition to grocery bags, I use bags that are somewhat thicker. The thicker bags are cut in a continuous spiral and wound on pieces of recycled cardboard. I often use them as accents to creations that are made primarily from grocery bags.

I learned from Etsy that the items I create from the PLARN are called upcycled. Something is upcycled when you take one item that has already been used, and turn it into something different

This is one of my recent completed PLARN projects:

I'm pleased with how it came out. For more pictures and a more complete description, you can check out my website at Etsy.com