Ekeing

This blanket can be finished.   I believe that now.  I’ve been knitting like a demon on it, and after putting in some solid work, I think the end is in sight. The problem now is that the end of the yarn is in sight as well.  It’s looming actually, the little half ball remaining to me sitting there and looking leaner with every repeat.  Last night at knit night someone looked at how much I had to go, and how much yarn I had left and gave me a worried glance.  "Do you have a plan for what you’ll do if you run out?" they asked tactfully. 

"Do you have a plan for what you’ll do if you run out" is knitterese for "You’re never going to make it – you see that don’t you?" and I’ve been friends with knitters for long enough to make the translation straight away.  I mumbled something about how I’d had two balls, and the first ball did half so the second ball should do the other half – but in the back of my mind, I wasn’t really worried.  I was convinced that somewhere in this house there was another ball of that yarn. When I got more, I’d put the old lot of yarn into one bag, and the new in the other, and set aside three balls to do the edging, because I wanted to use all one lot for that. I’ve used one, I’m knitting the second, so upstairs should by my ball remaining.

I just trotted myself upstairs to dive into the little paper bag sitting in the stash room that held the insurance ball, and it’s not there. Odd, I thought, but things have been a little hairy here, so I checked another couple of likely places.  Then I checked some unlikely places, and now I’ve been checking really super unlikely places and it’s stopped being "checking" and is now right on the edge of  just ripping the house up – and that ball isn’t here. It’s nowhere. I thought maybe I left it in the Dominican – but I know I didn’t.  I remember putting it really carefully in my suitcase, because the blanket was too important to screw up.  Same thing for when I was at Madrona, and besides it stands to reason that if I had it at Madrona, I couldn’t have left it in the Dominican.  I know it was here, I know it was. I’m absolutely positive – and now it’s just gone, which is making me a total crazy person.

It really isn’t that big a deal.  If I run out tonight, I know where to get more, and it’s not a big trip and it can be easily handled.  It won’t even put off finishing the blanket by much, it’s just that I feel like I need an explanation for where it has gone.  It can’t have disappeared.  It has to be here somewhere. I know that I haven’t had a lot of sleep since I got home, and I’ve been all over the place, but I’m just not the kind of person who misplaces something as important as this yarn – and that means it’s somewhere, or something happened, and try as I might to just sit down and knit, I keep thinking of another place it could be – or another thing that might have happened.  I’m so disturbed by it that a few minutes ago I checked the fridge and a suitcase I haven’t used in two years. I’ve spent more time looking for it than it would have taken to get on the streetcar and get more, and that means I have to let it go.

There’s one explanation that makes sense, and for the sake of my sanity, I’ve decided to accept it.  This blanket is now so big, and has so much yarn in it, and it’s been run in at such a great rate of speed over the last few days, that the blanket is now working like a yarn siphon, or a black hole.  It now has so much yarn mass squeezed into one spot that it has started generating its own gravity, and because like attracts like, out of all the balls of yarn in this house, the blanket has already reached out on a molecular level to the stash room, and sucked in the ball that I was going to feed it.

It’s that or I lost it, but in all seriousness I think the black hole is more likely.

145 thoughts on “Ekeing

  1. Can you weigh the blanket to see how many balls you’ve used in it. Sovle the mystery and let you know that yes, you do knit in your sleep?

  2. Also, did you mean to spell the title of this post “Eeeking” as in “Eeek! Where’s the rest of my yarn?”

  3. I was so excited that I might be the 1st to comment that I pushed post twice. Now I am first and second. Trippy dude

  4. black hole or those tricky little zippery liners in the suitcases? I find all kinds of missing things there. 🙂 best of luck!

  5. Yeah, same thing has happened to me. Either I knit the ball into the project and lost count or three years later I find the ball in a totally logical place but the logic eluded me at the time of hunting for it.

