The Heathen Housewife

Hi, friends. I know I’ve probably lost a lot of readers over the last few months, with the lack of posting. I’ve got so much to catch up on, so much to share with those of you still here and with the world. I’ve been busy enjoying my daily life, indulging in a creative spurt that just wouldn’t stop. I’ve had many thoughts every day about what to say on my blog, and then every evening it seems that one of many crafty or family or even job-related things seemed more important or fun.

Well. The need to blog has started to reassert itself. I’ve re-realized how important this little record of everyday life is to me. I know that if I can just jump back in and write every day, more or less, then the habit will sink back in and I will get my groove back. I miss you all, so give me another chance, and I will do my best to entertain you a little more often.

I owe an especial apology to the people who started that spiral sweater knit-along with me. You are not forgotten! I’ve just finished up a real-world pattern for it, and I have something special in store for all of you who are waiting for the knit-along finale. I promise a big post on it by the end of the weekend. You are not going to believe the spiral madness I’ve been up to. Meanwhile, I’m going to share another design project that I’m pretty excited about.

Back in October, I teased you all with a blurry picture of a couple of bags sitting on airport chairs, headed home with me from SOAR. Here’s a better picture of the one I’m talking about tonight…

I love this bag. LOVE this bag. It is so much fun to carry, and honestly it was kind of fun to make. I took this bag with me on my trip to Oregon for SOAR, and got compliments on in non-stop from the moment I walked up to the Starbucks barista at 6 a.m the first morning at the airport till the moment I climbed in the cab on my way home and the cabbie did a double-take on it. Not to mention the fiber-groupies at SOAR who couldn’t stop fondling it and oohing and ahhing over it. It was a great conversation opener, and people would drag their friends over to me at meals to “show them that bag they were telling them about”.

Let’s take a closer look…

Yes, it is made out of recycled pop tabs. The little things that open beverage cans. I crocheted them together, then lined it with a double-sided fabric tote bag, which was not nearly as difficult to make as I’d expected given my stand-offish relationship with my sewing machine ever since that wild experience with the slipcovers back in 2002. The yarn is some Lion Brand stuff, of all things – it’s their wool/stainless steel laceweight, which I had laying around, and which was a great color match, but not so great in the durability factor. I’ve had to repair it twice since I made it, but live and learn, the next bag(s) are and will be made of more durable yarns. More about that in a minute.

First, here’s a look at the inside. I love this fabric. The inside of the bag is this cute print, and there are even some pockets. It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but the outside of the lining is a solid-color canvas in a brick red. I wanted the extra thickness to help support the weight of the slinky pop-tabs, and also the solid color looks much better peeping through the tabs than a print would.

Okay, and I have to note here that while the actual doing of this project, the size, the shape, the figuring out how to put it all together came straight from my head, I had some awesome inspiration. There is an awesome cooperative from Brazil called Escama Studio that makes similar bags. Go look – you can buy them online, and they are made by artisans who would not otherwise have jobs in the local economy there. The stories are moving, and the bags are beautiful. I’d long admired their bags, and would have like to buy one, but for two reasons. Most of their bags are a bit smaller, and also they’re a bit pricey. Now, I mean, I think they’re worth every penny – especially after having made a couple myself and knowing how much work goes into them. But I really wanted to make one myself for the experience of it, and also so that I could say that I made it myself if someone asked.

Then, one day, I was at a neighbor’s house (Hi, Megan!) and noticed a giant Ziploc bag of pop tabs on her kitchen counter. She’s involved with our local schools, helping to sort out the trash-to-change program donations – you know, the soup can labels and the box tops for education and the milk container caps that all add up to big bucks for the extras at our schools. Someone kept donating these pop tabs, thinking that the schools could benefit from them, when really it is the Ronald McDonald House charities that wants them.

Well, the lovely Megan just laughed at me when she saw my eyes bug out over that bag of pop tabs. She said yes, I could have them, as long as I promised to make a donation to some charity in return. No problem! We don’t drink a lot of soda around here, and what beer we drink comes in bottles, so it would have taken me about a year well over a year to collect enough tabs for a bag that size. Trust me when I say that Megan was not laughing when she saw the finished bag. She was practically passed out on the floor in disbelief with how cool it is.

Alright, so the story’s not over. I knew after my trip and all the fiberistas flipping out over the prototype that I was not the only fiber-crazed individual ready to knit crochet a bag out of recycled aluminum. I ran off to my LYS and begged my bosses there to let me offer a class on the subject. They were a little dubious at first, especially with the issue of where on earth we would get all those pop tabs necessary to supply the students. But they realized that I wasn’t going to give up on this particular brand of crazy, and agreed to give it a try. I spent a couple weeks whipping up this little beauty:

A much smaller bag, small enough for students to get the work done between classes, small enough to require a lot less carbonated-beverage consumption to get from point A to point B. This one is crocheted with Euroflax linen yarn, which is super strong and also comes in lots of pretty colors. I even crocheted the lining so that my students won’t have to make friends with a sewing machine if they don’t want to, although they will have to install a zipper, which is much less scary than I, as a zipper installing virgin had imagined.

Here’s the brief rush-call-to-action. If you want to make your very own bag, the class does still have a few openings. It’s on Thursdays, starting January 21, and continuing on February 4 and 18 from 6-8:30 at The Yarnery in St. Paul.

But what, you might ask, did I end up doing about the pop tab supply? Oh, that is a fun story all its own. I simply called up the nice lady in charge of pop tab collections at the local Ronald McDonald House charities in town. I told her what I was up to and asked if I could a)donate some money to pay back for the tabs I’d redirected from the donation stream in the first place and b)buy a bunch more tabs. Turns out the market price for pop tab aluminum is pretty low right now, so the nice lady was thrilled to help me fill up the back of my minivan with just about as many pop tabs as I wanted. She also hinted strongly that she’d like me to crochet another bag for their Spring fundraising auction, and I hinted strongly that I could probably do that. Here’s the stash of unprocessed tabs – that green tub and the box and bags on top of it are completely full of tabs, and there is another huge pile on the other side of the room of kits all ready to go – washed, sorted, crazy sharp edges bent down or removed.

I’ve put together a very nice tutorial-style pattern for the small zippered clutch, and will probably be putting up some kits on etsy soon (once the class has gone and my students have had first crack at the available kits).

And that is the story of the pop tab bags so far. I’m off to start typing up a spiral sweater post to hopefully make it worth the wait. Meanwhile, hey! I know the knit-blogosphere has been dwindling all around. People are busy on Twitter and Ravelry and probably suffering the same kind of blogger fatigue that I’m trying to recover from. Let’s all go leave a nice comment on our favorite bloggers’ posts, give them some good feedback to keep them motivated. Thanks for sticking with me.

-Shelly

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 4:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.