Posted by: springviolet

I love my iPhone. There’s just one little problem with it; I can’t use the touch screen while wearing gloves. Oh wait, I can buy special gloves.*

But I’m cheap and knitting from my stash.

I have a pair of fingerless gloves, but having all your fingers exposed all the time is chilly. Flip top mittens are great, I even have a pair on needles. But they too, will be a little clumsy when it comes to using my phone when I’m out and about at wintertime. What I really want, is a pair of mittens with a single exposed thumb pad.

Around the same time I started thinking about knitting up a pair of thumb exposed mittens, a link came across the Historic Knitting Yahoo Group where I lurk.

The Worshipful Company of Glovers of London has a beautiful collection of antique gloves and mittens, most of which they have photographed and published online. Of particular interest to me are the gloves listed about midway down the webpage. Take a look at item number 23401 + A.

This pair of gloves was knit in 17th century, Italy. Take a close look at the fingers on the left hand glove (the one on the top in the photo). The thumb, index and middle fingers all have slits in them to expose fingertips. And on the right glove, there is no thumb tip at all. The site says this is likely for the annointing of holy water or oils. How crazy cool is that? :-)

Using these gloves as inspiration, I now have a pair of opera length gloves on my To Be Knit list. I’ll use a button hole technique to knit slits into to a couple fingers of right hand. Granted, I probably won’t get to this glove project until the end of next year, but they’ll be made.

* Note: Regarding fancy gloves for touch screens: It is possible to stitch a small square of conductive thread on to the fingertip of a glove. Spools of conductive thread run about $20, however, I did find an online source for short lengths of conductive thread for $3.95. By the way, this would make an excellent stocking stuffer for a crazy person like me.