Your hands are shaking, the need to knit or to crochet is growing.  You scrounge through your closets, under the bed, in every hidden corner. No yarn left in the stash. What are you going to do? You must knit! You must crochet!

Keep those needles and hooks poised because you have just found your newest stash.  This article from wikihow.com shows how to recycle those plastic bags into a much needed yarn substitute.

How to Prepare Plastic Bags for Knitting or Crochet

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
If you have decided to knit or crochet a bag from plastic bags, you’ll need to know how to prepare the plastic bag first. This article demonstrates how to create the ribbon of plastic needed for creating the “plastic yarn” that you can use for knitting or crocheting your new bag.

Steps

1. Trim the bottom seam from the bag.
2. Unfold as much of the bag as possible. Flatten it out.
3. Fold the bag not quite in half widthwise (with the fold perpendicular to the seam you cut off). Let one of the edges stick out about 1 inch/2.5 cm. Fold the part you already folded in half, repeating until the folded part is also about 1 inch/2.5 cm wide.
4. Cut off the handles.
5. About every inch/2.5 cm, cut the folded part of the bag with vertical slits. Make sure you cut all the way through the folded part, but try not to cut into the unfolded part of the bag.
6. Grab the unfolded part of the bag, and shake gently. The folded part will unroll into a fringe.
7. Open up the unfolded part of the bag and spread flat.
8. Make a cut from the center (widthwise) of the unfolded part to the nearest cut, diagonally.
9. Keep cutting across the unfolded part, diagonally, connecting the different cuts.
10. The last cut will be similar to the first, finishing in the center, widthwise, of the unfolded part. Now you have turned the plastic bag into a single long, thin, plastic ribbon. Roll it into a ball and knit something.

Tips

• Consider using different color bags to make rainbow effects.

Warnings

• Beware of cat. Claws and plastic bag yarn don’t mix.
• Cats are also notorious for swallowing things they shouldn’t. Plastic yarn could mean an expensive trip to the vet.

Things You’ll Need

• Plastic bags
• Scissors
• Pattern for knitting or crocheting bag

Related wikiHows

• How to Knit a Bag from Plastic Bags
• How to Knit a Simple Bag
• How to Knit a Scouring Pad from Orange Bags
• How to Crochet a Quahog Beach Bag

Sources and Citations

• Original source of article from Pie and Coffee, How to Knit a Plastic Bag, shared under the creative commons sharealike licence.

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Prepare Plastic Bags for Knitting or Crochet. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

FOR MORE IDEAS CLICK HERE for Joann.com