A Glove Supreme

January 2, 2021 3:01 PM

I've been unhappy with the fingerless gloves I've tried so far - mainly because they leave some of my fingers inadequately covered. I'm looking for suggestions for better ones.

Keeping my apartment fully heated in the winter is prohibitively expensive, so I keep it partly heated and dress warmer. I work from home and I'm on the computer all day every day. I use fingerless gloves so I can type, use my phone, etc. But here's where the snowflakes come in:

1. They can't be bulky or I won't be able to type easily.
2. By measurement my hand size is technically "Large", but I've found extra-large sizes to be less restrictive.
3. This is the clincher: I need the fingers to be different lengths! On every set of gloves I've tried so far, the cutoff line of the fingers is straight across - i.e. the length of each finger is about 1.5". However my index/middle/ring fingers are longer than my thumb and pinky (middles are in fact over an inch longer than pinkies), with the result that my thumbs and pinkies are covered all the way up to their last joints but my other fingers are only covered up to the next-to-last joint. This drives me absolutely crazy.

How/where do I find my ideal fingerless gloves? Is there such a thing as someone who can custom-knit gloves for me?

posted by Greg_Ace to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (10 answers total)

My domestic partner cut the fingertips off a pair of dollar store gloves. He has never put in any stitches to keep the gloved from coming apart where he cut them, but they have so no sign yet of doing so despite having been put through the washing machine and dryer.

The gloves he used were the larger thicker kind, not the smaller stretchy ones, but I think the small stretchy ones might survive this too. I sew doll sweaters out of the small stretchy ones and while I sew up any cut edges I make I don't bind them and they have never frayed or laddered while I was sewing the pieces together.

It's not too difficult to put crude blanket stitches in around the cut end if you want to experiment with doing that. Your question now makes me want to see what would happen if I got a pair of gloves made out of some kind of 100% plastic yarn, and I cut them and melt them to see if the plastic can be fused around the cut rim using intense heat - when I was kid people used to mend broken hard plastic items using a lit cigarette.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:20 PM on January 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

I used to work in a cold office and IMAK Arthritis Gloves helped a bunch. I like the snug fit which you may find restrictive.
posted by tinker at 3:24 PM on January 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

I wear these for work from home. All I could find around right now was my daughter's pair of small ones, so it's hard to tell the finger cut - but it looks like the index/middle are about 1/4 inch longer on hers, and on the picture on amazon the first two fingers do look appreciably longer. I prefer a tight fit for typing and wear a medium, but they are perfectly fine for typing and are quite warm.
posted by true at 3:35 PM on January 2, 2021

Best answer: I bet if you found a pair of hand-made fingerless gloves on Etsy (one example) and contacted the maker, they'd make them to your required lengths. It'd be super-simple for someone to just knit a few extra rows on specific fingers.
posted by penguin pie at 3:48 PM on January 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I buy cheap neoprene regular gloves at Costco - billed as egloves - and just cut the tips off where I need them. Have had to stitch them up a little after several years of wear. I use them for photography outdoors but would work for typing too.
posted by leslies at 5:27 PM on January 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have a set of these (more designs) that I either wear on their own, or with the aforementioned compression gloves, for typing in a cold room. It might be a bit too "fingerless", but they work surprisingly well on their own. These are similar, but add a mitten cover.

I have a set of running mittens without fingertips for light computer/device work, but I haven't been able to find a good version online. This is pretty close. I think I got my current pair at Target.

Otherwise, make sure you look at gloves marketed at both genders. Gloves "for women" also tend to be thinner and more flexible, making them work better for typing in my experience.
posted by Anonymous Function at 8:53 PM on January 2, 2021

Response by poster: Follow-up:

So far the only person who's come even remotely close to what I'm looking for is tinker, who gave a link to a pair of gloves with obviously different-length fingers. Although I'm not sure whether a cotton glove is going to provide adequate warmth.

I hadn't thought of getting gloves custom-made via Etsy, I'll definitely look into that as an option.

I'm not interested in electrically or chemically heated gloves in any format.

I've tried snipping off full-fingered gloves but the unraveling has always been a problem. I haven't completely given up on that idea but at the moment I'm hoping that a ready-made finished product is available somewhere.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:21 PM on January 2, 2021

There's nothing unusual about the lengths of the fingers in the IMAK gloves: on me, my pinky and thumb are covered significantly more than my other fingers.

Most people have fingers of unequal length, with the relative lengths being affected by a wide variety of reasons. The relative lengths of the pointer and ringer finger seem to have the most data, but there is research about relative pinky length if you dig. To me, this implies that all mass-produced gloves must be designed under the assumption that fingers are of different lengths, and thus all recommended gloves meet requirement three.

They just don't fit you or me right because our hands don't meet the artificial standards set by Big Glove.
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:59 PM on January 2, 2021

Is there such a thing as someone who can custom-knit gloves for me?

So there's etsy, and beyond that if you or anyone you know who might be willing to do this for you has a sewing machine, making custom gloves is actually really easy. You can use the material from thin leggings or even some thin women's dress socks (this is surprisingly warm), make 3 really narrow U-shaped seams down one end to make tubes for the fingers plus a wider one for the thumb, and it's literally a 10-minute job.

But the imak gloves are pretty warm, ime.
posted by trig at 12:47 AM on January 3, 2021

Response by poster: So my IMAK gloves arrived today. Even though I got the largest size they're still more restrictive than I'd prefer, and they're maybe not as warm as I'd hoped. BUT at least it reaches to the bottoms of my fingernails on all fingers, so I'll call it a temporary step up and look for custom gloves on Etsy.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:36 PM on January 8, 2021