Plarn Bag

I know I haven't updated in a while, so here are a few pictures of what I've been working on!

This is a crocheted plarn bag, modeled by my lovely friend Brittnay. Sad to say, this was not a wholly original pattern! I mostly followed a pattern I found on a website somewhere...but I can't remember where. A step-by-step close to the instructions I used can be found here. It was simple enough to make, if you know some basic crochet stitches, but the most time consuming part was making the plarn itself. A great tutorial for making plarn is here.

Plarn bags are really neat for a few reasons. One is that they recycle plastic bags that you might get by the dozen when you go grocery shopping. Another reason they're cool is because they combine the normal durability of plastic bags and multiply it, due to the nature of crocheting/knitting. The plarn bag in the photo here is actually holding a thinkpad laptop with little to no strain on the strap! They're great for groceries, books, little thingamajigs, etc. Sometimes I hang mine on a doorknob with yarn inside, and use it to keep yarn from rolling all over the place when I knit or crochet. In any case, they're cool, and if you're interested in making them, you should experiment with different colors and patterns. :) I'd love to see some variations!

This is a random little doodad I made to spice up my desk a little. I took a plain plastic pencil holder (you can probably find one at Wal-Mart for a few dollars), wrapped it in tissue paper, put a rubber band around the whole thing, and cut the tissue paper standing up around the pencil holder into strips to create a kind of fringe-like pattern.

This is a forget-me-not-holder, as I have so creatively named it. It is made out of nearly all completely recycled materials. The base is the plastic top off of a Chinese take-out plate, the 'vase' is a glass bottle wrapped in some scrap paper that I thought was pretty, and the flower is made of a bent clothes hanger, spare scrap paper, and a toilet paper roll holding the petals in shape. All of it was put together with a bit of patience and hot glue. :)

I know that these projects aren't for everyone, and they're not really super sophisticated, but if you're bored one day and want to do something kind of unique with recycled materials, let me know what you come up with! :) I'll be updating every now and then with a few new projects.