Mitten Fairy

A few weeks ago, I read a post on Persephone's blog that delighted me so completely that I decided I would knit her some mittens. If you think this a strange gesture, please note that I have redoubled my needlework efforts to take advantage of the hypnotic effect working with yarn and thread produces. If I find a willing or even remotely reasonable target, I knit. And since Persephone lives in a cold place where mittens are misplaced all the time, I decided I would make the mittens.* And then figure out later how to preserve her blog anonymity and mine -- and still give them to her.

Behold the comments on yesterday's post at WhatPossessedMe, Persephone's beacon of inernet excellence:

Nina:

Manhattan sidewalk
A safe place, I have hidden
Your new red mittens


Persephone:

I want me some gloves
or mittens with mud flap girls.
Do their boobs get cold?

Am I really getting mittens? Really?


Nina:

Snow flurries, lovely
aloft like mudflapper boobs
Of course, red mittens


Persephone:

Oh, where can they be?
Porny mitts amid the drifts –
Sluts in virgin snow.


Nina:

Seven train and up
past sephora and soupman
midown mittens park

(I could keep this up forever, or I could tell you where I hid them. They are in no danger of being randomly discovered, if you are in the mood for a work-distracting treasure-hunt).

Persephone:

Very intriguing. I know the train and park and Sephora of which you speak - but which way "past"...


I have not written Persephone, who doubtless spent the afternoon diving into the planters at Bryant Park (ok, probably not), another haiku. Her mittens are in safe hands (and in the location I specified) but you see, all this talk of mittens and the exchange of haiku - and something I saw on the street last night - has given me pause.

I was walking home across 42ns street, and it was bitter cold. There 104 bus, which I sometimes take to 2nd Avenue if I am lazy (or just freezing my face off), was pulling up. I got on the bus and noticed, under one of the seats, a single pink glove, perfectly clean and obviously just dropped there by its owner. I rode the bus four blocks. When I disembarked at 42nd and 2nd, I waited on the corner for a moment, waiting for a message from my innermost being, regardind whether I should stop for a bottle of cheap hooch and drink myself into oblivion. The answer, as my innermost being reported, was, sadly, no. I wanted a bowl of steamed kale and a half gallon of spring water and perhaps half a sleeping pill, all of which could be had at home. I turned left and headed up the stairs into my neighborhood and saw, right there on step four, another pink glove, very like the one I had seen on the bus. Its fingers were all smashed together, as it had been trodden upon all evening.

Losing your gloves, mittens, hat, scarf, nose cozy, whatever, sucks. It's cold here in wintertime. We don't have cars. We need these items.

The sight of these gloves and the haiku I had been trying to construct in answer to Persephone made me wonder if I might be able to knit and give away more mittens.

I think I might. I love making mittens. I wish to make more of them. Porny or no.

So until the official end of winter, that is to say whenever it stops being cold, I will knit and stash one pair of mittens in New York City and post clues as to the whereabouts of said mittens here, on Nina is ridiculous dot org.*

Keep in mind this will amuse me greatly and also prevent me from grading papers, which means I definitely deserve some kind of an award for something. Perhaps illogic and career sabotage?

Will post again later. (I think). If I don't see you, have a good weekend.


* Please note: these are not the real mittens. I simply forgot to photograph the mittens before I stashed them, so I stole this photo from KnitDad. I love KnitDad's blog, so perhaps since I have said "l love you" and linked to him he won't be mad that I stole his photo. *ducking*