Experimenting with plarn

Or: how I failed to make those plastic bags work for me.


Today, I decided to try something new in crafting. Plarn. I heard of it, I read about it, I thought it was hideously stupid, but it stuck. I mean, think about it. The possibilities are endless! Re-using plastic bags to make something new! Something bright and colourful, something cheerful, something useful.. I saw someone on Ravelry making earrings out of this stuff. Earrings!

So I figured, why not give it a go! I was bored anyway! I found a quick little tutorial, grabbed some plastic bags, and started snipping. The first bag I tried was one of those thin little bags that can hold a lot of goods as long as they're soft and squishy and don't have any sharp edges whatsoever. I turned one bag into a long ribbon of plastic and crocheted a testpiece.

It kind of looks like a dead koi, doesn't it? With the red, and the white... Anyway. This piece was a pain. I couldn't find my stitches! The plastic wrinkled so badly, it was a nightmare to figure out where my hook should go next. And besides that, it stuck to everything and wouldn't slide through my fingers so holding it was annoying as hell.

After I used up one bag, and realised that this is just a tiny piece of crochet and this took up that whole bag, I decided to put some strain on the piece to see how good this plastic holds up under pressure.

And the answer...It doesn't hold up at all. This is not material I want to make a shopping bag out of! One bag of apples and it'll break!

So I did another attempt. This time I used a plastic shopping bag from the grocery store that is made out of thicker plastic. Thicker = less likely to break, so thicker = better, right?

I wish it was right. I do. See, with thicker plastic, the chance that it will break will be reduced, but the thickness will cause a whole new problem. The knots are too big.


Way too big. I couldn't get that to fit through a stitch! And even if I did get that through..


There was a whole forest of knots waiting for me to get through. And I had pulled as hard on those knots as I had dared! How was I supposed to crochet with this?

I wasn't ready to give up, though. Not yet.

I tried tying the knot again, and pulled it as tightly as I possibly could, but despite the fact that it was now twice as small as before, it was still too big to fit through a stitch.


Now I was ready to give up, mostly because it was getting annoying. Plarn might still be my thing, but I think I might just need to go an buy myself a bigger hook. Twice as big, that might do the trick.

Until then, I can always practice my rythmic gymnastics. I've already got the ribbon on a stick.

An addition to the minifamily

I have got someone I would like you to meet. His name?

Mini-Mike.

He's a gift for a friend who has been helping me out with my website, and who gave me the idea of making a Mini-Me. I figured the perfect 'thank you' would be a mini of his own!

I made several changes in construction from the Mini-Me idea. The most apparent thing, of course, is the fact that this mini has a face.

I kept his face simple and focused on the eyes and hair. The hair is quite stiff, even though it's all separate threads, but it looks much more lifelike than the thick red strands of hair on Mini-Me's head that make her look like she hasn't washed it in days. I used several different colours of embroidery floss to add some life to it.


Just like real-life Mike, Mini-Mike is wearing a floral shirt and is carrying his camera around with him. His arms and legs can bend slightly but cannot move around, which is a feature I might add to the next Mini I make.

Yep, I said it, the next Mini I make. Because these Mini-Me's are really entertaining me right now! I've been toying with the idea of making an Etsy shop and selling some of these, but I'm not too sure right now if this would sell. Would you buy one of these? What would you pay? And would you pay more for a crocheted doll that looks like you? I'd love to know!

Little Green Bag

All done! Thanks for the advice on my last post! I decided to do a bit of light blocking to see how that would turn out and it was almost completely flat when I took it off the towel the next day, so I sewed it up and attached the clasp and strap and....

Voilá! All done! It was fun to make, taught me how to decrease, made me realise that I might have to take another look at how to do the first and last stitches on a row because they all seemed very loose compared to the rest, but hey, I finished my first knitting project!

It's an adorable little knitting kit, too. The bag itself is, of course, tiny, and then there's these good luck charms that came with it which I tied to the strap on both sides of the bag. The strap itself is a really long braid. It's been ages (AGES I say) since I last braided something that long and it brought back all these childhood memories of tying string to the school gate during recess and making braids that were sometimes 5 metres long.... This one was only 2, I think. All in all, it's exceptionally cute!


And little. Have I mentioned that? It's almost Mini-Me sized! So it's no wonder I decided to call it 'Little Green Bag'. Hope you all enjoy having that song in your head for the rest of the day as well!

Thorougly confused

I am, I really am. For several reasons. One very serious, one less serious.

Last weekend, I ended up doing a lot of knitting in front of the television. There had been a mall shooting in a shopping centre in my hometown on Saturday where six people were killed by the shooter, who committed suicide afterwards. The entire day, we had the tv on, had people on the phone, were checking up on friends and family to see if they were okay.. I'm glad I can say that my friends and family are all fine but we were all shocked and scared. There's about 75.000 people living in this city but it's times like this you find that really, it's like a small town, where everyone knows everyone and something as tragic as this will bring the whole community closer together.

I spent most of the time that we were watching tv with my knitting in my lap, and it has grown to almost the size it should be before I start the decreases, which, admittedly, still isn't very large. (think 20 stitches wide and 60 rows long..) Here's the thing, though.

It's curling up again. I can stretch it out a bit and because it's so thick, it stays straight for a bit and will even stand up vertically, but give it a nudge and it rolls right back.


Am I doing something wrong? Am I knitting too tight? Or is this simply a matter of 'stockinette will curl, end of story'?



I am going to go ahead and finish this, despite the curling, because I have to make a flap and then fold the body in two and sew it closed along the sides, which would probably negate any curling. But I am curious why it would do this.

What do you think, knitting gurus? My fail?

Things that are on my mind

That's three things, actually. PHP, MySQL, and Attic24's ripple pattern. God I'm a geek.