Confess your glove fetish here

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
My name is Graham and I have a glove fetish!

I suspect that my friend Evil Jay, avid ice climber and past tense whitewater kayaker, is to blame. I suspect, like an infectious disease, if your climbing partner has a glove fetish, sooner or later you will be infected and the more climbing partners you have the more it spreads. I suspect I've infected others, too.

This has spread to other passtimes like motorcycling and, although I try my best to avoid it, yard work.

The fortunate fact is most gloves suck, otherwise I'd have more of them.

Fortunately most gloves have fingers that are too long or too short, to wide or too narrow, aren't warm enough, aren't dry enough, are too bulky to provide any dexterity, have a liner that sticks to my hands when damp, slip on whatever I'm holding, fill up with ice and snow when clipped to my harness, wear out too quickly, the list goes on...

Today I went to an outdoor store to look for something else entirely and of course I went straight to the glove isle. Just in case the perfect glove was waiting to be discovered. Just in case. You never know.

The racks are full of gloves for all sorts of winter sports. I guess some might be adequate for their intended skiing or snowboarding. But not great. My snowboard has been neglected the last couple of years so I don't fret. I'm here for gloves for ice climbing. Actually I'm really here for something else entirely. No, actually I'm really here for gloves. I try on pricy gloves from Marmot, Black Diamond, some others. None fitted, or were imperfect for various reasons. Then a small rack of Outdoor Research gloves came into view. I've had good luck with OR gloves in the past, but found plenty of duds, too. More duds today.

Now what's this? Alibi 2. In a size small. Hey, this fits like a glove! Instant perfect fit. Great dexterity. Looks like it would be warm enough for individual pitches if not a whole-day climb especially if there's water. $69. Promising, very promising. Now what's this? Alibi 2 Alpine. In a size small. Damn, this fits like a glove! Instant perfect fit. Great dexterity. Goretex but doesn't feel like it. Warm but no bulk whatsoever. Ooh. $169. For gloves. Ouch.

So I carry both gloves around the store for a while. I play with ice tools with both gloves and both are still a great fit. I find the thing I really came here for. Two gloves, I can't buy both of them, can I? I look at some daypacks because Debbie will need a new one for a trip planned for next year. Two gloves. Which one? Both? I look at other chuff. Damnit. Just pick one.

$169. For gloves. Ouch.

I ride home wearing the new gloves. They feel great. Its getting cold but my hands are comfortable even without the grip heaters on.

$169. Bargain. Bring on the winter!
 

squatch

Adventurer
kinco winter work gloves! the garden looking ones with the knit cuff $8 to $12 and warm enough for skiing in Montana! When its really cold Black Diamond mercury mitts.
 

rxinhed

Dirt Guy
I have some Carhartt microsuede lined gloves to drive my truck during the cold mornings. :ylsmoke:

For regular work duties, I use a variety of FG brand gloves from Home Depot. Though not fancy like the ones you describe above, I have several pair that I rotate for different purposes.
 

