Besides shoe polish, stationery, my pocketbook, travel pillows, the basket for rogue socks, and a pile of shirts to be ironed, there were many bins of fabric in my front closet. How did they get there? Was there a party I didn’t know about?

Just kidding! How else to keep several compositions going without running to the basement every other minute?

The closet had to be mostly emptied this weekend because I sold a cute patchwork purse on Etsy last week and cannot find it. Anywhere. This in spite of the fact that I took over one of the boys’ rooms as a “store.”

I’ve looked in all the right places and all the crazy places. Pulled furniture from walls. Looked in attic luggage and under car seats (don’t ask). Looked using casual side eye and with focused attention using a flashlight. Nada.

And to make matters worse? I can’t help but keep a rough tabulation of my time at this point — something I generally avoid because the numbers tend to be depressing.

A very generous guess puts my hourly rate at about $5 / hour for this pouch — which was machine pieced, hand quilted, machine and hand bound. There’s a Chinese closure which was hand stitched on. That rate excludes shipping and handling time (– another hour minimum). With every hour of searching, the rate goes down. And down.

Good thing the buyer is my cousin!

I will be making another pouch. A different one, of course, because all my cloth work is one of a kind. A weird pressure arises because the one my cousin bought came out really nice and they don’t all — ya know?

If the search hadn’t been so thorough, here’s where I’d joke that the damn thing will probably turn up the the second I finish a replacement. But I won’t now because it feels well and truly gone. I am mystified.

Leprechauns, for sure. What else could it be?

Also, what’s on your fridge?