How to: touch screen your gloves

It's ever so very cold out there as winter sets in. The hats, scarves and gloves appear once more and all is cosy with the world. With one small problem. I'm standing at the bus stop on the way to some fabulously festive Christmas shindig and I'm late. As usual. I fumble my iPhone out of my pocket with my warm woolly be-gloved hands and set out to text the usual apology to the poor sap who thought I might arrive on time. I poke in vain at the screen with my cosy digits. My iPhone shakes its virtual head. It isn't having any of it. To use my touch screen I am going to have to deglove and take the chilly consequences.

Just when you thought you'd have to choose between frostbitten fingers or impolitely turning up late without warning, along comes Instructables. Grathio's tutorial on how to make a glove work with a touch screen.

Phones and other gadgets with touch screens need the electricity your body makes to complete the circuit which tells the screen where you are touching it. The solution is simple. You sew conductive thread into the fingertips of your gloves and leave enough thread on the inside of your glove to connect your finger with the thread that is sewn outside the glove. Simple genius.

Best of all if you don't tell people you've done it you can completely mess with their heads as they wonder why on earth their iPhone isn't working properly. Hours of confusing fun to while you through chilly bus stop waits.

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