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.

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

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.

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

Spring has sprung, bringing with it the ever changing rain-sun-rain-sun-hail-rain again cycle that is one of the things I love most about living in the Willamette Valley. My crafty desires have been following the path of the weather, changing on a whim. I have nine knitting projects in progress right now and as they all move slowly along I crave the instant gratification that comes from small spinning projects.

To kick off my spinning binge I finished spinning up some 90% pygora 10% silk blend batts from Rainbow Yarns Northwest. Terry and Susan, the women behind the pygoras, are absolutely fabulous and I couldn’t resist these amazing, cloudlike puffs at last fall’s Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival.

I broke out my awesome fast flyer for my spinning wheel and spun the singles at a ratio of 16:1 (for non spinners, that means that for every one turn of the wheel the flyer turns 16 times) to put a good deal of twist into the singles to hold the very fine pygora together in thin singles.

From there, I plied them at the same ratio, and the result is 600 yards of squishy and shiny laceweight yarn, that is being knit (slowly) into Romi Hill’s Bitterroot Shawl from Knitty Winter 2009.

It’s not the most fluffy yarn I’ve ever spun, and I probably could have gotten away with less twist, to make a softer yarn, but I’m relatively pleased with it. More spinning projects to come!

My sprouting set up is a 4′ shop light hanging from the closet rod over a table in our office closet. It’s working really well thus far, although next year we’re expanding which means the closet is a 2010 location only.

The first to appear in my tray were the San Marzano tomato seedlings. Today, they’re all sporting their real leaves and growing steadily. I also have two other kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, eggplant and marigolds started, with a few more things to follow. Other things will be sown directly in the ground and I’m sure I’ll be tempted by an interesting seedling or two at the Lane County Farmer’s Market (which starts tomorrow!)

Cat grass. the BobCat likes to eat plants, so I planted some just for him, that are safe for him to eat.

I’ve been doing a bit of navel gazing. About growing and changing and how that impacts friendships but also how that impacts how I understand myself. Earlier tonight I sent a text message to someone who was once very close to me; a friend that I had not had any contact with in at least a year, and had not had a real conversation with in double that amount of time. I recently found out that he had become a father and was devastated–not by the birth of his son–but by the fact that our once tightly knit friendship had deteriorated so far. He responded to the text message with one of his own, and then a phone call. The call was somewhat awkward; he only had a short break in his schedule to chat and neither of us seemed to really know where to start to fill in the missing information. Eventually we were laughing over an event that happened nearly eight years ago, one that involved an epic case of stubborn on my part. As we laughed about it, I assured him that my stubborn streak is still alive and kicking and he laughed and told me he couldn’t imagine me any other way. Eventually we both made promises that we’d continue to try to reconnect and hung up the phone.

Our conversation got me to thinking about the struggle I’ve gone through in the past few years to understand myself as the person I am now. One morning I seemed to awake and find myself happily married but unhappy with my graduate program of study, and generally unable to get out of my own way because of anxiety and depression. I had no idea how to interact with the person I was, the person whose goals had changed from “career driven workaholic person with a PLAN” to “happily married and mostly domestic with no idea what I want to spend my life doing.” I thought that my major struggle was because I had fundamentally changed as a person but I realized tonight that that was not the case. Instead, my struggle was with accepting the person I’ve always been. I’m not as stubborn as I used to be, I try to think more carefully and speak less hastily (although I still have an awful lot to say) but it’s taken me a long time to realize that this Bon, the one I am today, has always been there. She was just overshadowed by the Bon I thought I needed to be. It’s nice not to feel trapped by a box of my own making anymore, there’s a lot more room for me to grow.

The Knitting Olympics asks knitters to challenge themselves with a project that will stretch their limits and test their mettle as a knitter. Or cause a repetitive stress injury, whichever might come first.

I chose Tonk’s Snow Peacock for my project because I knew that long rows in natural colored yarn was a recipe for a project that stalled out and dragged on if left to my own devices. I don’t normally knit anything in natural colored yarn because I am 1. very pale and 2. very clumsy and the combination makes me look like a ghostly ragamuffin. However, the recipient of this shawl requested a warm white shawl since it will be her wedding veil. I’m all too happy to comply if it means that I get to play a role in outfitting a lovely person as she legally defines her relationship with the man she loves in front of all their friends and family.

So far things are moving fairly smoothly, I cast on as the torch was lit in Vancouver last Friday evening and have knit varying amounts every day since then. I’ve had a few upsets, including discovering that the garage needed to be totally rearranged due to a leaky roof. I’m just a few hundred stitches shy of halfway done so I’m feeling quite confident that I will be able to finish the knitting–if not the blocking and photographing–of the project before the Olympic torch is extinguished on the 28th.

*yes, 51,000. That’s a lot of stitches. Every stitch is full of love and good wishes for the couple, that they may be as strong and happy a couple as my husband and I are.

I ended up taking an impromptu trip east to stay with my mother for a week, which saved me a little money on postage as this was a gift for her. We got a little bit of snow while I was there, which is the perfect backdrop for this lovely shawl.

I knit this one in Madeleinetosh Tosh Sock yarn in the color Malachite and used less than one skein. The pattern is easy, and the main body stitch pattern is extremely easy to memorize. In fact, I liked knitting it so much that I started a second one, in red, for myself.

About 2.5 years ago, my husband accidentally broke my $40 plastic ball winder. It had some flaws, the all plastic construction being one of them (there was no way to fix the broken one without causing it to stop turning, which would have rendered it decorative rather than functional). Instead, I decided to upgrade to a Strauch Jumbo Ball Winder because they’re handmade from wood and metal and the price was reasonable for the materials and craftsmanship. Also, it winds up to one pound balls!! So I ordered it, and anxiously anticipated the balls I would wind.

When it arrived, it didn’t work. Yarn would slip off the center post during winding and create a yarn barfy mess. I chalked it up to user error for awhile but after a year I still couldn’t make it work. I emailed Strauch and within twenty-four hours had received support both via email and telephone. The company diagnosed my problem and told me that if I would just ship the winder to them they would repair or replace it and ship it back to me. Fast forward 13 months. I still had not shipped the winder to them, so I sent another email asking if I could still send it off to them. Again, within twenty-four hours they had responded with “Of course! We were wondering what happened to you!”

I packed it and took it to UPS on the evening of January 11th. It arrived in Virginia on January 18th and was repaired and shipped back to me on the 19th. Yes, they fixed it the same day it arrived with them. It arrived back with me yesterday and I am so pleased to report that it works perfectly. I wound a ball and it was a. super fast and b. super easy. No frustrating slippage. I’m so pleased that I chose to spend my money with them, because it’s been an investment well worth making. And now, I need to find a 1 pound skein to wind. Giant yarn balls, here I come!