One to One Thousand: 1000 Games of Cribbage

Between August 2020 and April 2024, my now-husband, Douglas, and I tracked 1000 games of cribbage (“crib”) by hand, initially for no reason other than our mutual love of both crib and data. While experimenting with making wedding decorations, I got the insanecredible idea to incorporate our crib data into crocheted vines, which ended up over 100 meters long and took over 60,000 stitches. They were then strung across a heptagonal arch, creating a striking backdrop for our wedding ceremony.

My friend and colleague Madison Snell meticulously cross-stitched a legend to accompany the vines, intertwining the story of the vines, statistics, and trivia that we thought were neat.

This project went from concept to completion in just five months, and presented unique challenges every step of the way (including inventing a new crochet technique). When I started, I could never have imagined that it would evolve into such a beautiful representation of my crib games with Douglas.

Keep scrolling to read way too many details about how this accidentally took over my life.

Douglas and I met in June 2020, playing crib on our very first date. Six weeks later, we did the rational thing and went camping for ten days. To pass the time, we gave ourselves a challenge:

Can we play 100 games of crib in 10 days?
Should we keep track of the games?

Sitting in some tall grass in the Rocky Mountains, we deliberated about what data to capture that was easy to record without interrupting the regular flow of a game:

• Who won the cut to start the game, including who selected a card first (determines who deals the first hand)
• The final scores of the game (the winner having 121 points)
• Each of our best single hand and crib scores in the game (tracked with extra pegs on the same board)

I set up a journal to log everything, and we began playing.

We triumphantly finished our 100 games in 10 days, and the tracking system (not to mention our relationship) worked so well that we decided to continue. Somewhere along the way, a new goal emerged: 1000 games.

Over the next four years (most of which were long distance), we played crib everywhere: coffee shops, camping, visiting friends and family, hiking, even sitting in the car waiting for an oil change.

In April 2024, we successfully made it to game 1000!

To preserve my sanity, I obsessed carefully planned and streamlined the process so that each vine could be made in a reasonable amount of time, without a bunch of additional work once the crocheting was complete… nobody wants to weave in hundreds of ends after so many colour changes.

Each vine represents 10 games, and includes a loop and button so they can be connected in a modular way, allowing for flexible decorating options.

• One length of vine with a leaf at the end: One game of crib
• Colour: Game winner
  • My hair colour is darker than Doug’s, so I am dark green. 
• Length of vine: Difference between our final scores.

• Size of leaf: Magnitude of losing score
  • If you win by more than 30 points, you “skunked” your opponent, and winning by more than 60 points is a double skunk. 
  • Small leaf = no skunk
  • Large leaf = skunk
  • XL leaf = double skunk

• Buds: High values for best hand / crib
  • Small = 20-23 points in a single hand
  • Large = 24+ points
• Colour attached to game number label: Who won more games on the vine
  • The losing colour was used for the loop
  • Ties include both colours

To keep track of it all, I created so so so many formulas a spreadsheet that translated the crib data into a crochet guide.

Madison: As a crafter with my own experiences in data physicalization, I gave Taelynn a little tutorial on the basics of cross-stitching, and she drafted this incredible grid in Adobe Illustrator. The final format is inspired by quilted wall hangings. At one point, it was decided that the legend would be split into two pieces, with the second hidden under the first, so it is only visible once the fabric is lifted. This is directly inspired by the concept of progressive disclosure, a UX tactic often employed on websites to prevent visitors from becoming overwhelmed. Plus, it’s fun to lift up the panel and discover MORE data!

Cross-stitching and sewing the legend was incredibly fun; I just think it’s so fun and silly to make a bar graph and line chart with just a needle and thread! And can we talk about the teeny tiny skunks, hidden under the leaf samples?! Their little pink noses just make me so, so happy.

I would be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to what we lovingly call “Baby Vine.” This little guy represents games 791-800, and features most of the critical data points encoded in the vines. Taelynn made this vine in miniature by splitting the yarn in half, as one would do with embroidery floss.

The 8-foot-tall heptagonal arch we rented for the ceremony was rather plain, so we planned to hang the vines behind it like a curtain to make it feel more “us”. Unfortunately the arch would not be available until the day of the wedding, so we devised a temporary hanging system that would be easy for someone else to install without damaging the arch. After wandering around the hardware store for ideas and testing things on our own walls, fate would have it that all of the vines fit perfectly!

I saved the very first vine, our first games from that 10-day camping trip, to add a personal touch to my bouquet.

With only a few days until the wedding, we made detailed installation instructions and entrusted my brother and very crafty mother to make our vision become a reality. While I trusted them completely, it was still scary to hand the box of vines over and not be present for the final installation. Hundreds of hours of work came down to this.

It was perfect.