The Case of the Missing Yarn

My sissy and I are in the best knitting group ever. EVER. These women make me laugh. So much that I sometimes spit out my coffee, or fall out of my chair, or cry. Like the night that PKB (she has a hyphenated name that is used as one word "pattykellybedard" - it's much easier to call her PKB) was telling us about losing her ball of yarn.

She and her husband were visiting their son at college the previous weekend and her knitting bag fell out of the car and spilled onto the pavement. Knitting needles, yarn, knitting tools and patterns went all over, rolling under the car and away from it. She gathered everything up, went to her son's game and forgot all about the knitting bag until class on Wednesday night.

So now it's Wednesday night and we're at knitting class. PKB is chatting away, eating her snack, and searching through her bag for her yarn. She can't find it anywhere. Thinking back (and this took a little while), she remembers that the bag fell out of the car and so the yarn must have rolled under the car and they had driven off, leaving it behind. She pulls out her cell phone and calls her son at college and this is what we hear:

"Hi, honey. It's mom. I need you to do me a favor." (son speaks next)

"Oh no, finish dinner first. But I need you to go to the parking lot by the field and see if my ball of blue yarn is there." (son speaks next)

"Yarn, Patrick, a blue ball of yarn." (son speaks next)

"Patrick, I need that yarn to finish my sweater." (son speaks next)

"I know the dining hall isn't near the field, but I need this yarn, Patrick." (son speaks next)

"Okay, that's fine. Call me and let me know if you find it. Bye honey." (son hangs up)

She tells us the jist of her conversation and that Patrick will go look for her yarn as soon as he finishes dinner. So we all chatter on, teasing her about her lost yarn and how it sounds just like a Nancy Drew mystery, The Case of the Missing Yarn, and how it's not going to be there, or if it is, it will be filthy and she wouldn't want to use it on the gorgeous sweater she's knitting for herself. Time passes and no call from Patrick. PKB decides to call him back.

"Hi honey. It's mom. " Because he can't figure out from caller id that it's his mother calling him. "Did you find my yarn?" (son speaks next)

"It's not? Patrick, did you even go look for it?" (son speaks next and we now hear Patrick's voice a little louder.)

The rest of us are talking back and forth about how unlikely it is that Patrick even went to look for the yarn. He's just telling her he did so she'll get off the phone with him. We all start laughing, and since there's nine of us, we get kind of loud at times. Somebody else says something funny and we get even louder.

PKB has her free hand covering one ear, straining to hear her son, and then we hear:

"No, we're not drinking! We're knitting."

That was when my coffee spewed out.



Postscript to the story, she and her husband were back on campus the following weekend for another game. She had her husband go to the same parking lot and there was the yarn, lying right where they had parked previously. She picked it up, brought it class and used it to finish a sleeve on her sweater.

I still don't think Patrick went to look for the yarn.