I learned how to play cribbage when I was fairly young. My parents were friends with a couple who had two boys about my age; they would bring the boys over, we’d have dinner and then the grownups would drink beer and play cribbage while the kids watched a movie or played together. The real treat during these cribbage nights was that sometimes we were allowed to sit with the grownups and help count points. For those not familiar with the game, you get points for combining the cards in your hand or crib in different ways. It’s a great learning tool for kids–counting, addition, pattern recognition–all wrapped up in the fun of a game.

In college I spent many hours with one young man, forging a friendship initially based on little more than a shared love of the game. The board pictured above was a gift from him to me and it’s one of my prized possessions. I’ve taught my husband how to play now. Tonight, reminding him of the somewhat complex rules I was filled with happy memories. It’s easy to let the good things take a backseat to daily stress and frustrations and after a month particularly full of them, I’m working hard to embrace the little joys. And maybe I’ll be playing a lot more cribbage than normal.

I love a good semicolon; the way it transitions from one sentence into another without a hard, hard pause. When I saw this pattern for a comma, apostrophe or quotation marks I was smitten. As I was showing my husband the nearly finished item, he smiled and told me that I “should knit it a friend and make it a semicolon; I use semicolons at work a lot”. And so the seed was planted and with just a little wrangling of the pattern I had made the comma’s spherical friend and joined them into the beautiful semicolon.

Now I have this crazy idea to knit an interrobang, but I think it might be better suited to colorwork than to a softie.

It’s been awhile since part one but I wanted to share the trio of 3ply handspun yarns that I finished on my last spinning kick. I wanted to get these up because I’ll be spinning a lot in July since Tour de Fleece starts in just a few days. I’ve been participating in Tour de Fleece at a varying level since 2006 when Star coordinated her first one on craftster.org and her blog. At any rate, I have big plans for the Tour so hopefully there will be more handspun to talk about soon.

The first and second of these yarns was spun by splitting the top into three equal pieces and plying them together. The third yarn was intended to be spun as one continuous single and navajo plied but I was too far in when I realized the first half of the skein would be quite different from the second so I wound the singles into three wee cakes and then plied the three together. This was kind of frustrating and not something I would recommend. I’d probably wind them onto bobbins/toilet paper tubes if I needed to do it again. All of the yarns are a sport/dk weight.

First up, 4 ounces of merino in “Hotness” from Funky Carolina. I love Funky Carolina. She’s a total sweetheart of a person and takes a lot of pride in her business. Additionally, her colorways are phenomenal and her fibers are well prepped and spin like a dream. This top was no exception.

Secondly, 4 ounces of 21.5 micron merino in “Northern Pine” from Black Trillium, a Portland indie dyer. She mostly dyes yarns but her fiber is really awesome and less expensive than many other places I’ve come across. Again, beautiful colorways; she has a lot of gorgeous semi-solid colored yarns that make my heart go pitter-patter.

And the third. This is 4 ounces of Targhee, in club colorway Woodstock from Crown Mountain Farms. I’ve been a long time customer of CMF, and Klaus is having a lot of fun with the club. This is normally a much more variegated roving than I would pick up so I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about spinning it without turning it to mud, so I spun straight from the top without splitting it in any way. I’m very pleased with the results, it’s unexpected but gorgeous. I feared I would end up with something so clown barf-y that I’d never have any idea what to do with it.

I also spun a 4 ounce skein from a gradient batt but I fought it the entire way so I’m calling a mulligan on that one and not devoting any more of my energy to it.

Three years ago I married my best friend, my unwavering support, my biggest cheerleader. Each day I wake up to find that the impossible has happened and I love him even more today than yesterday, and know there’s no one on this earth that I would rather share my life with.

Happy anniversary, my love. I love you more than cheese.