  6. Go ahead and buy another ball. Then you’ll find the one you’ve misplaced. Always works for me.

  7. I was thinking about those zippy linings in suitcases too. I once found an earring there about three years after I lost it.
    Or you know, you might have actually knit the ball into the blanket yourself in some moment of inattention. No black hole might be involved. It’s not like you haven’t had a lot going on lately!

  8. Curiously, I am having the opposite problem! I have been knitting a wrap, with some lovely dk weight alpaca, but it’s in garter stitch, so not the most exciting thing to work on, and I swear, the LAST THREE TIMES I have sit down to knit, I am positive that I am going to be done with this tiny little ball that’s left, but NOOOOooooo, the yardage keeps going, and going, and going, rather like this sentence, until I am sure that it is the first ever never ending ball of yarn! Aaaargh!

  9. This may come off as 9 kinds of crazy — but what do you do with the ball bands? Could they be centrally located and counted, thus dispelling any mystery?
    Not that knitting doesn’t love a little mystery….

  10. Did your black hole blanket absorb some of MY yarn? Because I have a missing skein that I SWEAR I had, even have a receipt to prove it and it is gone. Poof. Gone. It is totally insanity inducing. Although to be fair, it may be the insanity that is causing the missing skein in the first place?
    That blanket is coming close to causing an international incident. Or my needing a psych commitment. Just so you know.

  11. Yes buy a new ball. The other will suddenly appear, newton’s law, and the baby will get a new hat and booties from his speial aunt.

  12. Have you checked over adorable Luis’ house?? I thought I read a post where you were working on it there while you were helping out.
    I lost my DPN holder, and I thought it went on a little trip, and then all of a sudden, it was right in a basket by the desk – not sure how it got there…. 😉 I’m sure the same will happen for you. so good that you can get more without much effort though, but so frustrating!

  13. i always swear i have another ball, but it’s usually just that i’ve knit it already. goood luck!

  14. I recently lost a just finished, never worn knitted shawl and cowl! I looked in the closet where I am certain I placed them and they have disappeared. The trouble is if they are not where I am certain I placed them I have absolutely no idea where to look. Maybe I should check the fridge!

  15. Is it the ‘odd as fish’ ball of yarn from the beginning of the blanket that’s missing? Because you don’t want that one anyway.
    Go buy more. Be sure to photograph the blanket as it blocks on a king-size bed…or on your rooftop if you need more space.

  16. Just another thought, have you asked that lovely cat who let’s you stay in her house what she did with it? Bet she has lots of sneaky hiding places!

  17. I’ve had this happen to finished projects, and balls of yarn. I’m not sure which is the worst of the two scenarios. I lost a beautiful scarf I was very proud of, and also a pair of fingerless mitts I made for a friend. One of these days I’ll knit them again, but I only have so much time.

  18. I think maybe you’re coming at this “baby” blanket the wrong way. Consider how briefly babies are little, and how long that blanket will be used. Consider how briefly they are small and how long they spend growing. Perhaps this isn’t so much a baby blanket as an investment in this person’s future (and also, how well it will look draped over the bed when he gets married. Just saying.) Maybe this is an incredibly early, well-thought-out wedding gift, not a baby blanket at all!

  19. Is that the same black hole that contains all those rows and rows of knitting that never add up to more inches of my sweater? I hate that black hole.

  20. Black Hole. Yup. Probably the same one that will suck up all the extra minutes at the end of April as the tax filing deadline looms.
    Better go find it some yarn. I charge for my time.

  21. Yes. I like the “hidden suitcase compartment” theory. I recently found a stash of diapers in a suitcase that I use regularly….like several times a year. My youngest is now 23, so ponder that one.

  22. My mother just found the piece of my bracelet that Ive been looking for in her freezer. Have you checked the freezer? It’s as likely as the black hole theory! 😀 I hope this doesn’t make you too crazy!

