Mixer Mix Up

So yesterday I made refrigerator-mashed potatoes for MOPS this morning. You mash the potatoes with cream cheese and sour cream the day before, and then bake them right before you are ready to serve them. I burned out my old stand mixer about 6 months ago making sugar cookies, so I splurged for the Kitchen Aid when I replaced it. It was so strange, the mixing paddle kept hitting the side of the bowl making a horrible clanking noise, some times it would clank so hard that it would actually knock the bowl out of the locking bottom. It would jam and stop mixing all together. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. To get it to limp along I had to pull the paddle out of the potatoes and reattach the bowl. It was horribly annoying, but I had to mash the potatoes, so I kept limping it along. I even called my friend Anne who has a similar mixer and asked if she has had this problem, with no luck. I vowed to send it back to Kitchen Aid as soon as I finished mashing the potatoes. On the second batch it mysteriously stopped doing it. I meant to have Travis look at it last night, but I forgot. I didn't give it another thought until this morning when I was standing in the buffet line behind a woman as she dug into my potatoes and found the metal cap piece to my mixer in the potatoes. I didn't admit that it was my dish. I took the cap from the woman saying, "My that is strange, I wonder who brought the potatoes, I will go wash it off and see if anyone is missing it". But what I was thinking was Ah Ha, that's what was making all of the clanking. How embarrassing! I am so glad my mixer is okay!