Have You Seen My Sweater?

I have experienced a knitting disaster. We’ve all had them of course. The cable sweater where you forget to cable on a few rows. The lace scarf that has a few too many yarnovers; you want to call them eyelets, but you know that they are holes.

Yes, I’ve done those things, but my most recent disaster seems to be beyond reclamation.

I have lost the almost completed front of my husband’s birthday sweater.

I knit him a sweater every birthday. This year it is an argyle vest. I have taken meticulous care with all the bobbins hanging and dangling and getting in the way. As is my way, I enlarged the color chart to poster size to give me half a chance of keeping my colorwork on target. It is a slow knit and I have been working stop-start since June.

It was that stop-start knitting that made me realize I had to pick up the pace. So instead of knitting it at home following supper and evening household chores, I began taking it along with me during the day. I worked on it while my car was being washed. I took it to a doctor’s appointment for the inevitable wait. And I took it to a rehab center where I volunteer in the knitting therapy program.

And that is where it seems to have vanished. On this particular day, it stayed unworked on as residents of the facility were having a lot of knitting problems that required my eyes and hands. At the end of the session, I put my notion bag in my knitting bag where I thought my argyle safely resided. But when I got home, the pattern was in my bag but not actual knitting. No bobbins, no yarn, no needles.

The air was sucked out of my chest. I turned the bag inside out. I looked under the seats of my car. I called the center, but the director had left for the weekend. No one had seen my knitting.

I can’t believe that it’s gone. I have gotten forgetful in my old age; as my hormones retreat with middle age they seems to have taken my memory with them. I have forgotten my jacket, my purse, my grocery list, forgotten to buy things on my list when I had it in my hand.

But I have never lost a knitting project. I am bereft. I don’t know what to do; the notion that I will have to start all over makes me distracted and slightly nauseous. I’m even more forgetful. I keep expecting to find the sweater in some off place -- like under my bed. I check every day.

It looks like it is gone. It looks like I’ll be starting again although that idea makes me weep. Worse I won’t have a sweater by Nov. 18. I can’t knit that fast -- and color changing really slows me down. I guess the sweater will be a Christmas gift.

But I can’t get over the absence of my work. Feels like I lost a finger. Very unsettling. I’ve been told to ask Anthony, patron saint of lost objects, to help. So far, it seems he wants me to continue looking under my bed.

So I’m asking for your good thoughts. Maybe if I get going a good knitting vibe, my sweater will find its way home.

Thanks in advance. And keep an eye on your own project!