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.

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.

Help the planet (and your bottom line) with online auctions: shopgoodwill.com

Like an angler with a bountiful fishing hole, bargain hunters like to keep their best sources secret. While I'm sure to draw the ire of other cheapskates, it seems wrong not to tell people about this cornucopia of savings.

All proceeds benefit a charitable non-profit. Buying resale items keeps usable goods out of landfills (longer) and prevents redundant manufacturing. It can also save consumers a fortune.

We married young, so in the first years of our marriage, Jim and I were lucky to buy the essentials. By the time he got the first professional job in our family, even a single dollar had meaning. Around that time I discovered antique malls and consignment sales. After a while I started looking into thrift shops. Now, over a decade later, I answer most "Where did you get that?" inquiries with some form of resale or reuse answer (thrift shop, yard sale, consignment, gift, loan from a friend).

When we're clearing out the house, I like to give usable to goods to friends and some of my favorite charity shops. It was at one of these drop-offs, when I stumbled upon shopgoodwill.com.

In its early days, I visited and found mostly tchotchkes requiring dusting, dolls that give me nightmares, and handbags. Beyond the amusement of the occasional suggestive monkey teapot, I didn't think it had much promise. But I didn't think the Web would catch on either (didn't Gopher already offer everything minus the images and sound? Is that really such a big deal? In my defense the early web featured the blink tag WAY TOO much).

In the time since my initial introduction shopgoodwill.com has grown into a real beauty.

The savings are mind-blowing. This cool metal dollhouse's current bid is $10.99, while an identical dollhouse (possibly with fewer furniture pieces) sold online for $130 at an antique shop. The antique store has better lighting and photographs, but are they really worth the additional $119.01?

Not only can you find many of the original Fisher Price Little People buildings- from the barn to the A-frame house (that I wanted to live in) to the great merry-go-round to the school, you can also buy NEW stuff and current electronics.

Just cruising through I've found new in package games for systems ranging from Leapster to DS to Xbox 360 to PS3 to didj to PSP.

Want a DS or a Leapster?

Are you shopping for someone who likes Lego, American Girl, Hannah Montana, Star Wars, or Sesame Street?

And who doesn't love this vintage Fisher Price tabletop kitchen stove (presently with a $6 bid)?

Shipping seems to be reasonable. If you are willing to drive to the selling Goodwill, you can often arrange for pickup.

I can trust you to keep this under your hat, right? We wouldn't want the place overrun with hipsters looking for Elvis memorabilia.

***Baby Toolkit is a couple of geek parents with more opinions than should be shared. While we shop at Goodwill Industries and drop off lots of unwanted stuff there (including review samples), we are not affiliated with Goodwill Industries nor have we received any compensation for this review (beyond the joy of sharing something awesome with our readers).