Saturday, January 5, 2008

So what have I been working on you ask (so polite of you I might add!) I found a cool pattern for market bags using recycled plastic shopping bags. I figured what a great way to use up all of the plastic bags that collect at my house and make something useful at the same time.

So I started cutting up my plastic bags thinking I would single handedly save the earth. Then it got to the stringing the bags together.....hmmmm......it all started to unravel. Every time I tried to string the plastic loops together they broke. Ever one to save the Earth, I kept trying. After throwing away enough plastic to pollute a small country, I gave up.

The idea still appealed to me after a few days so I tried to think of another way to make they very cool bags. I had some old cotton yarn left over from a kids sweater project, so I started playing with that. I soon discovered that if I use 2 strands of 100% cotton and follow the pattern (with a little tweaking ;) ), I came out with a pretty cool bag! The first (and the second) bags were given to my mother and my MIL respectively. They both enjoyed them enough to encourage me to make a few more. I decided to try for a Beach bag - you know - bright fun colors and the sand will fall right out?
The orange/yellow/white one will be for my son - he *hearts* orange. The cream/black version is a smaller market bag - much like the original bags I made. And just because she was bugging me something fierce, I made a little pink bag for my daughter.


Don't we all need a little pink bag?

2 comments:

hakucho said...

Your cotton bags look fabulous! They'll last forever and you can wash them...great! In response to your problem with the plastic ripping...I have the feeling that those might be the bags that they add the cornstarch to to make them degrade faster. See the note in my pattern for more info. The quality of the bags that are out there vary quite a bit. Wider strips also help to keep them from breaking. I'm still using the 4 bags I made and my only complaint is the baggers tend to overfill them so they are way too heavy for me to lift....oh well.

happy knitting :)

P.S. May I add your pictures of your cotton big bags to my gallery?
http://hakuchogallery.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-knitting-friends-gallery.html

dawnmercedes said...

wow! welcome to the blogosphere...I was just wondering the other day, "Does Barb have a blog?" I see you didn't but now you don't! Book marking you for future reads!