  23. Oh ye (them) of little faith. And if you run out, I’m sure that there will a tidy solution-you are so amazing, you know. The sheer magnitude of the blanket itself is…um…(not really a demonstration of maniacal obsession)…magnificent. Have something brown and frothy, pray to the knitting goddesses, and all will be good, or at least you will have had something brown and frothy and taken a well-earned break from the black hole.

  24. Maybe you already used it and forgot you started it. I guess a quick weigh-in on the scale could tell you fer sher!

  25. I’m a natural pessimist so I always buy an extra ball, just in case, and I always end up with one or two balls left over. I’ll bet that doesn’t make me very popular right now!
    If you stop knitting to find the extra yarn you will never need the extra yarn because you aren’t knitting. Paradox. LOL

  26. I hate to bring this up – but are you sure that yo bought 3 balls of yarn? As I recall, you went thru this same thing with the last baby blanket and it turned out that you had gotten fewer balls than you thought.

  27. Can’t WAIT to see it!!! I love the patterned edge concept you’ve kept us in the dark about. Good luck with knitting. The last few miles are always the longest of the trip!

  28. Dearest, you’re definitely already knitting with it. I had the same thing happen to me. I was sure I had another, and then realized I was already knitting with my last ball without noticing I’d started it.

  29. As the friendly neighborhood astrophysicist/knitter I say.. this is a totally feasible explanation…

  30. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been looking for some of my knitting books and magazines that have disappeared in thin air! Mind you, I’m talking about a BOX worth of my favorite old Rowan magazines and many out of print knitting books!!! I have torn the house apart (there are a lot of nooks and crannies where they might have been hiding) to no avail! There IS a black hole that absorbs yarn based objects… We all know that one of the portals through which objects disappear is the clothes dryer, but it’s not the only one! Be afraid, be very afraid!!!

  31. The problem with a knitter’s stash is that it tends to absorb certain items at random, chew on them a while, then spit them back out in a place you have already looked multiple times (and which you will wonder how you could have possibly missed something that obvious!).
    I watch Fringe…so I think that is an alternate universe where the yarn goes. It is probably gone there by the odd socks that the washing machine sends there.
    But, I know that in the last six months, I have torn the house apart for at least two sets of multiple skeins…and Vogue Knitting’s 25th Anniversary Issue.

  32. Maybe you could weight the blanket and divide by the number of ounces (or the Canadian equivalent)that each ball weighs?

  33. These black holes are nefarious things – I have one resident in my apartment, too!

  34. The blankie looks absolutely beautiful. Can’t wait to see pictures of it finished.

  35. Luis has it. He seems like just the kind of guy (remember the hand gesture?) that would pull a prank like that on his OCD sleep deprived aunt. You have to love the ones with a sense of humour!

  36. Or, dare I say it, could you have knit it already? Not that I’ve ever done that, you understand. Only found the lost ball when I frogged the item because the yarn was one-of-a-kind. Which also means I was deluded in thinking it would have been enough anyway…

  37. go buy another one. by the time you get home, the missing ball will be in the middle of your living room table (or somewhere equally obvious). laughing at you.

  38. Hi!
    Put the blanket on your kitchen scales. You’ll know where the ball went.
    Keep knitting!
    Martina

  39. I have a reverse black hole: yarn just keeps appearing… I don’t think the fact I memorized my credit card number has anything to do with it.

  40. I’ve done the mad search for a ball of yarn you know must exist, because, well, you obviously haven’t knit it yet.
    Please don’t let the crazies get to you and get yourself on the streetcar. If you find it later, you can have a good laugh and make tons of booties instead.

  41. Hmmm, If you wondered if you left it in the Dominican then you probably should wonder if you left it at Madrona….
    Another thought: could have already knit the second ball and you are on the third without realizing it?
    I misplace things occasionally and this tip works for me about 70% of the time: go back to the first place you looked and look again, except this time do a better job…

  42. In very Catholic, and very superstitious, south Louisiana, when anything goes missing we immediately pray to St. Anthony and he always comes through and finds it for us right away. So I am praying for you, though I am not certain he works by proxy or very long-distance, though I do know he works even for those who are not only not Catholic but of no organized religion. I am thus absolutely sure he would listen to a faithful knitter, if you want to give it a go.

