Milkbag Mats
The teacher who does many of our eco projects and charity drives picked up on this activity a few months back. She read in the paper about a woman in a nearby church who led a group of women who collect milkbags, cut them apart and then crochet them together into mats to be sent to the tent communities in Haiti. She was impressed enough with the project that she asked the woman to come do a presentation at our school so we could start up our own school group to weave together milkbag mats.
That teacher came to me early on, as we've worked together on the school Green Committee and had our two classes working in the school garden together and selling Smarties for charity. She also knows that I like crafts, so she wanted someone who could learn the weaving technique quickly and be able to teach other teachers.
Turns out the weaving technique is a simple single crochet using a large crochet hook and long, long strings of plastic strips cut from the milkbags. The woman from the church came in to teach a volunteer group of students how to cut and attach strips of milkbags together and she also gave a lesson to interested teachers in how to crochet the "plastic yarn". I've crocheted off and on in my life (thanks,
artbeco :)), so I was able to pick up the technique pretty quickly, despite her being right-handed and me left-handed :).
Over the next few weeks we fell into a lovely rhythm. The entire school started bringing in milkbags from home and on Monday and Wednesday at lunch the student volunteers would come to the library to make balls of plastic yarn, while a handful of teachers would come in to supervise them and work on their woven mats. At first one of the Gr. 3 teachers and I had a friendly rivalry going to see who would finish their first mat first, but I eventually had to bow down to her crazy speed. I'm about three-quarters of the way through my first mat right now (I only work on it at school and continue cross-stitching in spare time at home) whereas she has finished her first mat and is a fourth of the way into her second mat! My student teacher for this year got hooked on weaving a mat, too, though she tells me her mother steals it all the time when she's out because she enjoys doing it, too :).
The woman from the church came back recently to help us "trouble shoot" our mats, which as you can see from my photo were kind of wobbly at first. We also learned that she is in negotiations to travel to Haiti herself to bring together groups of women and start them into independent businesses weaving the mats and selling them as well. At that point it would be a matter of collecting the milkbags here and shipping them to the women in Haiti to weave and sell, though she said she'd continue weaving mats just because she and her group enjoy doing it.
So do we! It looks like our "Milkmats for Haiti" project will continue into the new school year next fall, too.
That teacher came to me early on, as we've worked together on the school Green Committee and had our two classes working in the school garden together and selling Smarties for charity. She also knows that I like crafts, so she wanted someone who could learn the weaving technique quickly and be able to teach other teachers.
Turns out the weaving technique is a simple single crochet using a large crochet hook and long, long strings of plastic strips cut from the milkbags. The woman from the church came in to teach a volunteer group of students how to cut and attach strips of milkbags together and she also gave a lesson to interested teachers in how to crochet the "plastic yarn". I've crocheted off and on in my life (thanks,
artbeco :)), so I was able to pick up the technique pretty quickly, despite her being right-handed and me left-handed :). Over the next few weeks we fell into a lovely rhythm. The entire school started bringing in milkbags from home and on Monday and Wednesday at lunch the student volunteers would come to the library to make balls of plastic yarn, while a handful of teachers would come in to supervise them and work on their woven mats. At first one of the Gr. 3 teachers and I had a friendly rivalry going to see who would finish their first mat first, but I eventually had to bow down to her crazy speed. I'm about three-quarters of the way through my first mat right now (I only work on it at school and continue cross-stitching in spare time at home) whereas she has finished her first mat and is a fourth of the way into her second mat! My student teacher for this year got hooked on weaving a mat, too, though she tells me her mother steals it all the time when she's out because she enjoys doing it, too :). The woman from the church came back recently to help us "trouble shoot" our mats, which as you can see from my photo were kind of wobbly at first. We also learned that she is in negotiations to travel to Haiti herself to bring together groups of women and start them into independent businesses weaving the mats and selling them as well. At that point it would be a matter of collecting the milkbags here and shipping them to the women in Haiti to weave and sell, though she said she'd continue weaving mats just because she and her group enjoy doing it.
So do we! It looks like our "Milkmats for Haiti" project will continue into the new school year next fall, too.