one man's garbage

A friend of a friend recently cleaned out her tack trunk and passed along a whole pile of gently- and not-so-gently-used stuff for our consideration.

essentially a very comfortable, well-fitting and grippy glove. what's not to like?

Among the pile was a pair of black Roeckl gloves in my size, complete with a couple holes and a crusty dirty quality that was not exactly endearing.

I tossed them in my bag anyway tho, bc, hey why not? I've heard so many nice things about these gloves, but always balk at the price tag. And otherwise they were headed to the trash pile and I have first world guilt about throwing away things that might still be useful (it's a problem).

gloves have seen some action... but still have a lot of life left!

Fast forward to our lesson on Saturday when another rider needed gloves while riding her spicy new mare. I loaned her this pair, figuring it wouldn't be heartbreaking if I forgot to collect them after the ride.

But she did in fact return the gloves, and into my pocket they went... and stayed right up until laundry time. So what the hell, I tossed them in the wash along with all my other stuff. And they came out looking actually quite nice! So nice that I regret not taking 'before' pictures lol. 

left glove needed a bit more tlc than the right glove

The only problem: they still had those pesky holes.

I'm not the best seamstress in the world by any stretch, but it would only take a couple judicious stitches to hide the holes in these gloves. And, again - if it didn't work nbd.

stitched up hole at base of index finger

But it did work and the gloves are officially back in passable show-quality state! 

Sure the stitching isn't perfectly even, and the 'clear' polyester thread I used is actually kinda light-reflective compared to the matte gloves... and there's still one last hole between the right hand index and middle fingers... but it's not visible anyway so it might be awhile before I fix that...

stitching across the back of the hand is visible.... but it's holding up pretty well

But whatever - right? They're now in better shape than any other pair of black gloves I own, and I happen to be on a self-imposed spending freeze.... so... yay for new treasure!

and bonus cat bc why not