My Love of Reusing Plastic Bags

I have a love of reusing plastic bags. It started a couple summers ago when I was visiting some friends with an outrageous collection of plastic grocery store bags spilling out from under their sink. I was feeling a little bored with the knitting project that I had brought along so I decided, with great encouragement from the crowd, to knit a bag-o-bags. Before long I had help cutting up bags and what was born was a giant grocery store tote- which come to think of it I don’t have a picture of, I’ll work on that. What was also born was my love of reusing plastic bags.

I came home and immediately began experimenting with different techniques and size of plastic strips. I have discovered that I love to sit and watch bad tv while cutting plastic bags into long strips. I must advise that this can be an annoying project to someone you live with as it is a very loud and crunchy process and they might not enjoy watching bad tv with you as much while you are doing this.

My first nano case was fairly simple. It was a slip in crocheted case so when I wanted to change the song or adjust the volume I had to pull it out of the case. A few years ago I cracked an ipod screen (which is a pain to fix) so I sewed in a screen protector. Under the advisement of my number one craft advisor, AKA my friend Mary, I used that plastic cross stitching template you used for 2^nd grade craft projects.

Last Fall I decided to update the case. I used Chinatown red plastic bags. I don’t know if other Chinatown’s have red plastic bags but in NYC it is part of the fun of Chinatown. I still sewed in a screen protector which I hide under some fancy paper scraps I had around.

Recently, I have been pondering making my guy a clear case using plastic bags from Sahadi’s, a middle eastern specialty food shop in downtown Brooklyn, which has a fine quality of clear plastic bags. I think I have enough bags now but I can’t quite decide on a design. I’ll keep posted.