Project Bag O'Sunshine

Based on the insight I received so far on the last post, here is my proposal. Let me know any further thoughts, criticisms, or patterns for crocheting cars. (Just kidding) :)

1) I am nominating arian_diana and doclegs to be our sources of information, if they are willing (and since they have already started gathering information, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Any specifications about bag sizes, colors, etc should come from them. They are "in the know" as it were.

2) Ideally, what I would love to happen is to be able to send our knitted or crocheted bags to a couple of different people, likely non-crafters who want to play, who would go to a Wal-Mart or some other kind of discount store and buy a travel size toothpaste, soap...stuff like that. These items usually can be found for about 50 cents, so I'm thinking filling 2 bags would be about equivalent to buying one skein of yarn or so.

3) If the above does not happen, that's cool.

4) Depending on what our informants find out, i think it would be ideal to have a point person to whom we can send our finished products to. Then, when maybe 20 are collected, that person can drop those off to the VA place. This way, they will not have to pay for postage, and the VA Hospital will not have to worry about opening boxes and all of that kind of stuff (arian_diana, I'm kind of looking at you for this since you mentioned your local hospital, but it could be anyone).

Now...supplement, comment, complain...all ideas are welcome :)

A weird idea

So, we got an anonymous comment on the previous post that let to a US Troop Care Package Site, and that gave me a weird idea.

One of the things they ask for on there are little carrying bags for the folks at Walter Reed so that they can carry around their toothpaste and stuff like that. They want bags with handles so that folks with crutches or other issues can handle the bags easily.

I got to thinkin...bags are pretty darned easy really, whether you are a crocheter or a knitter. At the most basic, you make two squares and sew 3 sides together. Then you have rockstars who can do a lot more.

So what if we made these little bags, no settled upon pattern but out of bright colors (maybe red white & blue, but not necessarily)?

Additionally, if someone would want to do this, we could send the bags to a person and maybe they could contribute by buying travel sized toothpastes, soaps, stuff like that, a couple of items, totalling like, $1, and those could be put in the bag. Each little package would be an item.

Now, my only concern with something like this is that I think we would want to a) make sure that we send these to a place that realllllly could use them. Maybe someone could research another VA hospital that is less famous than Walter Reed, that might not get as many donations.

Additionally, we'd probably want to wait and send a huge amount in a box. I think doing onesie twosie might just cause paper trouble for whomever we're donating to.

Is this sounding like a starting point to anyone? Ideas? Ideas?