My wife knits fingerless gloves like this for pretty much the same reason: she got tired of pulling them off in the winter to use her phone or iPod.

You can check out some of her stuff here: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5056598§ion_id=5363393
She can even make you ones in any color yarn you like.

gloves like this have been around forever. especially in the city. maybe not with fancy magnets, though. i always saw them with velcro or maybe buttons. still, this is a lot to charge for fancy magnets. but then again, i've never been a fan of these kinds of gloves because when it's cold my fingertips are usually suffering the most already.

Funny how you mention hunting in the first sentence of the summary, cause this seems alot like hunting gloves.

P.ex. http://www.greenlakeoutfitters.com/images/insulated-gloves.jpg

#3: Yeah, I had a pair like that, and that was the first thing I thought of. The idea of just having fold-backs on the thumb and index fingers (on a per-finger basis) is pretty good, though.

Fingerless gloves alone just don't cut it - you really need to be able to cover up in between operating the equipment (or so I discovered whilst photographing Cambridge one frosty evening).

I had a pair like this when I was little. They were joined together with a bit of string through the sleeves of my duffel coat.

there's a stall at cambridge market which does a good pair of mittens-to-fingerless velcro ones. perfect for cycling into the wind, and rolling cigs on wet doorsteps...

Not a new idea, and I'm reluctant to bring magnets anywhere NEAR my electronics thank you.

I'll stick with my vecro-assisted wool mittens (for repelling water) with the lycra fleece liners (for warmpth) and the flip back tops with vecro to morph into fingerless gloves.

I don't use thumb-boards so my thumbs are a moot point. The leather patch over the thumbprint is enough to hold my stylus :D

#6 If you've ever even tried to fry a drive with magnets then you should know it's extremely hard. You should not be afraid of that.

As we all know, those of us poor bumpkins who aren't "city folk" never get cold driving our cars to work, and have never seen hunting gloves.

Sure is neighborly of the Outquisition gang to help us with some advanced green tech. *snicker*

I've always referred to the flip-back finger gloves as "smoker's mitts" - they're super handy when you're searching for a bus pass. I've never seen them with a flip-over thumb though, these are very nice.

I always end up layering my fingerless mittens with thin gloves underneath though. When it hits -30 C, you really don't want much skin exposed.

I have a pair of fleece mitten/gloves from REI very similar to these. The mitten and thumb part flips back, and is held in place with velcro, to reveal the fingerless gloves. They call them "field researcher" mittens. I always feel like I'm an intrepid natural historian, ready to record data on the mating habits of swallows or something when I'm wearing them. They're really great.

@wolfrider(#7): it's not so much an issue of accidentally wiping the drive; magnets play havoc with screens as well. I had a HTC TyTN which had a magnet-closure on the pouch, and the screen would flip round and go nuts every time you pulled it out the pouch.

The magnet that held my bag closed was blamed for the repeated failures of my iPod - theory was that it was pulling bits around the drive out of alignment. I'm on the fence about the plausibility of it all, but I definitely had a suicidal iPod (4 deaths in a year and a half).
Now I have a Zune. It doesn't have a problem with being in my bag.

Cabela's (hunting and fishing outfitters) sells some nice glommits that I use for my job running instruments outside all winter here in Wyoming. Realtree camo, however, may not be a hit with the metrosexual crowd.

Yeah, this isn't really new.

@ MAGGIE LEBER: I grew up in the country, went to high school in the suburbs, and now live in a big city. I never remember wearing gloves to drive around in cars because they had heaters in them. That's all I meant.

@#7 Wolfrider
That depends on the magnet. I used to carry a very, very small neodymium magnet in my pocket to play with when I was bored. Surely it wouldn't cause any problems, right? Wrong. While sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap, I fried the HD in my 6 month old macbook. Of course, I didn't tell Apple that when I took it to have the HD replaced. Needless to say, I don't carry magnets in my pockets anymore.

