A few years ago I was building a rolling ladder for a library. It was a kit that had all the metal parts, I just had to cut the wood and put it together. After getting it all together, I took it apart to stain and seal the wood. I carefully put all the metal parts on my workbench is little piles so I wouldn't lose anything.
When I put it back together, I was missing a black crown nut. I looked for two days to try and find it. My mind was thinking up the craziest things that could of happened to it. Finally, I gave up and bought a new one from Lowes and painted it to match the others. I had to do some filing on it to get it perfect, but when I was done, nobody would ever know that it wasn't the original nut.
After installing it at my clients house, I started another project. This time, I decided to use my magnetic bowls to hold everything in. When I picked up the magnetic bowl, I found that missing nut underneath it. My guess is that a cat bumped it off the bench and it hit the magnetic bowl on the way down, and stuck to it where I couldn't see it.
The entire time I was looking for it, it was just a foot away from me and I never thought to look there!!!!