Following Valentines Day it’s important to remember the lonely ones. You know who I mean. All those sad soggy singleton gloves left hopefully on garden walls or found languishing in puddles?
They’re always a bit damp aren’t they – even on the sunniest day. What’s all that about then?! Except the world conspiring to make the sad anthropomorphic glove picture even more tragic.
I bet you’ve found a solitary glove on the pavement and picked it up (probably very gingerly between forefinger and thumb) and plopped it on a surface ever so slightly higher than the pavement and so ever so slightly closer to maybe being happily discovered by the orrignal owner (who obviously hasn’t thrown the partner away). Even less likely, You hope it might be spotted by a passing stranger with the exact same glove looking lost and lonely at home having lost it’s partner weeks earlier but not yet given up on.
One of the guy’s Chris works with spent a rainy afternoon dreaming up a glove matching service in which people would send in singleton gloves found on the street to an office where people could wash it dry it catalogue it and attempt to match it to it’s partner.
He imagined gloves posted in being listed with a photo and a short description of where they were found. People who had lost one glove would then log in to see if their glove was featured and people who had found a glove could do the same. It would be like a dating service for gloves. He never did anything with the idea. For some reason it died when they left the pub. Questions such as who would administer this site and who would get to keep the pair of gloves, The finder or the loser each with one glove and how would people collect the gloves made it all a bit complicated.
But last week I read over on the inspiring make do and mend year about a website that are a step ahead of Chris’ mate Phill. Glove Love collect odd gloves and mismatch them or knit partners to make slightly oddball pairs and then sell them for a fiver.
Totally worth a look. However, just when I was about to buy myself a pair of loved gloves – out of the blue a colleague of Chris gave him a pair of beautiful soft woollen gloves which one of her colleagues (keeping up with all the workmates??!) had given her but which she is unable to wear.
Gorgeous Gloves
Never look a regift horse in the mouth says me. Especially not such a beautiful regift! So, for now, I will keep Glove Love in the back of my mind until I lose a glove and need to buy a new old pair or find a sad solitary glove looking to be matched. But who knows, it might be just what you were looking for.
Farewell Hackney Hipsters 