Crib is for old people
Card playing has been a very integral part of our relationship. Our first date, we met at Stillwell Freehouse in Halifax on a sunny Saturday afternoon, had a coffee, then a beer and learned about each other over a game of crib (which I won by the way). On our second date (which happened only a few days later, because Justin just couldn’t wait to see me again), we played rummy at Two Crows (he won). On our third date, I snuck Justin into the architecture school to show him my studio space, and we had a little crafternoon. We sketched and then laser cut a little card holder, with cute baby box joints and engraved suits to replace the tired hair elastic holding Justin’s classic bicycle deck together.
Our early days of romance were playing out through February 2020, and much like the rest of the world, we had no idea that a dramatic change was pending. On a Monday the world shut down, on Wednesday I booked a flight home, and Friday I was set to fly back to Northern Ontario for who knows how long. There’s a dramatic version of this part of the story, but you’ll have to ask us for an in person rendition of it. After knowing each other for only about a month, it felt like maybe it was easier just to cut ties.
Justin kindly offered to drop me off at the airport, and of course, I text him when I got home safe, and then out of courtesy, he checked in on me to make sure I was staying sane working on my thesis in the boonies of Sudbury. The accidentally, for about a five month period, we lived out this unexpected long distance relationship - playing crib over the short lived Houseparty app, one of the few activities we could really do, besides just talking and learning everything about each other.
Part of staying sane and keeping in touch with friends during those strange times, I did a handful of art exchanges with friends where we would make a water colour or collage or print and mail it to one another. Justin wanted to join the fun, but rather than a piece of art, Justin wanted to *make something* for our exchange. He had worked with wood before, and at the time didn’t really consider himself an artist (!!), so I was fully expecting a carved little something to arrive in the postbox. Meanwhile, I was excited for Justin to see the marine themed deck of cards I was working on. There’s a lot of different design decisions that goes into the 54 cards. Choosing a font, colour palette, and playing around with different suit shapes is a start. I also designed a diver, a mermaid and a merman for the face cards, a different fish for each ace, two guilty looking seagulls for the jokers and the back of the deck was an architectural drawing of a fish (plan / sections / elevations).
I was still putting finishing touches on my creation when a 3”x4” package arrived in the mail from Nova Scotia.. not a wood carving as I had been expecting, but in fact, a custom, one of a kind deck of cards. I couldn’t believe it, what are the chances we both decided to make cards? But, a totally different take on it. While I was fiddling with vectors in illustrator, Justin took a more handmade approach. I’m talking hand made. Each card carefully cut out, with each symbol hand traced and coloured in. Justin even told me that he went to Des Serres and tested out every black and red marker they carried to make sure he got crisp edges without bleeding through.
I think these cards represent a lot of different things for us. It also shows how dedicated we are to crafting, but take totally different approaches to doing things. In the many, many card games we’ve played over the years, we’ve yet to score the elusive 29 point hand (IYKYK). There’s a rule about retiring a deck and framing the winning hand once it happens. I REALLY when one of us inevitably gets it, it’s done while we’re using one of our creations.
