It’s another beautifully brutally cold morning here at Wild Ozark. After bundling up to go out and feed the horses and chickens, I glanced at the package of Hot Hands and decided, nah, I’ll only be a few minutes. Twenty minutes later, with frozen fingers in my supposedly thermal gloves, I wished I’d ‘wasted’ them.

As it often seems to happen, it turned out to be more than just feeding the horses and chickens. The electric fence was broken and needing at least a temporary fix before I went back inside to warm up the fingers.

In Search of Warm Gloves for Frozen Fingers

We have packs of pocket warmers and toe warmers I could use. But if there were only a pair of gloves that would dependably keep my fingers warm, it would save a lot of hassle.

Sometimes I think I won’t need the pocket warmers, because it’s only a short run into the brutality. But, like this morning, sometimes there’s an unexpected thing that I have to take care of while I’m out doing the ‘short’ run.

I hate wasting the pocket warmers for a 10-minute excursion. I think I’ve tried probably all of the locally available gloves for extremely cold weather. The latest pair are like scuba gloves and I love them because they still allow finger dexterity.

But apparently, they don’t hold warmth long enough for our below freezing temperatures.

If you live in a place that’s cold in winter, and have gloves that work for extreme cold – yet still allow you to use fingers for things like mending fences, tell me about them! I want to buy a pair, pronto.

Painting in Progress

Yesterday I got a good bit done on the sky in my painting of the old Ozark shed. The next step will be a glaze – either orange or yellow, I’m not sure yet, and only on the skies. Once the paint dries, I’ll decide. Maybe yellow over the lower portion and orange over the top. If whatever I choose doesn’t work, I can just wipe it off. Hence the need for the current layers to be thoroughly dry.

It gets pretty cold in my studio too, but instead of frozen fingers I get frozen toes, lol. I do have a heater, two of them in fact. A tiny one to direct heat under my desk and a propane wall-mount that works nicely.

But there’s little or no insulation underneath the house, and so no matter how warm the room is, the floors are freezing. Sometimes literally freezing, like with ice on the floor if there is condensation. When the room is nice and warm, the condensation gathers beneath some things and on the windows inside. And then that freezes.

Still, the frozen toes are easier to remedy with my tiny under-desk heater than the frozen fingers from going outside.

It seems the older I get, the less I enjoy winter. Right now, I’m just ready for spring to arrive.