  43. I can hardly wait to see the finished blanket. Your projects are always impressive and inspiring!

  44. Like I heard sooooomeone (ok, you) once say to an audience…maybe if I knit faster you can beat the yarn to the end. Thought you could use a chuckle to ease the situation.

  45. Like I heard sooooomeone (ok, you) once say to an audience…maybe if I knit faster I’ll beat the yarn to the end. Thought you could use a chuckle to ease the situation.

  46. Reminds me of when I couldn’t for the life of me find the second skein of yarn for a top I was knitting for myself. Tore the house apart. Finally gave up and ordered a new skein. Knitted the top half of the sweater with the new skein, all the while pretending that the line where the two skeins joined really wasn’t a color shift. Finished the damn thing, but it looks like a clown shirt. Two months later found the ****darn skein hidden away. Aargh. I feel your pain.

  47. It’s always comforting to hear about someone like me who nearly rips the home apart in the search for a missing item. At least you have an easy way to buy more of this yarn.

  48. Have you unpacked both the Madrona and Dominican suitcases? Bets it got wrapped up inside a shirt or jacket.
    Since the knitting gods have a sick sense of humor, you won’t find it until you’ve bought another ball (ask me how I know) ;D

  49. Did you leave it at the owner of the wip’s house? Maybe in a sleep deprived state?

  50. Did you find any yarn shops in the Dominican Republic? Can’t imagine how I forgot to ask that when you posted about your trip. 🙂

  51. did you leave it at luis’s house? stuck in a couch cushion? that’s where i always find things…the couch cushions. i hate the couch cushions.

  52. Did you check the laundry (area/hamper/basket)? Could be it ended up with the clothes you pulled out of your suitcase and set aside to wash…
    Good luck!

  53. This is why I never work my ends in as I knit. They are my sanity savers. When I know, and I am absolutely positive I have one ball left and said ball is missing, I count my ends. That’s not to say that last balls haven’t gone missing, they have, plenty of times, but at least I know for sure they are really missing and no longer have to second guess that part of the equation.

  54. Don’t worry, at least you can buy more; and you know what will happen as soon as you bring it home.

  55. When I find the rubber ball (belonging to my dog) rolled under my bed and into another dimension, I’ll look for your yarn. There are portals and black holes everywhere.

  56. My purse is a black hole and I’m sure that some projects are as well. They couldn’t use as much yarn as they do. Also, weight (of project) can try to prove you wrong, but ignore it. It’s just an illusion. Good luck with the blanket.

  57. This is to Crys @ 5:16 your comment is AWSOME super funny !!!! I bet he has it too !!!!

  58. Another possibility: it’s in the blanket because you used it. I know I’ve knit whole skeins without realizing it…

  59. I looked in the January blog archive for the name of the yarn you are using in the baby blanket and couldn’t find it. What kind of snowy white yarn are you using?

  60. I once read a story (or had a dream, ’cause you know I can’t find it now…..) that people who “misplace” things are bound to be really famous in the future when they invent time travel and people who come back to visit our famous homes pick up souvenirs. That’s where I think most of my yarn goes. Congratulations.

  61. Was your luggage searched at any point? This is extremely unlikely, but just maybe one of the TSA workers was a knitter working on a similar color/weight baby blanket on her break and she had just run out of yarn. In a moment of weakness that I’m sure she regrets, your yarn appeared to her while doing a routine search and, believing that the knitting saints had presented her a wonderful gift, she absconded with it to the break room. She managed to finish the blanket before work ended, timing it perfectly for her to take to the hospital for the wee little one, who desperately needed a new blanket. The knitting powers-that-be knew that Luis was coming early and you were never going to finish in time, so they gifted your yarn to someone else. Really, you are just a terribly generous benefactor who solves crises without even conscious thought. It is far fetched, but more heartening than other theories.

