Just back from using the gloves (and jumper) in a driving wet blizzard
I did need a raincoat over the jumper, but the raincoat is no longer anything like 100%, and the jumper kept the wet from reaching my body.
Now I need to do the same for my legs
To answer your question about the gloves in the wet, FW, they do get wet at the ends, where there is just the one layer, but the hands, including fingers and thumbs, inside the inner-and-outer layers remain dry and warm. The darned one performs better than the newer one, actually, so I may have to rethink the stitch pattern for the ends of the mitts for future versions
There is some warmth from the engine on the quad, yes, but there's no possibility of giving the right hand a break as it has to have its thumb on the silly little throttle lever all the time
. That's partly how I came up with this design in the first place, needing a glove which would keep the exposed thumb (especially) warm even when motoring along. I'd used all kinds of gloves-inside-other-gloves, wristwarmers-over-gloves, and so on, including motorbike 100% waterproof leather gloves (absolutely hopeless; as soon as you stop to do a job the water runs back down your arm and into the inside of the glove
), neoprene gloves supposedly completely warm once wet (yeah, right
), but couldn't find a solution where I either didn't have to take them off at all, even if I had a fiddly job to do (knotting baler twine around something being a good, and frequent, example!
), or if I did have to take them off, they were (a) easy to get back on and (b) still kept me warm and dry once they were back on.
Re: the cold nose, FW, I have a snood type thingy. At the moment it's a thin 'fleece' (being poly-something, made of plastic, not fleece, of course) but in fact it's incredibly versatile and I am quite happy with it. It's a fleece snood with a long polyester neck sleeve attached, similar to
this one. (And yes, I did pay nearly that for it, and it's worth every penny. I'd had one half-price first, thankfully, so when I lost that I knew just how useful an item it is and didn't dither too long about buying a full-price replacement. I've had this one more than five years, so I think it's paid for itself.)
To wear in winter, I pull it over my head, thin end first, leaving the fleecey part ruffled up around my chin. If it gets very cold, I just lift this part up over my mouth or mouth-and-nose, as required. The stretchiness of the fleece holds it in place. Because of the long attached sleeve, you don't get a cold bit where the snood now isn't when you pull it up, and because the sleeve is thin material, the whole thing isn't too bulky nor too hot.
It also can be pulled up around and over the back of the hat, to keep any draughts from the back of the neck. My jumper now has a built-in one of these, but in today's and yesterday's weather I've still used the multifunction snood thingy as well.
Sometimes I have the fleece bit in my neck and use the thinner part up and over the hat to anchor it.
In warmer but windy weather I still sometimes use the multifunction snood thingy as a headscarf. I put it on as normal, then pull it back up, as though to take it off, but stop as the thinner bit is holding my hair in place against my head. Or if it's a little cooler, do the same thing the other way around, so the fleecey part is the headscarf.
I have thought about how I could make something as useful and versatile from natural fibres, but haven't yet come up with anything. Of course, now I am starting weave...