The gauge is incredibly flexible, especially as the bag will stretch and mold itself to your usage over time. The bag is light-weight and much stronger than the component shopping bags, but can’t be compressed into a very small space.

You can find instructions for creating plastic yarn by doing a web search for “plarn.” I favor the chained loops technique, which creates a two-ply yarn, over the spiral+square knot technique, which creates a one-ply yarn.