  62. I also vote to consider the cat. I must say, however, that weighing the blanket and counting the ends are really clever ideas that I never would have considered without reading the comments.

  63. Could there be a pile of unwound yarn left somewhere from when you realized “the line” wouldn’t go anywhere (which was followed by the provo cast-on thing?)

  64. You could weigh the entire blanket and divide by the number of ounces/grams in a ball and that would tell you how many balls you have really used …………. would it help to know that? Maybe you already used it but don’t remember because that cute baby arrived?

  65. What weight of yarn are you using? Maybe next time it needs to be a size or two down. It is gorgeous. When are you releasing that pattern?

  66. I can’t WAIT to see the finished blanket! Have you told us what pattern it is?

  67. Didn’t you have to dig into an extra skein when the beginning didn’t match, and you had to cut it off?

  68. Like Shelley (at 9:02 p.m.), I thought the squirrel might have taken it, but I thought he was more of a fleece aficionado.
    My guess is that the missing ball was used for yarn bombing. Either someone in the Dominican Republic used it to cozy a palm tree or perhaps you sleep-yarn bomb.
    It’s a theory.

  69. Did you do this before? This story sounds very familiar? Is this your tendency with big baby
    blanket projects? Just wondering…

  70. Pick up a crochet hook and finish the edges off and all will be well. . . And while I’m on the topic, if you would crochet your baby blankets, things would go along a little faster. I’m just saying . . .

  71. Yes. I was fearing that wooly molecular seepage, but I did find my ‘insurance’ skein. Wheeoo. As a matter of fact I may have to pick up another, but at least (after three searches) I found it near where I looked first. The blanket is stunning.

  72. The squirrels must be cold enough to actually break in and steal yarn. You’re in big trouble 😉

  73. I have 4 balls of Knit Picks Andean Silk, color Merlin, somewhere in my house BUT NOT IN THE STASH because I have ripped it apart looking. I really, really want those 4 balls back because I made a pair of perfectly awesome fingerless mitts from that same yarn in another color as a gift and they were so perfectly awesome that I could only give them away by telling myself that I HAD MORE OF THAT SAME YARN IN A COLOR BETTER SUITED TO MYSELF but I cannot find the yarn and I think I am gonna just sit down and cry if I cannot find them.
    Keep your eye out for some fuzzy worsted weight in a lovely shade of blue, m’kay? Perhaps it migrated to your house (from Wisconsin).

  74. This happened to me. I bought 2 skeins of beautiful yarn to send to my daughter in France. She had requested yarn to make a very nice headband and I bought this really lovely, and expensive yarn. It was so lovely that I bought 2 more for me. I decided to make a pair of thrummed mittens. The next day I took it to a council meeting at church and knitted. I took it to a friend’s house to catsit and knitted. I took it home and got about 90% of the first mitten done. And then it vanished. All of it. Not at the church, not at my friend’s, not in my car, not lying in the driveway and not anywhere in my house. I delayed replacing it for TWO MONTHs while I searched. I finally broke down and bought 2 more skeins for my daughter but my lovely thrummed mittens now will never be.

  75. Not only does like attract like, like DISSOLVES like. It’s simple chemistry (and the reason that salad dressing always separates). Clearly the lost ball of yarn has been diluted into the blanket. It really is the only explanation.

  76. I hate losing something like that, where you know it has to be somewhere but evidently the ‘borrowers’ took it! I really hate it when I look in the same places twice out of disbelief it wasn’t there the first time!
    Good luck!

  77. I’m betting that the missing yarn ball will turn up just after you’ve gone to the store, bought a new ball, & finished the blanket. I’m in the same boat with a sweater project.

  78. You all think you have black hole problems? My own local black hole just sucked up the pieces–all knitted, not yet sewn up–to a baby outfit for a baby that was born yesterday. The problem: this baby has a February 29 birth date. If I miss this one, he won’t have another birthday till he is four years old!!!

