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It does happen then. All this talk about knit-walking, like it’s without consequence. Well, for the most part it is, however, I have tripped, and ‘descended clumsily’ into a fallen tree and scraped up my thumb bad enough. (That was about three weeks ago , and is just now healed nicely).  And I have dropped my yarn and it has unraveled as I walk on unaware for a ways,  sometimes a long ways, before I realize what has happened, then having to wind it back up while picking leaves and twigs and forest duff out of the yarn (very tweedy looking) ~~~ and this has happened countless times !  Oh, but this time, the most recent calamity, was that the other day (my birthday, I am certain) I misplaced a mit somewhere, maybe dropped along the way  . . . and lost it !

So this one pair of pin-striped fingerless mits, was to be my last pair I was going to allow myself to knit, of my mit-mania (um…we’ll see about that), and I’m merrily binding off the second of the pair and starting to chirp the joys of spring as it’s time for finish work ! Weaving in ends, soak in suds & dry. . . then wrap very cheerfull like and send off !  WAIT.   Um . . . but . . . where is the other mit?  Did I lose it ??? Not even panicked,  I search all my knit-walk satchels, then look about.  Mild panic, search the satchels again… at least 3 times, as if once isn’t enough. I mean I stick my hand in and grope disbelievingly,  repeatedly, and actually turn them inside out , as if I can’t feel a mit without doing so the first time.  I’m laughing.  Yet I’m starting to get impatient and swear at the same time, because I know exactly what happened, I probably dropped it ! Not laughing anymore, as I’m knowing full well there isn’t enough yarn to toss one together in the nick of time.   Still ,  I obligingly search the likely places in the house it might be. . . again . . . and no mit.  This was last night mind you, so I couldn’t go out looking for it !

Until this morning. This morning finally dawns, and after feeling the doom that I can’t make another, that it is forever lost,  and how am I going to deal , since I used up the last of one of the pin-stripe colors . . oh sheesh . . . must I dorkily make a mismatched pair????  Well, I searched those knitting bags again, my hands groping around without my mind connected, they just shuffle papers, lifting piles of crap on my desk table, lift pillows, blankets…  looking behind my sideboard,  under the sideboard . . .my hands are hoping for a stupid miracle that I covered them up, or pushed them off the furniture.  My hands are slaves to my disbelief and my reluctance to go out in 34F temperature to go ‘hiking’.  But, at last, Emma and I did go out and retrace our last walk.

This was our Lucky Day…. only a little less than a mile and we found it !

There it was !!!

There it was in the dirt road !!!!!

There it was in the dirt road in the dark woods, damp, shaking, barely alive !!!!!

It was lying so alone,  vulnerable, belly up, in the  middle of the dirt road, right next to a little fir tree snag that had fallen in a recent storm.  Ohhh…yyyeahh… I remember Emma’s leash getting tangled up when she jumped over it, and I remember having to put my knitting in the bag to help her get untangled.  Then we went on, and I carried on with the pin-stripes.,.. probably yanked out the yarn a little too hard.  If this little mit had a voice, I’m sure it would be thin and very high-pitched and calling out in sheer exhaustion ” Here I am, here I am…. oh you found me, where were you, why did you leave me??? I don’t think I could have survived another wild animal sniffing me over in the night . . .”   So anyway, the story ends happily. We have ‘er back, and the pair is reunited !!! Washed, rinsed, and the color has come back into her cheeks. In fact, I bet you can’t tell which one was lost, can you?

Ahhhhhh . . .  . . drying ! ! !