Touchscreen Gloves
Credit: Courtesy of Grathio/instructables.com
While a touchscreen phone makes it easy to call, email, search, and even go green by doing little more than lifting a finger, the ease of use diminishes drastically in cold weather; gloves and mittens were just not designed for people who needed to write urgent Twitter updates from icy locales. To give your tech a boost this winter, try this Instructables tutorial for making your favorite gloves touchscreen friendly.
Most touchscreens work because of simple science—a circuit between your finger and the display—which is why a glove can be such a buzzkill when it interrupts the circuit. The solution? A dozen inches of conductive thread and a sewing needle. (And if you've never so much as ripped out a hem, don't worry: you can still do this.)
Tie a knot in the end of your thread, and then pull the needle through from the inside of the fingertip to the outside; then back into the glove, and repeat. Make 3-5 small stitches—close enough together that your taps will hit the key you're aiming for, but not so small that the device won't read it at all (this author recommends a one-quarter inch field on the outside of the fingertip). Then turn the glove inside out so you're looking at the inside, tie another knot, and leave plenty of tangled string to make sure the circuit completes. There you have it: a no-fuss way of turning the gloves you already have into touchscreen-compatible versions without buying new.
