Great Recycling Idea

While I was sitting in the waiting room at the hospital the other day during DH's wrist surgery, I was naturally crocheting. The interesting part comes in when it is noted that I could hear the woman across from me crocheting. She was making these cute little purses (which she very kindly allowed me to photograph a complete one). The cool part was her medium (which was why I could hear her crocheting). She had cut plastic grocery sacks into circular strips (about 1.5" wide, I'd guess). She would then loop the strips through each other to create a continuous strand she could roll into a ball. Then she'd crochet. She said she modified the pattern she'd found on the Web by adding the flap with a button-hole. The "frog" is the end cut off of one of the double ended hair bandies that little kids wear. She also finds large buttons or beads for the same. These little purses are machine washable and just hung to dry, as well.

While I thought these purses were just too adorable, I really thought of my previously attempted reuseable shopping bag. Wouldn't it be awesome to make my reusable shopping bag out of recycled plastic grocery sacks? I'm sure it's been done and I can do a search on the Web for patterns (I haven't yet), but I couldn't help but get excited.