Project Awesome 2010: Soldiers' Angels (like Charlie's Angels with yarn)

In a continuance of last year's Project Awesome, a few friends crocheted (Magpie Art and Mimi & Moe's Mom) and I knitted lap blankets for VA medical centers through the nonprofit group Soldiers' Angels. For our project deadline, we chose Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Everyone brought their blankets to ship and we enjoyed an evening of soup, pitch-in food, and games.

Friends and family who don't crochet or knit provided the shipping funds. Earlier this week our blankets arrived at a VA facility where they will be given to veterans along with our thanks and best wishes.

Knitting this blanket did a lot for me. Building a blanket from yarn is a meditative exercise in perseverance. Each individual stitch contributes to a useful whole. Small labors (even the imperfect stitches) build into something tangible. The construction is a hopeful metaphor that renews my belief in the value of individual actions. I don't think my blanket will change the world, but it is soft and warm.

If you want to beat the mid-Winter blues with some uplifting activism:

• Soldiers' Angels offers a diverse array of projects that support troops in the field as well as wounded veterans.

• There's still time to crochet or knit a scarf for Craft Hope's Project 6 which is sending handmade scarves to the Orphan Foundation's Red Scarf program. The project deadline is February 14.
  

***Baby Toolkit is the independent opinion of a couple geek parents with more yarn than time. We benefit richly (but not monetarily) from our Project Awesome friends and goodhearted programs like Craft Hope and Soldiers' Angels.

Dock those tails: Streamlining adjustable elastic pants

Pants handles [pænts hndls] pl n - the flappy bits of buttonhole elastic that stick out of a skinny kid's waistband when the pants are adequately cinched.

When I was a beanpole kid, I spent about 50% of my waking hours hiking my pants up. The other 50% of the time I was wearing highwaters that fit my minimal girth.

I celebrate the advent of pants with adjustable elastic. The only drawback of these brilliant inventions is the extra 4 to 8 inches of elastic that inevitably emerge from the pants waistband like tiny alien arms that sway giddily with every step.

While daydreaming of ways to batten down the tentacles (without cutting them off), I considered adding a second button on each side. At best it sounded labor intensive. At my present speed of mending, I could probably get all Ranger's size 5 pants adjusted by the time he's wearing size 7s.

Then the clouds parted, trumpets blew, and I saw IT. The no-sew, no-fuss solution.

The elastic anchoring hack is so unbelievably obvious that I consulted with other parents to see if I was the only one who hadn't thought of it.

Hang onto your hats, people. You can start docking those pants tails immediately (and humanely).

1) Adjust waist size normally. Secure elastic to button.

2) Take the tail and fold it back toward the button. Find a buttonhole near the dangling end of the tail (or near the center of the tail if it's really long). Loop that buttonhole over the tail.
3) Happy dance (preferably with music) and congratulate yourself on a job well-done.

***Baby Toolkit is an irregular communique from some geek parents notable for both spleen and silly dancing. We gain no profit (beyond bringing cutting edge obviousness to the Internets) from this discussion of fixing fancy pants for the wee-waisted. Photos: Baby Toolkit (c) 2009, some rights reserved.

Brightest Bulb in the Book: Simplify Auto Light Replacement

I'm not sure why the numbers in my car's auto manual never match the brands that my local auto parts store carries. I carry in the book, but usually end up resorting to the print or electronic directory. The whole process takes at least five minutes. With a toddler and perilously stacked columns of wiper fluid gallons all around, those short minutes allow a lot of opportunity for movie montage style chaos.

With the right replacement bulbs, I copied the maker and bulb number into the manual. After both bulbs were used, I put the cardboard backing into the manual by the replacement instructions.

This time, when my brake light indicator lit up the dash, I pulled the cardboard out of the manual. It took me less than a minute to find the right bulb even with a change in packaging.

When the new pack is empty, the new card will replace the old one.

***Baby Toolkit is the independent opinion of a couple geek parents.

Mountains Beyond Mountains: Medical Relief for Haiti

A few years ago, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder's excellent biography of Dr. Paul Farmer. The book (like Farmer's life) reminds me of the immense power of a determined individual.

Dr. Farmer found his place and purpose in an impoverished place not so far from our own borders.

His organization, Partners In Health, has been serving rural Haiti since 1987. Now, although two hours from Port-au-Prince, earthquake victims are arriving for treatment. A local church is being used for additional treatment space.

Partners In Health is an American foundation born out of Haiti. This organization is one of the most knowledgeable and prepared to serve Haiti. Within hours of the quake they were already working to route critical supplies through the Dominican Republic. Their Stand with Haiti site offers news from their Haitian clinic.

Please consider helping them help others. Giving (according to psychological research) is one of the most gratifying ways to spend your money.

The Amazon links in this post benefit Partners in Health as will any additional Amazon shopping through these links.

