The sky was dreary and hectic as I attempted to get into the car with my arms full.    I shoved my crochet bag into the seat and watched as it tumbled on its side, spilling the contents.  While I picked up scattered yarn and shoved everything back into the bag, a nice drizzle began to sprinkle the ground.

As we got under way, I reached for the bag to pull out a skein of yarn and discovered, the yarn I needed was missing!  I must have missed it when I picked everything else up.

When we arrived home 12 hours later, I found a rain soaked mass of yarn with the bent needle still attached.  We had run over the yarn as we left.

I decided to wash the yarn and see if it could be saved. I found a nylon laundry bag for washing dedicates and dropped the yarn inside. What came out of the dryer …… a tangled mess!

Still hoping I could save the skein, I spread the mass of yarn on the guest bed.

I stared at the tangle of thread and smiled.  It reminded me of another web of string I had untangled as a young camp fire girl.

My mother was my Camp Fire leader and a quilter.    She had a wooden quilting rack suspended from the ceiling.  For a fun activity at one of our meetings she created a web of fun.   Twine was looped around the rack and left to hang a few feet off the floor.  At the end of each string, she tied a piece of candy or a pack of gum or some other small token.  It looked like a multitude of prizes hung from that rack.  In reality only 10-15 strands dangled.  The strings were then crisscrossed and woven through each other until she had created a web with treats suspended at varying levels across the network of twine.

To my eight year old self, it was a treasure hunt.  The idea was to pick a string  and work to the prize of choice.  It sounds easy now, but with 8-10 girls vying for a position and pulling on strings, it was near impossible to predict which prize dangled from which beginning.  I wish I had a picture to show you, but I don’t.   There is a lovely picture, but it only exists in my memory.  The package of Wrigley’s spearmint gum dangled at the end of my string.  At that moment the gum was a treasured prize. This has always been one of my favorite childhood memories.   As I sit in the floor and work on my tangle of yarn, my heart is happy.

It took hours and tremendous patience to untangle this mess. I considered stopping and tossing the lot in the recycle bin several times.   Now I am glad I persevered!

The untangling is done and I will find something special to create from it. Maybe I will create a new memory that will give someone else a smile.