Lost!

I’m going to let you in on a secret…I hate losing things. OK so you say “who doesn’t?” Well…I especially hate losing things. Really. Like, really hate it. Loathe. I absolutely especially hate losing things that belong in sets. And when I lose things, especially set things, I go crazy and I cannot function until I find that thing. In my most recent case, the lost thing was one needle from a five needle set of Clover Takumi #1 dpns.

So I’m knitting along yesterday, after work, on my Mom’s birthday socks which have been 5 times frogged (because I couldn’t decide on a pattern). I finally decided on Cherry Tree Hill Super Socks. As I was knitting I was basking in gleefulness that my order from Peace Fleece (worsted weight in Lena’s Meadow) arrived for my first sweater project ever—the Streakers Shrug from Interweave’s Spring edition.

Lena's Meadow

I reached in my accessory pouch to grab a tape measure and decided halfway through that I might as well dump out the pouch and organize it since I already had my hand in it. The usual things tumble out, scissors, stitch markers, lip balm, toothpicks, snacks, what have you. I went through the pouch conducting an inventory, or actually just making sure that what I knew were already in the pouch were still in the pouch.

I pulled out some dpns that were hastily thrown in the pouch and began organizing them in their sets and returning them in their own vinyl containers when I realized that the #1s were missing a needle. Oh…it’s probably stuck in the pouch. Nope. Hmm, probably in the bigger bag that houses my accessory pouch. Nope. Huh. Let’s check again. Let’s count all the needles we put away. Let’s dump out the contents again and reorganize again and count again. Nope, still not there. Maybe the other knitting tote? Nope. What about the other knitting tote and the basket the tote is in? Nope. Your purse? No, your other purse. Hmmm, I’d better check the furniture—the couch, the bed, under, in cracks, the dresser, the bathroom, the nightstand, under rugs, in pillow cases. So, at this point, knitting has ceased and I was running around the house, up and down the stairs looking for that one stupid needle for an hour. I didn’t even need the needle for the project I was working on. I was just extremely bothered that the set was incomplete, that somewhere out in the void there was a needle unaccounted for.

So began the self-searching. “What are you doing? This is ridiculous. Carmen, you are wasting your time. You can still have a set with four needles. You can still knit socks with four needles. Look it’ll turn up, it always does. Ya, the four needles still work but there’s a fifth out there. I have to find that fifth. But you have to cook dinner soon and you’re freaking the dogs out.” And on and on the conversation went until I reached a point where I made myself say out loud—“It’s ok. I am ok. I don’t need that lost needle. I am wasting time, I mean really how much do I get paid for an hour of work? In the time I spent looking I could have gone out and bought another set. Well if it bother’s me that much, I will buy another set, and just hide that incomplete set somewhere and pretend it never existed and that this never happened.” OK? Ok. Good. I cooked dinner, and picked up where I left off on the sock I was working on. This was two hours later.

So, this morning, I thought I was over that lost needle. I thought I was so over that lost needle that I’m going to purchase some #0 Inox dpns online for some really lacy socks, and that if they had the Clovers in #1s I’d go ahead and get a new set too. I ended up getting 2 sets of #0 Inox and 2 sets of #1 Crystal Palace bamboo dpns. That’s it. The lost needle was behind me. I went downstairs to get some coffee and as I came back up the stairs I was stopped. I was stopped by something, some force, so strong, I knew where the needle was. Well I didn’t know, I just felt it, I headed straight for the bed, looked under, felt mildly ashamed by the dust bunnies, looked deep in the murky darkness…and shit, there it was, sure enough, that little f*&^er. The set is complete, and now I have more coming in the post. The sight of that lost little needle made my heart jump and I was relieved. See, the problem wasn’t that the needle was lost. The problem was that the set was incomplete. And so now, the storm has passed, and the day can continue on.