I finished the brown plarn basket for my washpins the other day. After I added little handles like the ChickPea pattern calls for (part of the cuteness appeal if you ask me) I decided I wanted a handle going across. I crocheted a handle and slipped it through the two little handles which worked fine. Plarn doesn’t really do so well in a skinny long format so the handle is a bit on the sad side. I thought about making it wider but then it wouldn’t fit into the little handles I had already made. The plarn isn’t holding the round shape as well as I had hoped so the whole basket looks a little mushy. It was a fun experiment in plarn and basketry though and it will certainly do for its purpose. I have yet to really use it aside from the washpins sitting in it for the last couple days. Hopefully we’ll have some sun and I can hang some clothes out to dry.
While I made plarn for this project I had all my brown colored bags strewn all over the floor. This was an irresistible cat playground and Kes got right in. I got some cute photos of her laying in the massive pile of bags and feeling like she’s in heaven. She was laying in the pile and I tossed a couple over her which she thought was great. She was quite surprised when I cleaned up all the bags, she couldn’t find any reason this was necessary. She tried her best to keep them all and ended up with one for herself. She spent the rest of the afternoon snoozing on it.
I’ve started a new cat amigurumi project and at the moment it is only a head. The cat pattern is Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service. I found the pattern at Ravelry.com. I created an account for Ravelry.com and now have a virtual list of projects there to compliment my real list of projects. I’ve thought of some little gifts to make for friends since I’m on such a crochet kick. Those amigurumis are too cute to resist but as I said when I made my first one, how many amigurumis can I have in my house without looking silly? I might have to find a big project like Mario or a blanket. For now I’m off to work on Jiji.
In between working on my crochet cats I took a few minutes to hide the ends on my large plarn tote from my February 7th blog entry. It took so little time I don’t know why I put it off. I decided that the handles are a good length especially if it gets used as a beach tote or something like that. I’ve taken it out for a trial run buying a couple groceries and it works well. It slings perfectly over the shoulder. Now that I’m done with it I like the single crochet just fine for a tote and I’ll consider both single and double crochet in the future. I took some photos of the tote itself to show on here and then I had a fun idea: put a cat in the bag! I looked at Kes and decided she’d be slightly uncooperative and that it might be a little unnerving for her since she’s a threelegger. I decided Onyx would be a good candidate but I wanted to have her go in on her own volition. I took the tote and rolled down the sides so it would be inviting then threw in a toy mouse for good measure. The trap was set now to wait. Ten seconds went by and Kes was in investigating but decided that it wasn’t so interesting. That was a bit of a surprise to me because she loves plastic bags and will claim anything plastic as her throne. A minute later and Onyx came by. She hopped right in just as I had suspected she would. She even did me the favor of facing outward away from the wall so I could take her picture. She had a grand old time batting the toy mouse in the tote. I let her relax in there for a bit and then it was picture time: Cat in the bag! I had my husband take photos to show the process of turning the tote bed into a tote bag with a kitty in it. It was a pretty cool set of sequence photos except that I had left the camera in manual mode and all of them were completely blurry! I really wanted to show them here but it’ll have to be a project for another day.
I have one more plarn tote that still has to be completed but first I’m crocheting a small plarn basket. A week ago I decided I wanted a washline for the backyard so we can harness the power of the sun and save some $ on electricity. We got a pretty cool system of a retractable line that I can just take inside with me when I’m done. Now using a washline requires washpins and these require some kind of storage. I’ve been wanting to crochet with a plarn that isn’t made of white bags so I prepared some brown Home Depot style bags for this project. I found a cute pattern from the Chickpea Sewing Studio. Of course I realize the basket they show is so much cuter than mine will be in that funny brown color. I’m not going to make mine as tall as theirs. I’ll probably test along the way to see if all the pins fit in the bag. I might also make it wider so it’s easier to reach into. I’ve started on the bottom rounds and think I’ve already missed a few stitches here and there, nothing drastic though. That’s what I get for doing it while watching TV. I’ll post a picture of it part way through at a later time. The Home Depot bags are crocheting very nice. The strips are about 3/4 inch wide which seems to be my preference. Now I’m getting all fired up to work on it again but sadly breakfast and a shower come first before today’s errands. Crocheting will have to wait until this afternoon.
I decided I wanted to make another plarn tote. I’ve had some plarn ready to go for a while, I’d even separated the white strips from ones with color. So what’s plarn you may ask. Plarn is plastic yarn. It’s made of plastic bags such as grocery bags. I made my first tote bag of plarn in 2008 after watching a video with some random statistics about plastic bags in landfills and other undesirable locations like the ocean. I’d heard of plarn a couple times before but hadn’t tried it yet. That video and those random stats lit my fire. I looked up a couple different ways to make it and got to work. I used Kate E. Austin’s Art Blog instructions for plarn; the instructions and pictures are easy to follow. Below you can see photos of my first plarn tote. I used no pattern and hardly even bothered to count stitches for the most part. I used black plarn as a contrasting border and to reinforce the seams. I didn’t really go about the whole thing in any kind of well planned mathematical way but it still turned out nicely! I used about 50 plastic grocery bags to make it. I use it a lot; for groceries and to carry things such as books or binders. It stretches a bit when there is heavy stuff in it but it keeps its form. I’ve carried some heavy things like a gallon of milk and a 2 liter soda without worrying about it even the slightest. It sparks people’s curiosity and I’m always getting questions about it. When people find out I made it myself they are dazzled and in awe. It’s a fun little conversation starter.
After making this, my plastic bag stash has grown. I always saved bags just because it’s handy to have them around for little garbage cans, packing material and what not. Now I have sorted through my plastic bags. They are sorted by colors, types and even brand. The Target bags have a different texture and quality so one day I’ll make a Target tote. I have a collection of yellow bags that grows slowly. Once you start collecting bags to make plarn you notice how dull grocery bags are and you ache for colored bags. I’ve had the thought cross my mind to shop at a specific store just to get their bags! But then I realize that I’m trying to be green and that would be wasteful; for every bag I use they need to make another. I’ve settled for what ever comes my way is mine. I’m sure if I was really desperate for more plastic bags I could ask friends and neighbors to share some of their bounty.
I enjoy the randomness of the plarn. You can’t predict where the colors will end up or even how much color you’ll have in an area. The colored plarn bag I’m working on now has a large variety of white bags with lots of different colored logos so it’ll be even more random than my first tote. For the two totes I’m working on now I’m using single crochet while my first and second bags I used double crochet. I am curious to see which lends itself better to carrying things. I like the flexibility that the double crochet gives the bag and I am a bit concerned that the single crochet will be slightly less flexible. Flexibility also depends on the width of the plastic strips, how tight you crochet and the size hook. For the first bag I used strips a bit over an inch in width which was sometimes a bit awkward to work with even with the K hook. 
For my 2 current projects I cut the plastic bags about 3/4 of an inch wide. As I said before I’m not approaching this very mathematically so you can probably guess I’m not measuring the width of each strip. The process of making plarn is tedious enough, I don’t want to measure each strip exactly! I’ve added a photo of my single crochet color logo-ed plarn project. The fun thing about plarn is that if you have a big enough plastic bag stash you can’t really run out of yarn! All you have to do is cut more strips, string them together and add them to the end of your project plarn. I enjoy the tediousness of making the plarn and it can take a long time to make what you need, but I enjoy it none-the-less.
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