Riot and Frolic

a mostly ballroom dance, but also a bunch of other stuff, blog

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about

I own and rock people’s faces off teaching ballroom dancing at Dancers Studio in St. Paul, MN. My husband and I compete professionally in American style and wrangle eight children in our spare time. I’ve been teaching and competing in ballroom dancing for over 25 years and have lots of opinions on it. I am an expert by any means, but there are quite a few dancers who are better than me and I have a solid knowledge of basic technique, so suck it.

Category: Craftacular

  • Toot for the Rug

    I'm going to write a tutorial for my circle rug since I didn't bomb the toot for yo-yos.  I'll give you some helpful tips along the way, but I'm assuming you know how to single crochet.  And wow, I started writing this last night and didn't realize it was so long.  I'm going to get you…

  • But this is…

    Crochet. I've done a bit of it, apparently.  I started on a whim a couple years ago, at the start of my Craft Age.  I picked up the book  The Happy Hooker, written by Debbie Stoller of Stitch 'n' Bitch fame and BUST magazine at the ol' B&N and got tangled up in some yarn for a…

  • It’s not crochet

    I'm going to make a quilt.  Not because I know how to, but because I needed another crafty thing to obsess about it.  It all started with this quilt: It's from the amazing Alicia Paulson, over at Posie Gets Cozy (a pretty blog), where she makes stuff like this.  I have always thought quilting was an old lady…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – Four loaves of various types of bread. Maybe a loaf that had too many scoops of flour.  The ladies are very distracting sometimes. – A mended $5 IKEA pillow.  It didn't need mending until I got it home from IKEA and decided to rip off the "do not remove" tag, instead of being a patient…

  • One down

    This is my new chalkboard.  I won't even tell you how much I love it.     Okay, I will.  This, you might remember, was my "dream project" from earlier this week.  The one with the fumes in the basement.   I was worried how it would turn out.  A) Never spray-painted anything before.  B) Could…

  • Before the spray

    Surprisingly, this isn't about spray tanning. It is, however, about my awesome day of spray-painting ugly things.   Note to self: -Your basement is not well-ventilated. That's the flash catching all the little paint particles, like 5 minutes after I sprayed.  Our basement looks like a dungeon, so I wasn't worried about getting paint on…

  • Putting it out there

    I am having a heart attack.  I make a lot of stuff.  Scarves, pidges (we'll talk), vanilla extract, coffee, pillows, yo-yos, doohickeys, doodads, bread, cookies, pants, you know- STUFF.  When I was little, I would set up tables on my folks' front sidewalk and sell friendship bracelets and friendship pins (yes, I was an 80's…

  • The Return of the Yo-Yo

    This lovely post might seem short and it will involve lots of links for minimum work by your's truly.  That's because my darling husband has run off to LA (it's for work, relax), leaving me home alone with my two ladies.  It has been great fun so far, but not what you'd call relaxing.  I…

  • The Yo-Yo Strikes Back

    I was just getting started yesterday with letting you in on my yo-yo obsession.  I started making fabric flowers to jazz up (in my mom's parlance) a cardigan that was boring me to death, but was in good shape.  Searching the interwebs for fabric flowers, I stumbled upon the all-too-easy yo-yo.  Seriously, five minutes to…

  • Welcome to the jungle

    Hello, everybody!   If you can name the two references I just used, I will give you a free mint.  Shipping not included.   I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for awhile now.  I was a hard-core journaler (?) back in the day and have felt a black hole in my…