The Great Yarn Rescue of '06

It was twilight at my grandfather's cottage on a small lake in northern Michigan, and I had been sitting on the pontoon knitting. As the sun set, the weather had cooled, and the mosquitos had begun to salivate. Not wanting to be their next feast, I decided it would be best to take myself and my things up to the cottage and change into some more evening appropriate attire-the swimsuit and sarong look wasn't going to hold out against the insect onslaught. I picked up my book, my knitting, and the extra ball of yarn I'd been carrying around with me all day (in the event that I came to the end of the working ball, I didn't want to have to trudge all the way to my luggage to get another one), and stepped off the boat onto the dock. I was just stepping off the dock onto the grass when I looked down at what I was carrying and realized something was missing...

Horrified, I whirled around and looked wildly at the dock, but the extra ball of yarn was nowhere to be seen. I hurried back onto the boat, but there was no yarn there either. In the growing darkness, I looked mournfully into the water between the boat and the dock and realized what had happened. I had dropped the ball of yarn into the lake. Desperately, I knelt down on the edge of the boat and peered into the water, but I couldn't see anything (I didn't really expect to, but I was distraught and not thinking clearly). Now, I am not a person to give up when I know there is still a way to overcome an adversity, but I am also generally realistic. I came to the very logical conclusion that the yarn, like a few pairs of my mother's glasses, my dad's fishing rod, and an odd number of swim shoes, was lost forever in the murky depths of Wixom Lake.

I'm not really the sort of person to get extremely emotional about most things. I did cry for half an hour when Chewbacca died in Vector Prime, but that was Chewbacca (on a side note, do you think there are knitters in the Star Wars galaxy? And do you think that anyone spins yarn out of wookiee fur? Like...wookiee wool?!!). However, I did feel a bit nauseated about losing a ball of yarn, as I had only bought five of them and wasn't entirely sure I was going to have enough to finish the project I'd started. I knew there were stores I could get to easily that sell the yarn, but what if I couldn't match up the dye lot? These possibilities made me feel very pouty, so I went up to the cottage and whined about it to my mother, who did sympathize but obviously couldn't remedy the situation.

For whatever reason, perhaps a desire to return to the scene of the tragedy and find closure, I went back down to the boat and half heartedly looked around again, in case the yarn really hadn't fallen into the water and I'd missed it in my initial search. Realizing I was being silly and still hadn't managed to change my clothing, I stepped off the boat and happened to look out on the lake.

Floating there, about fifteen feet out, was my yarn.

At this point, something very silly happened. After an initial surge of joy at finding the yarn not at the bottom of the lake, I thought, "Dad won't let me go swimming when it's almost dark outside..."

Then I mentally slapped myself, realizing that I am almost twenty years old and can go swimming any time I want, and this was an emergency. I threw the sarong and my glasses onto the boat and jumped into the water.

This proved to be momentarily disconcerting, as I can't see that well without my glasses-beyond eighteen inches or so, everything is pretty blurry. As I have said, it was almost dark, and for a moment I couldn't see where the yarn was and I thought that I was too late, that it had soaked up enough water to actually sink, and that my one brief glimmer of hope was just that-a brief glimmer.

But then the water moved just the right way, and I could see the outline of the ball of yarn, and I swam with all possible haste towards it. Reaching it, I grabbed it out of the water and held it aloft. Then I swam back to the dock using only one arm, since the other arm was occupied keeping the yarn above the water.

Having successfully executed the rescue mission, I went back inside to comfort the victim.