What a week!

Selling masks, wearing masks … giving away our posters! Practising smiling with my eyes.

Good morning. Leanne here.

What a week! I have been living and breathing all things masks, organising people to make more of them, selling them, testing different styles and whether I can ACTUALLY TALK in them without them falling down… trying to buy elastic!!*

It’s a whole new world isn’t it … the first day I wore one I felt quite claustrophobic, but each day I have been building up my tolerance and by Wednesday I wore one for quite a few hours without noticing too much - and walked the kilometre too and from work with one on without worrying about it.

And … at one point I actually forgot that I was wearing a mask … and I attempted to drink my coffee through it. Luckily I remembered at the last minute. Because it would have been a classic ‘Funniest Home Videos’ moment.

At ACC we have made (with the help of Alphington CWA and members of our Community Craft group) and distributed over 180 masks in the last few days. There are still some people who have contacted us whose orders we haven’t yet been able to fill - but rest assured we are attempting to help everyone out! We’ll be in contact as soon as we have stock available.

If you are having trouble accessing a mask at this stage don’t worry too much, remember you can wear a scarf over your face.

My husband, who is very sad not to be going skiing this year, has got out his synthetic skiing neckwarmer-tube-scarf-thing, and is pulling that up over his mouth and nose (I think he’s imagining that he’s on the lifts in the icy wind and snow at Falls instead of in the IGA on Station Street!)

So just be creative!

Or … there’s the no sew option using a sock that’s popped up in various forms in my Facebook feed. I tried it with one of the kids old socks - it was super easy to make. Only one layer, so probably not a great long term option, but an adequate and simple gap filler. I showed my gorgeous children what I had done and they were horrified that I was wearing one of their old school socks on my face. My middle child told me to ‘take a look in the mirror Mum and rethink your decision’ - I laughed and laughed! It was pretty gross. Perhaps I need to get out the Napisan more often …

* If you have any spare elastic lurking in the back of your cupboard that you don’t need please let us know … we can put it to good good use!

Jill modelling the CWA masks - thanks Jill!