You know I hate to waste stuff and love to recycle when I can. So I crafted this Christmas wreath of red plastic netting from grocery store produce. (Photo by Laura Groch)

I had to show you my colorful Christmas wreath. Look closely, and you’ll see it’s made of the red plastic netting that my grocery store uses to package for-quick-sale fruits and veggies. I had been saving these lengths of netting for something — I wasn’t quite sure what, but I knew it would be good for something besides scrubbing — and then hit upon the idea of a wreath.

I already had an empty wreath form — two concentric wire circles, held together by some other welding — and basically just knotted the lengths of netting together as I wrapped them around the wreath form. That was step one.

Step two was figuring out how to attach loops of the netting to the form. This was trickier than I’d anticipated, because the mesh lengths are short (usually no more than 12″), and there really was no good way to attach them to the wreath form. I tried to pull them through with a crochet hook, with varying results. Tried to hook them into the loop I’d knotted previously, also with varying results.  The finished product doesn’t exactly look uniform. Oh well, onward!

Step three: Fluffing up the mesh loops so they covered my fumbled attempts at tying knots and adding mesh. You can see some of the knotted ends, but they blend in fairly well, I think.

Step four: Dress it up with some ribbon, pine cones, small toys, whatever strikes your fancy (and whatever you can attach to the wreath). Hang and enjoy!

I am still mulling how to use the netting in another wreath, trying to figure out how to best work with it and secure it to a form. Maybe gathering the lengths with a few stitches to secure them would work. Or maybe they could be stuffed with white cotton and knotted to form some garlanding.

If you have any ideas, please pass them along. I have plenty of netting left and acquire more with every trip to the grocery. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying my recycled wreath, and hope you have enjoyed it too!

(c) copyright Laura Groch 2017