SPRING VALLEY, Calif. -- A nearly blind East County woman has found a way to weave her passion for recycling and her desire to help the homeless into a single creative endeavor.
Wilma Groh, a Spring Valley resident, leads a group that turns used plastic bags into sleeping mats and purses. The finished goods are then donated to the homeless.
"We use bags to help the homeless," Groh said. "We've made over 30 mats for the homeless to sleep on."
Going by the name of Wilma's Wil-Mat Crochet Group, the organization has grown over the past six months from three volunteers to almost 30.
"The response has been unbelievable," Groh said. "To think, we took shopping bags and made something the homeless can be proud to carry."
Groh and her helpers neatly fold the plastic bags and cut them into ribbons. The ribbons, in turn, are spun into a ball of what Groh calls "plarn."
"Plarn is rolled-up plastic," Groh said. "Instead of yarn, we call it plarn."
Groh and her group crochet the plarn into mats. It takes about 500 plastic bags to make one mat.
And the fine craftsmanship is remarkable, given the fact that Groh is almost completely blind.
"My left eye is completely gone," Groh said. "In my right eye all I can see is the outline of large shapes. Because I can't see good, I have to feel every stitch."
Macular degeneration had been dimishing her vision slowly through the years, but the almost complete loss of vision struck her just a few years ago. Since then, the former female truck driver has found purpose in her new charitable work and, despite her disability, maintains an extremely positive attitude.
When asked how old she was, Groh joked, "As old as dirt!"
She said she doesn't keep track of exactly how old she is, but she admitted that she was born in 1922.
More information on her charitable group can be found on the Wilma's Wil-Mat Crochet Group Facebook page.
