Geeking Along with Child’s Play

Hello all you fabulous Nerds!! I hope that 2022 is off to a good start for everyone. Or, if not good, at least a neutral start. I’d be really hyped to look back on 2022 and feel neutral about it. That would be an excellent change. On the upside, 2020 and 2021 are officially behind us, and I think 2022 would need to pull out a Kraken* in order to top them, so I feel like the odds are in our favor.

It’s the second Sunday of January which means it’s time for more sweet Geek-A-Long action. Last week Jac popped in to tell you our big news: The 2022 Geek-A-Long is SOCKS!! We chose socks for a lot of reasons, chief among them that we wanted this year to be chill. Last year was a lot. In 2020, we opted to do a sweater rather than a blanket to have some extra fun in a year that was short on fun. We upped the ante pretty significantly in 2021 with a truly ridiculous double knit exercise in collective madness.

Featuring 24 straight weeks of charts, this was the largest design project I’ve ever taken on. The final sweater weighed approximately as much as a mid-size sedan and outgrew my largest project bag before I was 1/2 way done. It was a wild ride and we had a blast. So think of this year’s socks as the cool down after a hard work out. We wanted something portable, easy to come in and out of without feeling like you fell behind, that we can all take it easy with.

You do not need to know anything about making socks to participate! Starting next week and running through March, we’ll be here each Sunday with a topic in socks. A Sopic, if you will. Early February we’ll be releasing a free pattern for a starter sock. It will help you practice the sock skills we’ve been covering to get you ready to go for the first GAL sock of the year in March.

Before we get that started next week, I wanted to take some time today to talk about Child’s Play! It’s been a while since we’ve talked about them, and it’s long overdue. Without CP, there would be no Geek-A-Long.

As we equip our party to delve into year 8 (EIGHT!!) of the Geek-A-Long, please take a short rest with me to munch on the goodberry** of nerds giving back:

Founded in 2003 by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade, Child’s Play was initially created by the writer and illustrator as a reaction to the bad press that gamers were getting. I know it was and unfathomable number of years ago (I was in undergrad in 2003 o_O) but here is the original Penny Arcade Post about Child’s Play, from long long ago in the Early Aughts. Since then, Child’s Play has grown enormously, and is no longer the “Penny Arcade Charity”, but rather a fully formed entity in it’s own right.

In 2015 Child’s Play added domestic violence shelters to it’s roster of supported hospitals. Today, in addition to the network of over 185 hospitals worldwide supported by Child’s Play, they provide equipment and games to shelters, and have added a grant program that can offset the costs of specialists and equipment to improve the lives of children in hospitals.

Did you know you could get Child’s Play Merch? You can support their incredible work by donating directly to Child’s Play through our widget (100% of that goes to CP, using our widget just helps us track how much our community has raised), but you can also check out their awesome Merch Store! I have one of the light weight hoodies and I love it. It’s the kind of thing that I wear every time it’s clean. It usually doesn’t make it all the way to a drawer from my laundry basket, I just put it back on.

~Megan-Anne

*That wasn’t a challenge, universe. You don’t need to prove anything to us by whipping out a Kracken.

**This year’s theme isn’t D&D.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. Here is a direct link to our official donation page benefiting the charity. Please help us raise $1,000 this year. No contribution is too small! Wanna make your donation go even further? Lattes & Llamas will donate $1 for every skein of Geek-A-Long Yarn purchased. Ask your local yarn store to carry GAL Yarn or get it through our website.