How to Knit With Plastic
Knitting with plastic bags, like the bags used at grocery stores and other shops, is an easy way to reuse these items that would otherwise end up in landfills. In order to knit with plastic, however, you must first process the bags into a yarn, also called "plarn." Once the plarn has been made, however, the sky's the limit as to what you can make with this free resource.
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Instructions
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Clean and air dry your bags and check them for holes. Holes along the seams are fine, but a hole in the middle of the plastic will make them unusable for plarn. Sort them by color and plastic type -- thin plastic will knit to a different gauge, or stitches per inch, than a thicker plastic.
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Lay a bag out flat and trim off the handles and bottom seam with your scissors. If the bag is folded in pleats to make a rounded bottom, turn it inside out and cut off the seam that way -- many times, these pleats will unfold to reveal a uniform tube of plastic.
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Make a one inch cut starting at the side seam on a diagonal. Begin cutting around the bag, as if you are slicing it into a spring shape, keeping the cut piece as close to one inch wide as possible, until you have cut the whole bag into one ribbon.
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Tie the ribbons from several bags end to end, which gives you one long strand of plarn. Wind it into a ball and knit from it as you would any other yarn.
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Knit with your plastic as you would with any other yarn. However, it may be more prone to stretching and tearing than other types of yarn -- depending on the heaviness of the plastic you used -- so be careful when pulling your stitches tight. If you've used a thinner plastic bag to make your plarn, you might want to use a needle with a fairly blunt tip, because sharp needles might push through the center of your plarn strand. Because of the need for loosely knit stitches, many plarn patterns are stretchy mesh bags or loosely knit purses and bags, although plarn could also be used for pot scrubbers, jewelry or decorative items.
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Tips & Warnings
Hand wash any item you make of your plarn. It will not hold up to a washing machine's action or heat.
When undertaking any project with your plarn, knit a gauge swatch before starting. Gauge swatches are squares of knitting that tell you how many stitches per inch you get knitting with your plarn on the size needles you are using. Plarn will compress as you knit but then expand when you are done, so try knitting a swatch in a US 11, US 8 and US 5 for comparison.
The ink from the bags may stain your needles, so be sure to use metal or acrylic needles that can be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.
Don't make anything out of plarn that might come into contact with heat or a heat source, such as a hot pad or pot holders. The plastic will not insulate against heat and may melt.
References
Resources
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