Bags of comfort
Trenton woman weaves plastic into something practical
Last summer, Kathy Gratto suffered a knee injury that put her out of work and kept her at home.
And while she doesn’t get out much, she can never be accused of being idle.
“I’ve got to keep busy, so that’s what I do — I craft.”
Her Trenton home is filled with subtle signs of her craftsmanship.
The pull-string curtain in the bathroom is actually an old beach mat, and a shining wall-hanging of a fish above the little sink was fashioned entirely out of melted compact disks.
Even the living room floor, a plain plywood affair, has been given a fresh shine with 15 dollars-worth of rolling paper that’s been wrinkled, flattened and dipped into a mixture of water and glue before being laid down and topped with soft paints that create a kind of mosaic in the centre of the room.
“I’ve always had this knack for taking something nasty and turning it pleasing to the eye,” she says. “Maybe it’s because I’ve never had that much money. You had to learn how to pinch a penny.”
But her latest project, which she worked on throughout the fall, is going to make a big difference in the life of someone, perhaps in desperate need of extra warmth and comfort. And all it cost was time — and 700 plastic grocery bags.
In Kathy’s hands, this trash was material perfectly designed to create a three-and-a-half-footwide and six-foot-long sleepingmat.
“I thought to myself, it doesn’t cost anyone anything, it’s not out of pocket, and it’s taking care of recycling material which will end up god knows where,” Gratto said of the mat which is at Viola’s Place Homeless Shelter in New Glasgow. “And it’ll be a barrier between the person using it and the ground.”
Using an ordinary hook, Gratto crocheted the plastic together. She lays matching bags down on top of each other, folding them up like a burrito and then cutting them width-wise with a regular pair of scissors. The results are hoops of plastic which she then joins together to create her plastic yarn, or “plarn” as she jokingly calls it.
Even though her project is finished, Gratto is still accepting donations of plastic bags from her congregation at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I’ll still take them,” says Gratto enthusiastically. “The mat project is going to continue.”
Gratto is the latest community member to put her name down to volunteer at Viola’s Place, and she’s hoping to teach anyone interested about how they can turn their pieces of garbage into something that can make a difference.
“I’ve never been homeless, but I’ve been one paycheque away,” said Gratto. “We all get caught up in our own lives, but we ought to think about other people, too. And we can also save some space in the landfills by turning this stuff into something useful.”