Plastic Bag Yarn aka Plarn

Move Over Yarn and Make Room For Plarn!!!

'Plarn' ..  it is a commonly used word heard quite a bit in the crafting community.    You can find write-ups and tutorials about it on various blogs and websites as well as in YouTube.

What exactly is Plarn?  It is a very creative way to recycle plastic bags you bring home from the grocery store, retail stores, and even fast food restaurants.  

The word 'Plarn' is derived from 2 words combined:  

[Pl (plastic) + Arn (yarn) =

Plarn]  . 

Let's go one step further - Now that you know what 'Plarn' is, how do you turn the plastic bag into plastic yarn? 

The 2 commonly used methods are:

1) Double-Strand Cutting and Looping Method

2) Single (Continuous) Strand Cutting Method

The Looping Method is a fun activity to do as a family or the next time you hear 'Mom, I'm bored, there's nothing to do...').    You can have lots of fun looping plastic in a group setting such as church, at school or at work on lunch.  Heck, this is a great way to make the time go faster while waiting at the dentist or dr's office instead of reading 2 year old magazines.  

Plarn is very easy to use in both knitting and crocheting and is also visually appealing.  

Here are just a few of the different types of plarn you will find available in the Plastique Plarn Shop:



Made from Marsh Supermarket plastic bags




Made from Publix Grocery Store plastic bags



Made with Dollar General plastic bags



or go crazy and mix it up with VHS tape:



Mint Chocolate Chip which is plied VHS tape & WalMart produce plastic bags



If you are new to using plastic yarn, I hope this information is helpful.   

I welcome any comments or questions via this post or send me a private message at plastiquerecreations@yahoo.com.

Sunshine but Windy Day Plart (plastic art) Yarn

As I was looking around my plastic bag collection, the Dollar General bags jumped out at me. I had to figure out what to do with them - something different. As the wheels were churning in my head, I noticed my Louet wheel sitting there looking sad and lonely.


That's when I decided, it was time to introduce another plarn color combination. I thought the yellow with black (Dollar General) plastic yarn and white with black (Winn Dixie) plastic yarn would be a perfect match. It reminded me of a sunshine day.




I looked outside my window and saw how windy it was and decided that my new concoction needed to reflect that as well. That's when I decided to throw into the mix the Raffeta. After it was all spun, this was exactly what I envisioned it would look like.

My spinning of this was a little different than normal. I plied the plastic yarn with the raffeta using different alternating combinations. My combinations were:

• holding the yellow plastic yarn and raffeta while spinning the white around it;
• holding the white with raffeta while spinning the yellow around it;
• holding the yellow and white plastic yarn and spinning the raffeta around it

I wanted to make sure that all 3 colors stood out and not one dominated more than the other. I did discover that while spinning with raffeta was fun it was also challenging because it kept getting caught in the spokes on my wheel.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38762662

I haven't quite decided what type of bag/tote to make with this yet. But one thing I know for sure, what ever the finished product ends being, it will definitely be ooak.