Mr Crafty & his terrible glove problem.

Yes, Mr Crafty has a terrible glove problem. I'm sure he won't mind me sharing this. You see, Mr Crafty gets the train to work. In the winter he sits on the train, takes his gloves off, puts them on his lap, and starts to read the paper or a book. Now Mr Crafty often gets so engrossed in his reading material that he doesn't notice when it is his stop. Often he only realises when the train has stopped, meaning that Mr Crafty has to quickly rush off the train. It is only when the train goes off in to the distance and Mr Crafty is walking out the station, that he realises in the rush to get off the train, he has dropped his gloves.

Now this happens fairly regularly throughout winter. The train company must have a small mountain of Mr Crafty's gloves. I suggested that Mr Crafty tie a piece of string to each of his gloves and thread this through the sleeves of his coat, a look à la school playground. However Mr Crafty is far too serious for this. Then I remembered my super action hero fingerless mittens. Maybe a pair of these would be the answer to Mr Crafty's problems. However this did raise one very important issue, the dreaded sweater curse. Every knitter knows that knitting for your partner is dangerous. They will never fully appreciate the love that went in to each stitch. But could I let Mr Crafty go on with his terrible glove problem? After much soul searching I decided I could knit mittens for Mr Crafty as:

• they are not a sweater
• they will only take a few hours to knit
• I can knit them in front of him so he realises how long they take to make
• I can use yarn that I already have in the house, so that if he loses them I don't have to cry about the loss of some beautiful alpaca
• I can use acrylic yarn, it is practical, and if they accidentally go in the washing machine, then the mittens won't have to be donated to a small child.

So that was that. The mittens were completed a few weeks ago.
Mr Crafty is very grateful for them, and wears them every day as he walks to the train station. There is no sign of the sweater curse coming to fruition. And best of all when he sits down on the train to read, he can leave them on his hands, so no more lost gloves. A happy ending to Mr Crafty's glove problem after all.