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Coffee Sacks
Saw this great Scarecrow Kit on Hen & Hammock and being a dedicated crafter thought I’d try one out for myself. I bought 10 coffee sacks on Ebay for £7 - bargain! I’m pretty sure they’re giving them away out the back of nearby specialist coffee shops, but I had a rotten cold and couldn’t face the mad conversation which was likely to ensue. That’s the beauty of Ebay - anonymity.
Anyways, they arrived in a big box and I hid them away before my husband could raise an eyebrow. They’re actually rather nice things - lovely jute, loose weave, cool prints, and there are millions of them cluttering up landfills so they tick the recycling boxes too. And obviously they smell of luverly rich, dark coffee. Now I’ve got them cluttering up the spare room, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get round to doing anything scarecrowlike with them anytime soon (what was I thinking? We’ve only got a tiny garden anyway), so I’m thinking of other uses … like upholstering a chair, could be great.
If you feel driven to do the same, use items like Hen & Hammock’s peg bag for inspiration, and Etsy have a heap of cool bags and purses for sale made out of coffee sacks (with varying results). If you can’t be bothered to go to your local coffee outlet, I’d be wary of paying anything over £1 each for these things. Although they’re invaluable to the crafter, there are thousands of them out there and they’re not hard to come by. Another resource is coffee community forums, such as Too Much Coffee, where coffee shop owners are posting questions about what to do with their sacks!
They’re the poor, modern cousins of the mightily expensive vintage linen grain sacks and I can see big things for them.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time … I keep reading about crafters re-cycling their plastic bags by cutting them into strips and either knitting or crocheting them into new bags. Great idea I thought, I’ll give it a whirl. Dug out the old crochet stick, found a pattern, off I went.
As a seasoned crafter I’m used to needing a lot of patience and paying attention to detail, suffering for my craft yada yada, but occasionally there are projects when I think life’s just too short and this is one of them. This occurred to me when my fingers were getting red raw from handling the plastic and my right hand was shaped like a rictus claw, it looked like a spat out, splatted piece of bubblegum and I’d only done about … well you can see for yourself.
| So, let’s recap … it was meant to look like this: |
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| It ended up looking like this: |
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| And it made my finger look like this: |
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Recycling as part of your craftery is a very good idea, I’m behind it all the way, keep up the good work chaps … but plastic bags are just horrible, doesn’t matter how you use them. They feel nasty and the end project just isn’t satisfying (well, not when I do it anyway). Having said that, there are some interesting ideas for fusing on the ‘Craft:’ website … maybe my plastic bag days aren’t over yet …
So the little fella (Mr W Jnr) has finally settled into nursery 2 days a week and the lovely staff look a lot more relaxed when I turn up now, rather than the tense wary looks they seemed to wear when I arrived or left with a wailing ball of upset.
They’re having an Xmas dress-up day on Tuesday so I thought I’d be a good parent, a good craftswoman and a good recycler all in one and bodge something together in the minimum of time … et voila!
Trousers and hat started life as a hooded zip-up thingy … I cut off the arms and sewed them into trousers and the hat was made out of the back of the thingy with the bottom rib as the hat cuff (I know I know, it would’ve been easier to cut up the hood, but I tried that and cut it too small - he’s got such a big bonce!).
I knitted the cardi before he was born … it’s a bit small for him now but I managed to squeeze his podgy little form into it. He hasn’t worn it much really, but I knew it’d come in useful sooner or later!
P.S. I guess it was inevitable really but we pitched up at nursery all proud and excited … and no-one else had bothered, bar a small boy in what appeared to be a Ninja Turtle outfit. Oh well, Lucaberry loved his hat and wouldn’t take it off all day apparently so it was all worth it.
![Sirdar \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-363.jpg "Sirdar \")
![Easily Made \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-362.jpg "Easily Made \")
![Emu \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-361.jpg "Emu \")
![Greenock \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-360.jpg "Greenock \")