Tuesday, May 1

Plastic shopping bags + knitting = reusable totes

Plastic bags have been in the news a lot lately. Earth Day has raised consciousness about the problem of tons of plastic shopping bags as well as San Francisco's bold move to ban them in their city. You can buy fabric tote bags or make them yourself, but here's another option--knit your plastic grocery bags into reusable shopping totes.

Click HERE to read about an English woman who knits her own grocery totes. The article shows you how to cut the bags into strips to prepare them for knitting and sketchy directions on how to knit one. She sews the handles onto her bags. I wonder if the handles would be secure enough for heavy items. A buttonhole type bag where the handle is knitted as part of the bag might be stronger. I'd also knit it in the round for no seams and a stronger bag.

Hey, that sounds like the felted bag pattern I came up with a while back. I'd better get busy and knit one with plastic strips to see how it comes out. Pattern to come...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Vicki,
I knit a bag in the round using strips of BN bags (the colors were cool). It worked well. I started on the botton with an emily oc(what's her name?) cast on. I had fun with it.

Sarah said...

Looks like there's one in magknits this month - http://www.magknits.com/May07/patterns/rrr.htm . The use of color is pretty impressive.

Sarah said...

Also a new triangular shawl http://www.magknits.com/May07/patterns/brigid.htm