DIY fingerless gloves for typing at your maximal productive speed. Jk I was playing video games.
DIY fingerless gloves for typing at your maximal productive speed. Jk I was playing video games.

Merino wool is very important to me, a sweaty monster that struggles with temperature regulation, because it doesn’t feel terrible to sweat into yet also keeps you toasty on the other end of the climate spectrum. It’s a popular activewear material for its natural antimicrobial/antiodor properties, which it presumably inherits from its days of living on a sheep. I have found the hype to be real: camp out of a vehicle for a while and it becomes evident who is wearing synthetics (ripens quickly, like a banana), cotton (honorable mention), or merino (actual miracle fiber).

The downsides to merino are that it’s fragile, and heckin spendy (I guess it’s cheaper to make plastics than wait for sheep to grow), which is how I ended up hoarding a pair of mortally wounded merino leggings beyond its usefulness, unwilling to throw away the precious material that had dutifully warmed my legs in the backcountry for 6+ years.

Unspeakable backcountry butt shenanigans caused these fatal wounds that I am not powerful enough to dress. Perhaps they will teach me in WFR next week.
Unspeakable backcountry butt shenanigans caused these fatal wounds that I am not powerful enough to dress. Perhaps they will teach me in WFR next week.

I’d just been looking for merino fingerless gloves and buff earlier and was procrastinating on purchasing because $40+ for simple tubes garments seemed excessive. This inspired me to try sewing them myself :D

Using scissors on clothes feels so wrong. I was able to map out arm warms plus a buff/hat while avoiding the worst hole zones. Turns out legs have a lot of surface area.
Using scissors on clothes feels so wrong. I was able to map out arm warms plus a buff/hat while avoiding the worst hole zones. Turns out legs have a lot of surface area.

>Buff/hat no-sew

This was the easiest, there was no actual sewing involved after cutting off the leg segment! Turns out my leg width is also my neck width. I just had to darn a small hole.

Wool buff keeps your neck warm and can be deployed to conceal your true intentions over Zoom calls.
Wool buff keeps your neck warm and can be deployed to conceal your true intentions over Zoom calls.
Tie one end of the buff together to make a hat. Got to keep that thinking machine nice and toasty.
Tie one end of the buff together to make a hat. Got to keep that thinking machine nice and toasty.

Oh snap, accidental styling?? “Officier, I swear I was just trying to stay warm.”

>Fingerless gloves

This was tricker, because one of the leg segments had big rips to work around. The tubes ended up being straightforward to sew. For the thumbs, I just left holes. I’m considering adding thumb attachments in the future, although the nice thing about the simple tube is that I can use them as running mitts by folding them over my hands. And also, I’m lazy.

That's it for the sewing.
That's it for the sewing.

>Conclusion

A success! I’ve been wearing these new, un-holey accessories nonstop (maybe I should figure out how to use the so-called smart thermostat).

What should I do with the leftover fabric? There’s quite a bit but the shape is irregular, and I don’t have more cylindrical body parts left in need of coverage. Maybe I could double-layers the hand warmers, my hands are always freezing T_T