I thought I was going to be putting the finishing touches on the first of what will be two crochet troll hats, but fate had her own agenda and did not care what I thought, and before the day was done, I would find that not one, but two crochet ears had gone missing.

Losing crochet ears is not new to me. I have done it at least twice before. Once when I was working on a dog appliqué to put on a Rainbow Bridge Shawl I made for a friend, and once when I was working on a Vinx (Vegan Mink) Stole in honor of my mom’s cousin, Flora Ruzich.

But I haven’t even had a chance to look for the ears yet because I was so distracted by the hair.

It started when I went out in search of the kind of brush that is supposed to be most effective–a particular kind of wire brush for combing out one’s dog.

I had no luck finding the exact type, so I bought a bristle brush, that to my eye, looked exactly like the one I had seen a woman used in a Youtube video I had watched.

Like me, she had trouble finding the exact right brush. Unlike me, she found a substitute that worked. As a result of some disastrous outcomes when I tried using the bristle brush, I decided that trolls can have curly hair just as well as straight hair that looks like cotton candy, and I took a wide tooth comb and pulled it up into a top knot/pony tail:

It took awhile, but eventually it was done, and I was able to move onto crocheting the headband and making a few flowers:

Which, when it was put in place:

looked to my eye as if it had added a bit of joi to the hat that had previously been missing, but when I looked again, I realized that the ears were actually missing.

Tomorrow, I will start looking for the missing ears in my purse, and then, when they are found (or not), I will continue moving forward one stitch at a time.