Plarn (Plastic Yarn)

A couple of years ago, I was simultaneously perplexed and shocked by the large volume of plastic bags we’d been accumulating in our household. I always thought that something could be made from them, so instead of returning them to the recycling bin at our local store, I decided to save them for the future and see what could be done with them.

My first thought was to spin them into a yarn, but I first had to figure out how to process them into a strand worth spinning. Luckily, there’s many a tutorial on the internet about how to make plarn. They all show the same process, and if you’re interested, they’re easy to find.

Here’s a pic of some of my processed plarn balls:

As I’ve become more familiar at working with plarn, I’ve started making different widths for different applications. I’ve also sorted out the heavy duty bags gotten from special shopping trips from the regular grocery bags. Yes, I’m lining up my plastic ducks in a row, so to speak.

Working with the plarn has been a journey of trial and error. It is, after all, plastic, and finding the right knitting needles/crochet hooks is a matter of experimentation.

Following Through on My Original Idea of Spinning

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that my first idea was to spin the plarn. Well, I gave it some thought and realized that my wheel couldn’t do it because of it’s hooks and the small orifice. I would need a specialty flyer, which I didn’t feel like buying. I still had my drop spindle though, and I used that instead. It worked fine, but it can only take so much yarn. In other words, the ball of plarn I had was too big for the drop spindle to process. Another contributing factor was that the width of the plarn on the ball I chose to spin was too wide. I did manage to get the ball spun, even with the huge volume of plarn falling off the spindle towards the end, which made it tangled and difficult to wind up. Lessons learned: use narrower and smaller amounts of plarn for drop spindling.

Alright, I had some spun plarn. Now I had to make something with it. After much hemming and hawing between crochet and knitting, and ripping back of stitches I’d begun, I ended up knitting it on large needles. I knitted a large mat, which I then folded in half and decided to make a handbag out of. I decided it needed a flap and closure to keep it secure, and so I made one by crocheting, up to and including the crocheted plarn button, which I think is pretty neat. The strap is also crocheted.

Here’s how the finished bag looks:

Here it is from a distance, to give you a better idea of the bag in perspective:

The body of the bag is made with the spun plarn, and the rest with plarn in it’s flat tape form, which is what most people’s work consists of. I do wish that I could’ve made the entire piece in spun plarn for consistency, but it’s really a lot of extra processing time.

With a little practice, plarn can be manipulated into an array of useful items. It appears that it’s been in vogue for nearly 10 years now, and it’s amazing to see what other people have made with it.

Recycling, upcyling, making something useful out of nothing, and keeping a mountain of plastic out of the landfill. All of these things appeal to me, and are what fuels this current obsession of mine.

Take care and thanks for reading 🙂