As I started work on the thirty-three remaining “solving” squares I need to make for the crochet sudoku afghan I made so many years ago, I realized that one of the colors from my usual rainbow assortment was missing–a skein of shocking pink yarn.

I was pretty sure that I had a skein somewhere, but where was not a question for which I had an answer. I moved forward anyway, crocheting my way through the rainbow: five hot red and orange squares, one bright yellow square, six turqua squares, four delft squares, and one each of light orchid and amethyst:

With all of those squares completed, the task of finding the missing skein of yarn suddenly moved to from “to get to when I need it” to “find it now.”

I started with the bins that were closest to me, and to my disappointment, it was not there.

Then I looked in a cardboard box that I was pretty sure it had been shipped in. I emptied everything from the box. There was no shocking pink yarn, but there was a receipt, and there at the very bottom of the list of yarns I had ordered was a note that one skein of the yarn I needed had been sent, but there was no note as to where I had put it.

Nothing to tell me where I should start to look.

But having eliminated both the bins nearest to me and the box it had been shipped in, I came up with a plan of attack, and within 10 minutes I had unearthed the shocking pink skein of yarn, and gotten a start on the first of nine more crochet squares.

Here it is with its mother skein:

and here it is on its own:

I am very glad I found the missing skein of yarn. There is a certain joy in using what you have, and now that I am just 304 stitches away from finishing this project, I will continue moving forward, one stitch at a time.