So.... It is pretty obvious that I like blue a little bit. I tried to keep it a secret, but it turns out that is a secret I can't keep. I can't keep the secret about tea, teapots, sheepy things, knitting, spinning..... Well, that list goes on, but for now that is all that is pertinent to this installment of I'm Losing My Mind, Won't You Join Me? I'll be brief.
Over the last many years I have collected blue stuff, sheep things and teapots. Then one day I ran across this:
So many of my loves in one little teapot. I felt it was made for me and I have collected many pieces over the years. It isn't as easy as it once was, and frankly, it was never easy, but now it is almost impossible to find new pieces and I would love new pieces.
But that is a digression. That teapot led me to commission a custom drop-spindle:
Gorgeous, no? It is not a light weight by any stretch so I primarily use it for plying. The yarn on it is the beginning of a spinning project that I recently decided must be completed, so I spun the remainder of the fiber over the weekend and on Monday went to grab this spindle and ply the singles.
Only, I couldn't find the spindle. It wasn't in the crock where I keep my spindles, decoratively arranged in the game room my studio. This was not good. I am not in the habit of casually laying spindles around, they have a home. I had dropped a bag with this spindle in it once before and had to have it repaired, I try to be really careful with it now. I would have put it in that crock.
A little back story or a little about me. I get it into my head sometimes that in my sporadic attempts at home decorating I should incorporate a little of my fiber life in every room. Some rooms have sheep, some have sheep on teapots, some have baskets of yarn or fiber or whatever. You get a little of the picture. Along that line I at some point think I had the spindle on the hutch in my dining room with the collection of blue sheep teapots/mugs/canisters/plates/bowls etc. I'm pretty sure that is the last time I remember seeing it. Then Christmas came and at Christmas all of the blue sheep stuff gets replaced with holiday teapots and decorations. I know that happened this year, but I don't think I actually did it. Not one of my family members produced illuminating information. Nobody remembered seeing it or doing anything with it. By this time I am going a little crazy. I start searching in every nook, cranny, bag and bin that I can find. I literally would recheck the same bags and containers of fiber and yarn and then go back and recheck it again, because when you empty a bin three times and a thing isn't there, it is likely to magically appear the FOURTH TIME!
I heard this story once about the scenes in our life being set up by, I don't know, a stage or prop crew or something like it, and they set up the scenes every minute or so and sometimes they forget an object or prop like keys for example. So you look for your keys where you know you put them and they aren't there, so you keep looking around for them and coming back to the spot where you know you put them and they still aren't there until finally the fifth, tenth, fiftieth, definitely the last time you look and WHAT?! They are THERE!? Well, the prop crew finally got their act together and remembered all of the props. That is why I keep checking the same places over and over again.
You never know.
I checked that crock a billion times, moving spindles around, taking some out, putting them back, counting them. Seriously. I counted them because I was talking to someone about how many spindles I had and I counted them. No blue sheep spindle.
I started to threaten my family. "If you know anything about this and you are afraid to tell me and you let me go crazy and waste hours and days obsessing and looking because you know how I get and I won't be able to think of anything else until I know what happened to......." Nobody 'fesses up. Nobody helps either. At that point it is difficult to discern which is making me angrier.
Exhausted, I quit for the day and Pete says he will take a look around on the morrow. He is a good looker he says. I'm just wondering if he is a good finder.
He didnt' get to it right away on the next day so that evening when I was headed out to the knitting class I teach I reminded him. I texted him and asked him if he found it, no answer. I came home and while he wasn't here I didn't see the spindle anywhere so I figured he didn't find it. Bummer. When he got home I asked him if he looked and he asked me what the spindle looked like. I was bringing him in to look at the teapots and he said, "just tell me, what does it look like?" and I made a circle with my hands and pointed to the teapots and he said, "you're kidding me."
What?
Pete: You're kidding me, right?
Me: Did you find it?
Pete: Where did you look?
Me: Everywhere, you saw me, I looked everywhere! Where did you find it?
Pete (leading me into the game room fiber studio): I spent thirty seconds looking for it.
Me: YOU FOUND IT! Where? Where did you find it?
Pete: (picking spindle off of pool table cutting table) Right here.
And he carries it over to the spindle crock and puts it in with the other spindles.
Where it definitely WAS NOT before.
Not during any of the one biiillllllion times I looked or the hours I spent searching.
Or I've been punked. Nobody is owning up to it. Not even the invisible prop crew, those practical jokers!
2011. Twelve. $16.88. Punked! I tell you! I've been PUNKED!!!!
I deeply love the sheepie crock.
Posted by: Lee Ann | April 21, 2011 at 06:46 PM
Hahahahaha!! Yep, I think you've been punked!
Posted by: Kim | April 21, 2011 at 06:55 PM
Hehehehe. Punked! Glad there was a happy ending after all of that angst.
Posted by: Manise | April 21, 2011 at 08:59 PM
he! I hate when that happens, and it does. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.
Now that you've shown your crock of spindles.. I'm doomed. I love / want / need // one of the carved sheep Goldings. I 've never seen that one before. Special commission?
Posted by: Judy | April 22, 2011 at 08:03 AM
Hahaha - that's too funny.
My friend once screamed at her husband "Where's the baby?" when we were picnicking in Central Park. She enters a panic about her toddler and starts screaming for everyone to look for him. I looked at her with a straight calm face and said "Um, he's nursing" and she looked down in her lap, and sure enough, there he was, safe as could be, nursing.
Posted by: Jennifer | April 22, 2011 at 09:05 AM
I guess the important thing us that you have it back - but still - I'd want to know how it could have just shown up.
Posted by: Carole | April 22, 2011 at 09:52 AM
I remember that prop crew from a Twilight Zone or TV show like that.
Sometimes we look TOO hard. Now that it's back safely you can ply that yarn! I love your teapots and spindles!
Posted by: margene | April 22, 2011 at 10:19 AM
I love your family!!!!
Posted by: Kathy | April 22, 2011 at 11:06 AM
And I covet the spindle with the tourquoise/star -- what is it? I LOVE it.
Posted by: Kathy | April 22, 2011 at 11:07 AM
Thank goodness Pete looked!
That happened to me with the car keys the other day. Spent 30 minutes searching and muttering about how I had to have them when I came home because I had the CAR with me. /sigh Behind me on the counter the whole time.
xo
Posted by: Cookie | April 22, 2011 at 12:30 PM
How perfect to find two things you love in one item in my opinion this is the best tea pot for you from what I read.
Posted by: BestTeaPots | May 06, 2011 at 07:07 PM