Someone was asking on KnitTalk, if you were a 6″ Crystal Palace double-pointed needle, where on earth would you be hiding so she could finish her project?

Boy, did that one bring back memories. Probably a dozen years ago, my youngest was having middle-ear surgery in an outpatient center, and I was in the waiting room knitting away with my dpns. We had been there quite a few times before, between our four kids. One of the nurses, it turned out, was a knitter, and when she had a moment we talked shop a bit.

When they moved our groggy John into recovery, they summoned us parents, and I gathered up my stuff to move into the next room–and, I found out after I went to go knit some more in the next room, dropped a dpn back there somewhere. (One of those moments when I regret having lousy hearing.) I immediately went looking for it, but it was never to be seen again. There weren’t that many places it could be, I mean, come on! I looked under the chair, under and down the sides of the couch, under the cushions, across the floor. But no luck. The nurses glanced around a bit, too, while I promised them I wasn’t trying to drum up business for them, honest!

A year ago, I had a colonoscopy done, and the assisting nurse happened to be an old friend. Pat told me gleefully that she’d been talking with some other nurses she knew, and they were talking about a mom who’d always knitted in the waiting room. It had suddenly hit her–they were talking about me!

I laughed and allowed as how she was likely right. I told her that one of them was a knitter, too.

And then I told her just why, though, probably, it was that they remembered me… I’ve always wondered who found that needle. And, um, how.