Welcome!

Hello, everyone! This is my first foray into the world of blogging, so please bear with me.

As you know, this idea grew out of the "What's your comfort item" post at Shakesville, as a way of providing comforting snugglies to Shakers who might be having a rough time. I've been looking for some good sewing projects lately, so this fit right in for me.
I admit that I took the idea wholesale from some sewing charity groups, in which people send in quilt/knit squares to make larger blankets. This has several advantages: there's not a lot of work to do individually, it's a great way to use leftover scraps from other projects, and the finished project is a visual representation that a lot of different people care. There are a lot of issues to deal with to start with, so I want to address those first.

1. Preserving pseudonymity for everyone. This, to me, is crucial. There are dozens of important reasons people might not want their username associated with them in real life, me included, and I want to respect that.
A. Melissa and I talked about using Disqus here too, but she realized that might make posts here visible on other blogs using Disqus. Instead, I'll have her verify that emails/usernames match. That way we can make sure that the person posting here as whoever is the same one we think it is, not someone who has grabbed the name.
B. I'm keeping the viewing closed to invitees at the moment. This is more for my peace of mind, since I don't have the time or expertise to deal with a possible onslaught of visitors right now. I'll probably open it later, when I'm more comfortable with how I can handle it.
C. I'll have a P.O. box set up next payday, so I have a mailing address that's tied to my general area, but not to me personally. The post office is pretty good at not losing mail, so anyone sending squares can do so without a return address if they want and be pretty sure it will get to me. As for the recipients, I'll have to ask Melissa for their contact email, let them know, and then see if they want to give me their address or if they feel they need to decline rather than let out their own mailing information.
D. Although Blogger is set up to link to a gmail account, if you don't want to log in that way that's perfectly fine. It also lets you just type a username in without linking to any email. By the time you get here you're good to go, so I don't think there's any need to ask for specific logins to comment.

2. Legal issues. Melissa alerted me to the possibility that this might run into contest/sweepstakes regulations, given that we would be deciding on someone to get it and then sending them an actual object. I've checked the state regulations of my state (the sender) and don't see that we would, but I've contacted the charity division of the Attorney General's office and am waiting to hear back from them, just to be sure. If it does fall under those rules and there is no way around it, I'll let everyone know ASAP. I won't set up the first round until I know for sure how to do it properly.

3. How it would work. I thought we could have a nominating process on a regular basis, say once a month, to see who seems to be in most need of a pick-me-up. My first thought was to do it on the blog, but if that makes it seem like too much of a contest (see #2), then it could be that people send me suggestions by email and I post the one who got the most mentions. Three weeks or so then to get a square to me, I'd put them together, post a picture of the finished project here and contact the person who gets it to arrange for sending. If once a month ends up being too onerous, then we could go to every other month. That leads into the next point:

4. Not taking up too much time. The last thing I want is for this to feel like a chore for anyone, ever. That is partly why I went with the 7x7 inch square model. That's the size used by a few of the charities that do group projects, and is good in that it doesn't take too many squares to build up size, but isn't too big for a single person to do in a fairly short time, and is a good size to use up spare odds and ends. The time element is also why I'd like to decide on who gets the finished project before asking for submissions. There are always going to be some people you'd shed blood for, and others you really like but really can't take the time for, and some you honestly might not care to do it for, and that's all ok. If there's a recipient attached to it first, you have more information to decide with, and also possibly more knowledge of how to approach your square (favorite color of that person, for instance).

5. More specifics.
A. 7x7 square, made of anything you want, as long as it's soft and flexible and I can sew it to other stuff.
B. If it's a quilt or other fabric square, please be sure the edges are finished somehow, either bound, or sewn inside out and turned, or zigzagged, or something of the sort in case it ends up next to a yarn square. I thought about trying to match all yarn to yarn and all fabric to fabric, but that gets complicated. As long as I keep any fabric to the inside and yarn on the outside, the stretch/twist integrity of the whole thing should be fine. I think.
C. I'm thinking that a 12-square piece would be large enough to be cuddly, but small enough to be doable. If there's overwhelming response, maybe 16. If there were more submissions than that, I'd ask if anyone would pre-donate to the next project, rather than sometimes sending out large blankets and sometimes small. That leads into the next issue:

6. Making sure no one feels like this is a popularity contest. I want to keep this entirely separate from Shakesville in terms of discussion, because I don't want anyone feeling bad if they didn't get "chosen" for a blanket. That was another reason to keep the viewing closed for now. To me this feels like a "secret santa" kind of project, and I'd hate for anyone to feel let down. That's also the reason to keep them all the same size regardless of response, so one person doesn't get a smaller one than another.

7. Other stuff. Melissa also suggested this might be a neat way to be sort of Shakesville-Esty-esque, with people getting together to trade off projects and such. I think there are definitely regulations on selling things online, so if we ever wanted to do that I think it would be more in a Craigslist fashion, where this would just be a place to link people up and do their own deals privately. That's a much more complex setup, so for now just keep it in the back of your minds.

8. Other stuff part 2. I love the teaspoon idea, to have a tagged square that has a teaspoon on it. I'm not sure whether the best way to do it is for me to do that square every time, or if someone else wants to be on call for that one, or if when we decide on a recipient someone calls dibs on the teaspoon square. That might be the easiest way to do it and not lock someone into always making teaspoons.

Whew! I think that just about covers how I thought it all might be sketched out. Comments, criticisms, changes?


ETA: Oh, bugger. I just sent an invitation to myself at another email address to see how it shows up, and it says that one has to have a google account to access it permanently if it's closed. This means everyone would have to create a google account if they don't have one, or create another if they don't want their usual one pegged to it. I think I can go ahead and open it up since I haven't advertised the URL and have all of the Blogger feed/search options turned off. I'll still give out the name via email only, which should keep the driveby traffic minimal to nonexistent.