Oh those sticky grocery bags!

Just a regular day behind the register, hunderte of plasticbags being filled with what ever comes down the belt.

Nothing out of the ordinary, exept some of those bags just don’t want to open up. They stick to each other like glue, clinch in a strange embrace of unyelding plastic.

Of course no costumer wants to wait for the cashier to fix this mess. So a quick solution ; they just get dropped in a box and go in the recycling bin at the end of the day. Unused, clean plasticbags, just going back to be made into new plasticbags. Most probably they will stick again and the circle will go on and go on .

There are also those bags we all have at home, once they may have hold cans or cereal boxes, a pund of sugar even just a gift card. They are clean, they where just used once, now they go most probably in the trash. Some of them will land in the recycling bin, some will just lay around in a landfill for who knows how many years.

One day i came around an idea in Pinterest, making plarn it was called. What is plarn you may ask me now, well it is actually yarn but made from plastic bags !

Omg , I have to try this! It seems simple enoug. You flatten your bag , fold it twice lengthwise, the you cut off the sealed bottom and the part with the handle. Now you fold the bag again and cut 1.5 inch wide pieces. They will look like rubber bands and just like you would link those, you join the plarn pieces.

Next day at work in a very slow moment with no business at all on my register, I grabbed one of those unruly bags. Folded nicely I started to cut of the bottom. What a pain in the ( you know where )! Those scissors are numb as numb goes , this will never work out.

Still I was very exited about an idea to bring those bags back to something useful. So I asked my manager nicely if I would be allowed to take some of those bags home. To my great joy he allowed me to take as manny as I wanted.

On my way home I stopped to get me a pair of really great scissors. What a difference it made! The bags where so easy to cut now, just snipp, snipp, snipp all evening long until I had a nice pile of “ plarn rubber bands”. Sitting in front of the Tv, watching a movie like every other day. But this time I was making Plarn, joining stripe to stripe. At the end of the evening I had a nice huge ball together.

I used a size 5 hook to start croche. First simple little washels, to clean my dogs bowls. They where soft to hold, did an amazing job and they did not start to stink like a washcloth would do after a couple uses. Next laundry day I added one to a load. It got a bid softer, but was still very usable. A hard lesson I learned, never put them in the dryer! There they will shrink.

After a while I made myself a little bag to take to the register with my personal items. Today 13 years later, I still use that same bag. I started to ask my neighbors for their grocery bags to get different colors and create more fun items. Shopping bags, beach bags, whatever pattern to be crocheted I could find.

Joining the cut pieces while sitting in the car in the passenger seat, crocheting when camping, I can say I got pretty good with it. So many bags made, I looked for something else easy to make. Mats for the homeless was my next projec. They are durable, keep moister away and easy to work up.

At the moment I am making round rugs to brighten up boring spaces and discovered dogs and cats love to chill out on them.

Churches and homeless shelter will gladly take those mats and somebody who is in need feels there is another person in this world who cares.

I hope I inspired some of you today to try it for yourself. There are so many videos and pictures in the internet to teach you. Just Google “ how to make plarn”. Get your grocery bags which are lying around in your house. Do yourself a great favor and get some great scissors and a hook you feel comfortable with. Then start creating. Bring new life to those plastic bags, enjoy what you are doing. Be proud of what you did, it does not have to be perfect.

Can you imagine how an unusual color in a bag can make you smile? You start hunting for them, you are exited when you find some purple ones. Orange is great too! So many possibilities are out there waiting to be found.

I nearly forgot to mention one great aspect of working with plarn! If you run out of materia, you just add more. No need to do complicate joint of new yarn !

The only investment you have to make is a hook, pair of great scissors and of course your time.

Mother Natur will be happy to have less plastic trash lying around too.

My next plan is to give classes to show more people how to do something useful for nearly no money . Hopefully more of you will give it a try soon !