I’m afraid that we are back to darning this week, but not socks for a change. Some years ago we came across some excellent oven gloves – glove shaped and made of some magic, knitted insulated stuff, the name of which completely escapes me. Anyway, over the years we have had several pairs and eventually they stop being so well insulated and have to be retired. However, the latest pair, which is constructed of two layers, started to wear out. There were holes in the thin outer fabric of two fingers and one thumb and this reduced the insulating capacity noticeably, although it’s the inner layer that provides most of the insulation.
I think the original outer is cotton with silicone grips, but I decided that wool would be a better fibre for the mend. I found some left-over pure wool in a natural grey colour – I think it might be Jacob wool – that was sufficiently thick for the job. Wool burns at 570-600°C, so there’s no chance of igniting it with the temperature a domestic oven reaches. I darned the holes with quite a dense weave, being careful not to stich into the inner layer, which could potentially provide a route to conduct heat.
Time will tell how long this particular mend will last, but I am quite hopeful that it will significantly extend the life of these very useful gloves.
The Snail of Happiness 
katechiconi
/ January 17, 2022That darn on the fingers reminds me of an experiment I conducted a few years ago (unsuccessful as it happens, but I’m still thinking about a solution). I wanted to be able to use my touchscreen phone on the back of the motorbike, for GPS navigation. In cold weather, it’s no fun to take your well insulated gloves off to do this, so I thought I’d try darning ‘pads’ of silvery conductive metallic thread into the fingertips to allow the screen to sense the charge. In principle, it should have worked. Sadly. motorbike gloves are extremely sturdy and resistant to sharp, poky hard things. Like needles. I could not get enough smooth, flat thread surface on the inside of the glove finger to make it work. Now, if you wanted to make a pair of knitted gloves with the same facility, let me know, and I will try to dig out the rest of that thread and send it to you!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ January 17, 2022I have some of that conductive thread somewhere… there was a plan for something, but now I can’t remember what it was!!
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DawnGillDesigns
/ January 18, 2022brilliant
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Going Batty in Wales
/ January 18, 2022Oven gloves take such a lot of wear! Mine seem to go into holes too. Those darns are very neat and wool being a good insulator they should improve the heat protection as well as sabilising the holes. Did you use the speedweave again?
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The Snail of Happiness
/ January 24, 2022No, the Speedweve disc wouldn’t fit into the fingers, so there were done without any sort of gadget. The fuzziness of the wool covers a multitude of errors!
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