Nthng nw fckrs. Glvs lk ths hv bn rnd lng tm bfr blckbrry's Try hrdr fr nws pls.

The hobos had it right!

Been using variations on these for years, but given how many interested people I've had to tell how to find gloves like these (REI or hunting suppliers, et cetera) they still aren't well known.

I find that if I keep my palms warm, my fingers are less likely to turn blue, and since I have very reactive capillaries it makes a big difference.

Of course, if we had self-heating Blackberries, iPods and so on, the need for glomitts would go away.

Now NINJAS everywhere will be texting too!

Arrgh!!!

I tried using super powerful magnets to attach horse-hide gloves to spring-steel gauntlets, because the damn things are so hard to drill for stitching. Note: sudden hard shocks to super-powerful magnets can cause them to shatter into pieces sharper than razor blades. Drawing your flesh past such fragments is bloody and a bit painful.

--Charlie

Thanx for the link, #1! Even though your wife's products don't have mini-fingers, I'm ordering a pair for an acupuncturist friend who needs to keep her hands warmed-up and flexible.

Now, can someone tell me what's happened to well-made, finished, fingertip-less gloves? We used to call them "librarian's gloves," and up until 5 years they were fairly easy to find. (Think well-fitting, styled calfskin gloves, with fingertips cut back to the second knuckle and finished with satin or silk binding.)

For outdoor use, regular utility gloves can be cut back, but they'll eventually become ratty. Indoor applications—writing, knitting, typing, etc.—need a closer fit and finer materials, and nothing seems available anymore. For those of us with a touch of Raynaud's, good quality indoor fingerless gloves make all the difference—we can use our hands, instead of having to sit on them!

As #5 mentioned, I remember these things being called "smoker's gloves", though they didn't have magnets.

@#21 --

I have arthritis that occasionally bothers my elbows, wrists and fingers, especially when it's cold out, or it's cold in my house. Last year, a friend of mine gave me a gift certificate for an online store called "Sock Dreams", where I didn't buy myself any socks, but got arm warmers, and a pair of the most awesome black fingerless gloves, in a nice thin (but WARM) knit:

http://www.sockdreams.com/_shop/pages/accessories_detail_ProductID_266.php

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you're looking for, but I LOVE these gloves. They have saved my nerdlife. Now I can compute into the wee hours, no matter how cold my computer room is. :)

All of you are right that these aren't new, but this type of fingerless glove would be awesome for amateur astronomers. I know many astronomers who use fingerless gloves, but having only one's thumb and forefinger exposed to cold night air is a good idea. My husband and I both use fingerless gloves, but I'd use these in a second since I'm the one who gets cold really easily.

a friend of mine gave me a gift certificate for an online store called "Sock Dreams"

They also carry split-toe socks for wearing with flip-flops.

My dad, who likes to fish, had gloves like this quite a while ago.

OMG thank you for the link to SockDreams, I am in thigh-high heaven!!!

crikey! fagins!

Another 'this isn't anything new' post.

Got a pair similar to these back in the 80's for my dad which he wore within a larger pair of similar design which were government issue (Army MWS) so that he could have multiple layers of cold protection but still get to bare finger for precision equipment work in the field.

I really like these "Bear Hands" gloves, they do the same things and make it look like your hands belong to a bear:
http://www.bearhands.net/

call that a bearhand?
http://www.paart.hr/media%5Cother%5Cshuko%5Cshuko%20real.jpg

I'm with those arguing that the idea is far from new... unless these are peelable individual fingers? But the fingerless glove/ mitten conversion (aided by a button to secrure the floppy bit) has been around for ages, and is a particular favourite with pianists warming up before performing in cold weather. (One of my friends had a particularly natty zebra-stripe pair...)

There's also wristies, which I use in my office during the winter so I can keep the thermostat down. They're also really good to wear under ski gloves (to cover up gaps between gloves and jackets).