bag lady

My work has organized an Earth Day competition where any employee can create a useful project out of items that would normally have been thrown away. Customers in our store on that day will vote on their favourite piece. Naturally, I have decided that I am going to win. I present to you my bag made of bags.

Now, I must admit that I didn't invent the idea of knitting with plastic bags. I found this idea on Flickr.com a while ago and have just been waiting for the right time to do this. All you do is take a plastic bag and cut it into strips so that you end up with a circle. Looping these strips creates a long chain that you can knit with.


I also took some plastic ties from some milk bags and wrapped yarn around them to make flowers for my bag of bags. I know the yarn isn't something that would have been thrown away but the rules are that the project must be made of at least 75% materials that would normally have been garbage. Therefore, I am exercising my right to use yarn as decoration.

The bag turned out pretty well, I just hope that the judges agree with me. What am I saying, of course they will. And if they don't, I will simply rig the contest in my favour.

*Update*
This bag won me first prize! Everyone loved the idea and appreciated the effort I put into it. I even had a lady approach me about a week later asking for instructions on how to make it, I told her to look at my blog.

shh...illegal knitting

I want to make it very clear that this isn't something that I do every day at work. I had lunch at my desk and after I finished eating, I decided to do a little experimentation. Introducing, knitting with office supplies!

I took two pencils and wrapped large elastic bands around the top of them to stop my stitches from falling off. Then I painted the ends with white-out so I wouldn't get lead everywhere. Unfortunately, white-out isn't as durable as I thought it would be and it chipped off. I would probably advice using tape or just snapping off the lead bit.

And look...
It actually worked, sort of. I don't think that these will become my new knitting needles, but it was fun for a while. Oh, in case you're wondering, the 'yarn' is some string that we keep around at work in case we need to tie anything up when we go to shows.