Friday 9 March 2012

Book Reveiw: Eco-Friendly Knits

Eco-friendly knits by Emily Blades is one of the twenty to make series and contains patterns that are knitted with yarn (or plarn as the book calls it) made from plastic bags.

This is an interesting form of recycling that takes an item that is known for being a visible pollutant and dangerous to animals and turns it into a much nicer looking, easier to store and useful item.  I find plastic bags an irritating thing to store as they just fill up drawers and are never taken out to use again. The 'Plarn' made from the bags is a little difficult to knit with (I have yet to attempt crochet with it) as it has a tendency to stick a little when being fed through your fingers but it creates a firm 'fabric' that can be ironed to fuse it into a ridged structure without completely loosing the texture of the knitting.

I haven't done any of the projects in the book as of yet but I'm finding it fun just to make plarn (especially in public) from as many different bags as I can (so far there's been bags from tesco, co-op, Superdrug, boots, the factory shop and several coloured bags from independent shops). One of my main problems is that from a regular sized carrier bag you only get a tiny ball of plarn and to do anything remotely big you need a lot of bags.

Some of the projects given in the book are a little weird such as the heart necklace. It is far too bulky and looks clumsy when worn in the pictures for the pattern. A lot of the projects are nice and I could see them being put to use. The drinks mat and waste paper basket are just some of these.  Then some of them are a nice idea but would be as good at their given purpose as a chocolate teapot. The electronics cosies fall into this category because for me the purpose of those would be to protect the item from scratches while it's being carried about but all I can see is them causing more scratchies than they would have prevented.

Monday 5 March 2012

Bloggers Block?

Recently I have found that I start blog entries and then after writing a little I leave it in draft form and can't seem to finish it. I currently have seven posts that are sitting in draft form waiting to be finished.

Five of those are book reveiws as well as the Dublin post that has been mentiond more than once.

In other news since I get the first two zelda games and Four swords for my 3DS I have been trying to at least play every game in the zelda series (except the cdi games *shudder* if you dont understand why they provike that response watch this video).  So far I have managed to play all of them apart from the oracle games and I have finished Four Swords (the main quest at least).  I have made it a large chunk of the way thorugh the Minish Cap, Wind Waker (I like to think so) and Ocarina of Time. I haven't played very much of Majoras Mask and I keep dying in A Link to the Past.  Skyward Sword has been severly neglected (Scaldera scares me)

Crafty news! the knives chau inspired scarf is finished! it comes in at just over 3m.  My knitting for Dee-con is going good and I will definatly have more headbands than last year.  I'm also knitting a variety of chunky mug hugs and travel cup sleaves in coffee clolours so my table isn't all girly accessories.
The chicks are comming back big time (as in more than twenty of them). I might have acutual jewelry that's not knitted.

I'm amazed that this post has made it out of the draft stage.