  79. Yup. It’s a black hole. Only it is really white.
    Of course, at my house, it’s always the cat. She puts them under the bed. Did you look there?
    If not, count the blessing that more yarn is a streetcar away, not a UPS delivery away. Then it will show up.

  80. OK — I so want to be the knitter in the alternate universe on the other side of this knitting black hole. He/she must have an amazing stash!

  81. Out of curiosity, have you checked your SIL’s? You were knitting over the baby, could he be a yarn fiend in training and be hiding it on you? 😉

  82. I have become a maniac more than once over lost yarn. Usually it turns up when I’ve given up on finding it. Hope that happens with my latest misplacement. This week I seem to have lost my set of Dyakcraft interchangeable needles I got for Christmas!

  83. George Carlin said that there’s a room in the afterlife where everything you lose goes. Pens, books, yarn, keys…yarn… keys… When you arrive, you get it all back.
    Hopefully it returns well before then 😀

  84. You’ve used the last ball you thought was in the paper bag and you’ve forgotten all about it because of Luis’ birth and all of the events surrounding it. Just get more yarn. You know where to get it. Just do it and stop torturing yourself. It will be a real treasure when you’ve finished. Luis will love it!

  85. One time, I lost a skein of yarn from a sweater I ripped out and started over. I tore my apartment apart. I looked EVERYWHERE for that yarn. It was gone. I thought I’d lost my mind.
    Naturally it was discontinued at my LYS and I couldn’t find it online but finally Ravelry came through for me.
    Then later I was cleaning my bathroom and noticed there, between the shower curtain and the liner, was the yarn I’d hung up to steam out. Yep. There the whole time
    True story.

  86. Is it possible you could put the edging only on three sides, and leave the top side plain across for him to pull up to his chin?

  87. Well at least you’ve figured it out. It’s definitely that molecular thing.
    My personal theory is that you’ve already knit it into the blanket and you are now actually knitting the last ball – but that thought is so frightening that you’ve stepped into a state of denial so deep that by continuing to look for this “last ball” you can keep the charade alive that there is in fact an additional ball somewhere in your home.

  88. The same thing happened to my ball-winder and swift a few weeks ago. No clue what happened to them still, but luckily a friend had a spare set she was willing to give me for the cost of a nice dinner together. Which, really, was no cost at all, actually.

  89. Cat?
    Or: try this: look in the lining of your suitcase. I’ve had amazing things migrate into there. Also things have wormed their way into the toe box of shoes that were in the suitcase.

  90. Cat?
    Also, check the lining of suitcases. I’ve had things worm their way into that, and also into the toe-boxes of shoes that were in the suitcase.

  91. Erm, I have to ask. What about that part you cut away from the centre of the blankie? As I recall it was 1 ball of yarn in a different shade (but same batch). Maybe that removed ball plays havoc with your total?

  92. I hate to tell you this but I think you should know. Last I heard, your ball of yarn went over to Franklin’s and is now hanging out with Harry. (I have no clue how it got there but you know how yarn is!) I guess Harry was lonely and your yarn thought he was cute and felt sorry for him. I just hate it when yarn gets a mind of it’s own!

  93. i agree. the simplest, most obvious answer is usually the right answer.
    it was clearly the black hole.

  94. I’m thinking that if you were to weigh the blanket, you’d be able to figure out where it went…

  95. make sure it’s just a yarn black hole – we wouldn’t want to lose Luis!

  96. Once when I THOUGHT I was one ball short to finish a sweater for my husband I sent to the shop in Donegal, Ireland where I originally bought the yarn and prayed they would have one ball for me. They graciously sent it along and then when I finally finished the sweater, I found the other 10 BALLS I had put away for “SAFE-KEEPING” while I was knitting the sweater. An abundance of riches and enough to make an Aran shawl for me! It is nice to see that even a master knitter like you sometimes has the same problems as we peons 🙂

  97. I agree with Kate. If you haven’t already done so, check all the little zipped pockets (outside & in). Whenever I pack for a trip, I come across all kinds of “lost” items.

