Stuffed
Published On: July 10, 2021

The next step is to stuff this little buddy nice and full. I’ve been making a lot of stuffed things lately, and I’ve come to really like these little plastic pellets.⁠


They’re heavy and make the finished thing feel solid in your hand, which I find deeply soothing in some way I can’t fully explain. So, they’re a good fit for me, and I will continue to use them because I love the way they behave.⁠

But, every time I’ve shown them, I’ve had a couple of people getting a bit snarky about ‘plastic, the scandal, I’m shocked, how could you.’

So, two things…⁠

First, if you don’t want to use plastic, you absolutely do not have to! I always go out of my way in the patterns to explain that you can use different stuffing material to achieve different results, and that you should use whatever you like best (for example, I wouldn’t use plastic for kids or pets because there’s always a chance the fabric might tear or pellets might work their way out, and anyone who can’t be trusted not to eat stuff shouldn’t have things filled with these).⁠

Second, while single use plastic is often problematic (not always, sometimes it’s literally lifesaving and it’s important to remember that, but often). But for stuff where you put into use and then keep right on using for years and years and years, plastic is often the best choice (think about your car or your refrigerator or the coating on the wires in your walls).⁠

So I’m totally behind reducing your personal consumption of things like plastic cups and water bottles and bags (though as with a lot of things, most of that responsibility should be on corporations and governments, not on individual consumers, but corporations have worked really hard to shift that sense of responsibility to individuals). ⁠

But if you have extra energy to snark at someone on the internet about plastic, especially if your concern is plastic ending up in the ocean, talk to the folks who make fishing gear, which is by far the largest source of plastic trash in the water, not to someone making a little decoration that’s going to hang out in their house for the foreseeable future.

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