Web site seeks to reunite lost gloves, owners

PITTSBURGH (AP) — It’s like an online dating service for long lost gloves.

No, that’s not a typo.

A Texas native who experienced her first snowflakes in Pittsburgh last year was miffed by the lost gloves she spotted all over the city last winter. Whom did they belong to? Wouldn’t they 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 www.onecoldhand.com in an effort to reunite dropped gloves with their mates — and in the process spread some good will.

One of her first ones was a moist, 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. A drawing of a black glove is scrawled on it and 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. Small yellow Post-it notes and slips of scrap paper hang there, too, chronicling where each was found.

Gooch would love to see One Cold Hand projects sprout up in other cities. She’s working with Kati and Erich Pelletier of Brooklyn, N.Y., to start a similar effort there. They hope to have www.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.

Pelletier hopes people get a little smile from the Web sites, and also get a little taste of how technology doesn’t necessarily have to keep people isolated and apart.