***Baby Toolkit is the work of a some opinionated geek parents. Partners in Health is an AMAZING non-profit humanitarian organization created by a hard-working doctor with genius and compassion. These opinions are freely given and we have no undisclosed relationship with Partners in Health (beyond the sizable intrinsic benefits in giving). These are good people with insight; Help them change lives.

New Prepositions: Dancing with the Squares

You wouldn't guess it to see us (or to see us dance), but Jim and I have taken years of social dance classes. As generally graceless people, we've been able to endlessly repeat beginner's classes without arousing any suspicion of prior experience.

Over the years, Jim and I have taken lessons for everything from sewing to stained glass to guitar to greeting card writing.

A few weeks ago a small roadside sign caught my eye. A new course? I called Jim, he looked up the website, and before I knew it, he had signed us up for square dance lessons.

Those who know me would suspect this to be something I resist (like romantic comedies) or something undertaken solely for snark value (like watching regional beauty pageants on television). But peeling back the layers of this onion, one can find a wide-eyed girl who secretly adored every moment of square dancing in 5th grade gym class.

The $5 weekly fee (per couple) for a 2 hour class appeals to my inner (and outer) cheapskate.

On the way to our first class, we talked about the sheer pleasure of some colorful new prepositions in our lives. "In square dance class..."

Yep. Colorful lives are drawn from a wide array of colorful prepositional phrases and experiences.

What's new in your lexicon?

Behold, the Angels of Destruction*: Best Recall This Week

The holidays stress me out. I'd rather clean cookies out of the VCR* than buy gifts that evoke a very merry "meh" from their recipients.

But today the CPSC delivered unto me a seasonal greeting that appeals to my coal black heart.

Precious Moments angels may burn down your house. Starting with your Christmas tree.

That's no star, it's an incendiary device.

Platter-eyed cherubim just got edgy.

Merry bah humbug to y'all!

*Yes, we still have a VCR because Richard Scarry DVDs are impossible to find while the VHS tapes are plentiful and cheap on the resale market. Also, the Raptor likes to trap her hand inside while using the flippy door for toy storage. Also, we use it to watch the excellent Notes Alive! Nutcracker.

**Yes, the title of this post was stolen wholesale from Keith Donahue's book. The book's title is easily its best attribute. Check out his earlier The Stolen Child if you're looking for something to read.

***And while we're on books, I just asked the library to buy Scroogenomics: Why We Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays. This, rather than visions of sugarplums, dances in my head.

Baby Toolkit is written by geek parents who are having a hard time embracing the holidays. We're Amazon affiliates, so if you're just dying to buy something through our Amazon links we get a percentage of the profits. We have no affiliation with Precious Moments, the CPSC, or other media we mention, and we may get a cease & desist notice for the Firestarter cover hack, so you absolutely didn't see it here.

CirKis by Hasbro: Circles + Stars= Fun

There's a great deal at Amazon* today: Hasbro's new family game CirKis is only $7.99 which is 60% off its standard $20 price.

Jim, Ranger, and I first played CirKis at GenCon 2009. I expected a knock-0ff of Mattel's clever Blokus territory acquisition game; the tiles, the shallow grid board, and even the names struck me as similar. Instead CirKis reveals a very different mechanism and strategy despite the superficial similarities.

In Blokus, players arrange luminescent tiles on a standard grid to acquire as much of the playing surface as possible. At the end of the game the winner is the player holding the most tiles.

With CirKis the grid is a repeating geometry of stars and circles. The tiles are odd polygons varying greatly in size and shape. It takes more discernment to lay tiles, but there are still multiple options for playing each tile. CirKis exercises lateral, spacial, and strategic thinking simultaneously; that sounds complicated, but Ranger really enjoyed playing.

CirKis' scoring is ongoing throughout the game. A player earns points when they complete a circle or star, and the winner is the first to reach 40 points.

While Ranger currently needs help playing (at age 4), I don't think he's far off from playing independently. For now, he can happily play with it as a tile drawing toy (which helps develop his placement skills for future game play).

The pieces are strong and plentiful, so this isn't something I'd want scattered all over the living room floor after the lights are out, but the game looks like it should hold up to regular use by children.

We tried to buy a pre-release copy at GenCon, but CirKis was entirely sold out and even the demonstration copies were reserved. I'm actually glad we didn't get one then because I was able to get two for less than $20 with this current sale price.

CirKis is a great game for families and adults. It scales nicely to different ages and abilities; while a preschooler can be involved with assistance it can also be very competitively played by adults.

*Baby Toolkit is an Amazon affiliate, and we make a small percentage off purchases made after clicking through from our site. We're geek parents who LOVE games. We have no extra-consumer relationship with Hasbro or Mattel nor have we received compensation from them or their affiliates for this post.