What not to do with a crochet hook.

You may have noticed that yesterday's post included yarn wound into a big old ball by hand.... I'll wait while you look. That is a result of the strangest knitting disaster I have ever perpetrated, and for some embarrassing reason, I have decided to share that with you here. Sit back and enjoy a laugh at the sequence of events that let to the existence of that hand-wound ball of lovely:

1. Found a very tiny crochet hook in the floor of my car while cleaning it out to drive The Mom to the bead store on Saturday.
2. Didn't read the size on the hook, just stuck it in the little well on my dashboard for the trip there and back, around three hours total.
3. Got the crap annoyed out of me by a VERY shiny metal crochet hook rolling around on my dashboard. In the sun. Flash, roll, fall off, put back, repeat.
4. Came up with a brilliant solution. Pulled the cone of laceweight yarn out of the bag in the back. Stuck the hook in the middle of a tightly wound cone of alpaca silk yarn. Hook down. I am obviously a genius.
5. Thought that I had solved the problem and dismissed the whole thing from my mind until I got home and got ready to cast on.
6. Tried to pull the hook out, the one that I was convinced that I was going to need to bead the shawl I was starting with this yarn. What happens when you try to pull a crochet hook BACKWARDS out of a tightly wound cone of alpaca silk yarn? NOTHING. Doesn't even wiggle.
7. Tried to push it through forwards. Guess what happens when you push a crochet hook forward into a cone of laceweight yarn that is taller than the hook is long?
8. You guessed it. It disappears completely. No amount of poking it with your fingers or with other long implements like, say, three different sizes of knitting needles does anything but make you worry you are chopping your yarn up.

That is right, in eight easy steps, I managed to FEED A CROCHET HOOK (that I needed to use with the yarn) TO A CONE OF LACEWEIGHT YARN. Now, THAT is talent!

Thus we arrive at the place where I spent two entire hours on Saturday night winding a ball by hand, like a treasure hunt, trying to uncover my crochet hook. All's well that ends well, right? And hey, I got to pay very careful attention to the new Dr. Who! (Who, geek?? Me??)