KEY POINTS:
It is like an online dating service for long-lost gloves.
No, that is not a typo.
A Texas native who experienced her first snowflakes in Pittsburgh last year was surprised by the lost gloves she saw all over the city last winter.
Wouldn't people want them back? Why were people just walking past them?
So Jennifer Gooch, who is pursuing her master of fine arts degree at Carnegie Mellon University, started onecoldhand.com in an effort to reunite dropped gloves with their mates, and spread some goodwill.
One of her first ones was a lambskin glove that someone had propped up on a ledge on campus. She was worried about taking it at first. What if the owner came back to claim it?
In its place, she left a small rectangular sticker. With a drawing of a black glove, it says, "Missing a glove? onecoldhand.com."
Gooch displays the gloves on the wall in her basement art studio at the university.
There are 21 so far, each tacked up with push pins. Slips of scrap paper hang there, too, chronicling where each was found.
Gooch photographs each glove and puts the picture and information on her website, where people can report found gloves and request stickers.
She has not made any glove connections in the two weeks the site has been live, but it is OK if that never happens, she said.
"It's kind of whimsical and bittersweet," Gooch said.
"It makes you feel there's this opportunity for benevolence."
Gooch would love to see One Cold Hand projects sprout up in other cities.
She is working with Kati and Erich Pelletier of New York City to start a similar effort there. They hope to have onecoldhand-nyc.com up and running soon.
"I like the sense of what stories are behind those gloves, sort of the community that you never meet but you see scattered about the city," said Kati Pelletier, a librarian who met Gooch through a mutual friend.
- AP