  98. I have found it you knit slower it helps. 😉
    I had to knit those intensely cute OH DEER mittens I saw on this site..I had just enough for the mittens, but not the thumbs. Thank God, I ordered double the yarn. Now I plan on reversing the colors for another pair. Say a prayer it works. Because there is no more yarn!

  99. You do understand, that as soon as you go to the store to pick up that extra ball of yarn, then your third ball is going to mysteriously appear in your yarn basket – looking at you like “Geesh – you looked straight at me like a billion times – why couldn’t you see that I was here”! It happens to me ALL. THE. TIME.
    Good luck with finishing your blanket!

  100. In our house we call it the gremlin. I once tore my living room apart looking for a first glove while knitting the second. Finally gave up and left the room. When I came back, it was lying on top of the last book I had thrown down in disgust. My husband was in the room the whole time I was gone and swears no one touched anything while I was gone. Hard to blame my kids or cat for that one. So, gremlin.

  101. Ha! (That is not a funny ha, but a ironic bitter ha) There is NOTHING that drives me more insane than not being able to find something that I KNOW was there.
    This has been a particular problem the last few years with the combo of chronic sleep deprivation, and small children in the house, touching everything.
    And then usually it ends up being my mistake. But seriously, it is one of the few things that drives me out of my mind crazy. And I hate feeling crazy.
    So. Good luck with that.

  102. Black hole, definitely.
    On the other hand, you are a brilliant knitter with perhaps no sense of mass/volume when it comes to baby blankets.
    Babies and black holes are kind of opposite phenomena. Black holes appear small but are infinitely large. Babies (in utero) appear large, but in fact are quite small as people go.

  103. Don’t feel bad, I lost an entire baby blanket last year. I had made it for a baby shower, finished, blocked and all, and put it up in a safe place (away from cats & dogs) where I couldn’t POSSIBLY forget where it was. I went on to the baby sweater accompanying it, and a couple of other items. When it came time for the baby shower, I spent DAYS searching the house, every square inch of it. It’s missing. Since December. I figure one of the house elves must have been cold, or some other such nonsense. Otherwise, I have completely lost my mind.

  104. You didn’t leave it at Luis’ house did you? You did say you tried to work on it there.

  105. Or perhaps you already knit it!!! That edge looks mighty long! Or maybe Luis decided he liked the feel of it and was getting impatient, so took it for himself as insurance that he’d get the rest!

  106. Sorry about your search. I had a similar search take place at my house last night – for a project bag containing some dpns, two skeins of yarn and a pattern. I remember putting it “someplace safe” and now I can’t find it. I even took to looking in the trunks of the cars – why it would be there, I have no idea. It is still missing. I think it is entirely possible that it took up with your ball of yarn and has gone on vacation.

  107. I’d been hoarding a special skein of lace weight with a specific shawl in mind for a friend’s 50th birthday. Had it 2 years and it even survived a move, but when I went to find it last month to start the shawl, it was gone. Just that, poof gone. The yarn’s no longer in production, so I figured the minute I bought a substitue it would show up, but nope. I’m pretty sure it’s hanging in the black hole with your blanket yarn. I hope they’re happy togehter.

  108. It’s with my black tights – in that special place I put them so I would be able to find them.
    Or the 3 pair of hose I tucked away in my Mom’s house in 1965 so my sisters wouldn’t get at them.
    I have lots of safe places for things like that.

  109. Have you thought about weighing the blanket? Maybe you used the extra ball and with all the ripping and late nights with Luis just forgot?
    Good luck! It will be so lovely when it is done. 🙂

  110. Well, it could be that your house, like my house, likes to hide things and laugh at you. Seriously, things disappear for months, only to reappear in strange places. At the moment, all but 3 of my blocking wires, a DVD and one of my cotton handcards are missing. I’ve yelled at the house to give them back, and eventually it will, but waiting for the things to reappear is truly annoying. Have you tried yelling at the house to give your yarn back Right Now!?