HumphreyBear

Adventurer
Hello my name is Humphrey and I have a glove fetish.
.
It started out with wearing gloves to work in London and Scotland, my Australian hands were crying out, begging for me to do something to relieve them from the numbness they had come to feel, so I got an innocent pair of calf skin casual wear gloves. They were great for about a week, then I started to feel I needed more from them. I began to notice that what they offered me was no longer enough - I needed a better fit, I needed more feel, I needed more sensation - and they just weren't giving it to me. So I got another pair, then they weren't enough so I began desperately searching for more, always more, ever more. Alas, I have a problem, and not just the compulsion, which compounds the issue. I have ugly hands. There I've said it.
.
I have fat fingers. Not just fat but short. Sausage fingers – but not the thin sort of sausage that sits daintily on a hot plate and slips effortlessly into a piece of bread at the BBQ. No, I’m talking your homemade beef steak and onion specials that are almost bursting out of the skin and look like they could peel open like overripe melons at any minute. Love ‘em as sausages, not so much for doing up the 5mm nuts on a bolt. I have short,fat, bloaty fingers, and everyone who models gloves or is used as a template when designing gloves have obviously got beautiful long, Rachmaninov-loving piano-concerto-playing glories. They must be slender, and dexterous, and wonderful. Mine look like an old arthritic gorilla had his hands amputated, run over by a Land Rover (or Land Cruiser if that is more your game) a few times, gnawed at by the flea bitten village dogs, then transplanted onto the ends ofmy otherwise quite masculine and shapely arms. Women have hit on me in bars, presumably because of the otherwise shapeliness of my arms, until I pull my hands out of my pockets to pay for a round of drinks, at which point they clutch the sides of their heads and collapse into poor little compressed balls of woe and grief on the bar room floor, saying "Don't touch me with those hideous things" over and over and over (and over) again whilst dribbling and generally making a fairly pronounced spectacle of themselves and my hands. People stare.
.
This makes getting gloves off the rack difficult, and in fact damned nigh impossible, so I have resorted to having them custom made. It is a dirty little secret, and one I don't tell many people, please don't hold it against me (after all this is a non-judgemental part of the forum). It all started when I was doing a lot of motorcycle track/road racing (amateur status only) (and not terribly good). When one is racing one needs touch. One needs feel. For all their grotesqueness my hands are very sensitive. Both tactilely and emotionally, I guess, but anyway. But when your sausage fingers only fill the first two-thirds of the finger sleeves, that’s a whole lotta flappin’ around in the breeze to contend with whilst braking from 270km/hr for a hair pin bend and banging the farings of the bloke who was making gorilla noises before the race.
.
So now I have eight pair of custom motorcycle racing gloves, and I don’t even race anymore. I have three pairs of ‘social’ gloves and I live in Australia again where the gloves would just be useful to stop sweat pooling on the table in the pub. I have three pair of ‘trekking’ gloves for walking on glaciers and doing the odd bit of climbing – and I live in Australia. I have gloves in every leather to have once roamed the earth. I heartily recommend kangaroo, by the way. Supple, warm, breaths well. Great traction, very tactile. Very abrasion resistant if that’s important to you (ask me how I know…).
.
Anyway... Thank you for letting me get the secret out in a safe and non-confronting environment like this. Now if only someone were to start on for woollen trekking socks, cos let me tell you about my feet!...
 
Last edited:

BigSwede

The Credible Hulk
Heh, I guess I have a glove fetish too. I'm always trying them on just in case the perfect fit comes along...never paid $169 for any though!
 

HumphreyBear

Adventurer
Custom kangaroo motorcycle gloves? Sign me up! :)

Try these guys, I have a set very similar to these that they custom made, though I can't remember the price. I have a set of custom Sidi gloves in a storage box somewhere, that cost a damn sight more than $169... :) The Italian shops do the best work, I was fortunate that I met some Italians who had custom gloves made, so they could do the translation. One and two piece suits in kangaroo leather are generally the same as normal leather. The first set of one piece leathers for GP racing is reputed to have been made from horse leather.
 

TangoBlue

American Adventurist
I have fat fingers. Not just fat but short. Sausage fingers – but not the thin sort of sausage that sits daintily on a hot plate and slips effortlessly into a piece of bread at the BBQ. No, I'm talking your homemade beef steak and onion specials that are almost bursting out of the skin and look like they could peel open like overripe melons at any minute. Love ‘em as sausages, not so much for doing up the 5mm nuts on a bolt. I have short,fat, bloaty fingers, and everyone who models gloves or is used as a template when designing gloves have obviously got beautiful long, Rachmaninov-loving piano-concerto-playing glories. They must be slender, and dexterous, and wonderful. Mine look like an old arthritic gorilla had his hands amputated, run over by a Land Rover (or Land Cruiser if that is more your game) a few times, gnawed at by the flea bitten village dogs, then transplanted onto the ends ofmy otherwise quite masculine and shapely arms. Women have hit on me in bars, presumably because of the otherwise shapeliness of my arms, until I pull my hands out of my pockets to pay for a round of drinks, at which point they clutch the sides of their heads and collapse into poor little compressed balls of woe and grief on the bar room floor, saying "Don't touch me with those hideous things" over and over and over (and over) again whilst dribbling and generally making a fairly pronounced spectacle of themselves and my hands. People stare.
.
Anyway... Thank you for letting me get the secret out in a safe and non-confronting environment like this. Now if only someone were to start on for woollen trekking socks, cos let me tell you about my feet!...

By the description of your limb appendages I'm getting this image that you're a Hobbit...
 

keezer37

Explorer
I got these in '85 when I joined the navy. We had to stencil our initials in them in bootcamp. I wear them every winter. Rub some Bick 4 on them in spring and autumn. There's not a split seam anywhere. They just won't die. They kinda look like Otzi the Iceman now.

DSC00335.jpg
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,531
Messages
2,875,591
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top