Start Date: April 2, 2020
Finished: April 16, 2020
It took me two weeks to finish the crochet bag I made from the used plastics we had at our sari-sari store.
The idea of creating a crochet bag from used plastics came from the moment I realized that yarn is not a sustainable material. My last craft is making a poncho using all the yarns I found while cleaning our bedroom (somehow, I crochet-ed in a sustainable way). Another reason is I want to try out various materials which involve finding a way into what to do to trashes to make them into something of value.
I found out that the DIY community in Youtube use the term ‘plarn’ for the words plastic yarn. Moreover, I am grateful for Trashform art on Youtube for sharing how to cut the plastic into one long plarn.
While in the process of crocheting, I spent a large amount of time completing this project than my past crochet projects because I still have to cut my own yarn. Honestly, I found this new massive respect to indigenous tribes who have no machineries to mass produce yarn so they cut and create their own yarns and threads. I’ll keep in mind to proactively search for opportunities where I could learn how to weave traditoonally.
I’m not sure if this happens to other asian countries but I do know Filipino families do this- they store any plastic they used instead of throwing them away. My mom saw what I was doing and she got mad because I am using up all the plastics we have lol. Well, we use these used plastics in our sari-sari store to wrap the items that our customer bought and my mom do not buy any plastic. Thus, if I ended up using all plastics that we have in store, she’ll have to buy one. Good thing, I did not finish it all. I only used 5 transparent plastic bags.
Moreover, when the initial excitement of doing something new has faded, I got into this thinking of, ‘I will never finish this. This will take forever to finish.’ And this thinking is something that I have encountered years ago when I am starting this big cross stitch artwork, which resulted to me leaving the whole cross-stitch artwork unfinished and no progress for months. But now, I have learned. I now understand that there are no gentle paths to the stars from the Earth (yes, Seneca.). No good will ever come out if I continued to let my emotions control me. If you think you can or can’t, you’re right. And I can. I started this and I will finish it even if it will take days or weeks.
And after two weeks, I accomplished it. My older sister suggested that I should paint it since it looked too plain. I actually thought that it was already okay but I realized that I thought that way because I was scared that I would ruin due to my lack of skills in painting.
I still decided to paint it- I need to apply the theoretical knowledge I learned in Visual Techniques class. I will risk it.
According to research, our eyes gravitate more to warmer and brighter colors so I chose ROY and I left a bit of the upper portion of the bag unpainted. The white will act as neutral color.
And that’s it. A crochet bag made out of plarn weighing 0.15 kg. Making something from trash to something valuable and usable. This craft project proved that there are sustainable ways to crochet and that yarn isn’t the only material that you can use.
Doubts in one’s creative ability can be cured by guiding people through a series of small successes. And the experience can have a powerful effect on the rest of their lives. -Tom Kelley & David Kelley, Creative Confidence
I observed that I am putting myself into harder-than-the-latest craft projects and since I spent a lot of time in crocheting this, I had a lot of time into brainstorming what can I crochet next. This whole experience opened a new perspective for me that I can crochet using A LOT of different materials other than yarn and I CAN CREATE THINGS without a pattern from the internet.
That combination of thought and action defines creative confidence: the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out. -Tom Kelley & David Kelley, Creative Confidence
Having the courage to act on my ideas is not something that I had overnight. For years, I always follow a certain pattern made by someone which is something that I am grateful for. But I need to learn to create something of my own. Now I had done it and with a new material. Every new project is a result of all craft projects I had done previously. And I am so excited to what more I could discover.