  111. I’m with those who suggest the various zipper compartments of your luggage — you don’t want to know the number of times I find things years afterwards, especially since I’ve been known to occasionally borrow my son’s suitcase because it is ever so much nicer than mine.
    And, of course, another rummaging through the stash might be in order. . . At the moment, I’m madly looking for a missing cake of yarn that I swore I told the son he could use and he swears it’s not in his teenaged messy room!

  112. I bought a lovely skein of Noro sock yarn once, brought it home, put in my sock yarn drawer (Ok its a whole chest of drawers) and then never saw that skein of yarn again. I have NO idea what happened to it, I know I never knit it, becuase it was destined for something other than socks, but it’s gone. Like the socks that disappear in the dryer, it’s just gone. poof.

  113. I had an actual black hole eat a whole sweater. It was a baby sweater, but still.
    I was doing research in Vietnam, and I brought yarn to knit a sweater for my then-brand-new (now-5) nephew. I worked on it the whole time I was there, and struggled because I was a newer knitter. By the time my research was done, I managed to complete sweater, including sewing it up, with just a collar to attach and ends to weave in. I bought myself a bigger suitcase at the market (I chose a “Polo Wang” brand, which I think was meant to be a knock-off, but just made me laugh).
    I flew to the US, with a stop-over in CA, where I saw my parents. I pulled the sweater out to show my mother, who expressed some concern over the head-opening size, but then realized I was fragile about that sweater and let it go. I popped it back in my Polo Wang and flew home to WI.
    A few weeks later, I was slated to visit the new nephew in Boston, so I went to take a hard look at the sweater. It was nowhere. Totally gone. Tore the house apart multiple times. Gone.
    A few *years* later, and my Polo Wang is finally giving out. The zipper on the lower front pocket explodes, so I take my baggie of bottled liquids out and pop it in the smaller top front pocket and zip it closed. I go to add one more bottle, and the baggie is gone. As it turns out, the little zipper pocket is actually a small portal to a big pocket the size of the front panel of the suitcase. I reach down and in, and there is the baggie… and a sweater that is much, much too small for my nephew (and would never have fit over his head as a baby).
    *sigh*
    …and that is how I was screwed by Polo Wang.

  114. I get so obsessed when I lose things. Even insignificant things. It offends my sense of order, such as it is (I’m not super-tidy), when things disappear. When important things go missing, I get really nuts. So, I feel your pain. In fact, I want to help you search, which is quite impossible from here in Eugene, Or. Good luck!

  115. Haha! I jumped to comment “Weigh the blanket!” and then saw that about fifty other people thought of it before me. Still… just in case you happened to miss those other fifty suggestions, perhaps you might want to weigh the blanket? XP

  116. What about that first ball of yarn that you removed from the beginning of the blanket? Are you counting that in your calculations? Because it was obviously different in some way, and therefore cannot be part of the main body of the blanket (I don’t know if it can be part of the edging, but you mentioned that those balls of yarn are a different dye lot, so I don’t think it can go with them), but if you are still thinking of it as the third ball for the blanket, maybe that’s where the extra ball went, and the one you remember packing in the Dominican is the one you are finishing with now?

  117. You’re at the point where I say, “I’ve gotta knit really fast, so I can finish before the yarn runs out!”. Illogical? Yes. But illogical is how I roll! 🙂 And USUALLY it all turns out OK. (Because I knit fast enough that the yarn didn’t run out? Maybe. Probably not.)

  118. I believe in the black hole theory because I have personally witnessed this. I had a shawl pattern and 3 skeins containing significantly more than enough yardage to make said pattern. However, the black hole in the middle of the shawl ate the yarn so that I had to shorten the length of the shawl and even then had to unknit some more to have enough yarn left for edging. Still have no idea where the 400 yards went so the black hole theory sounds good to me.

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