Oh, What Do You Do in the Quarantine, When All the World is Closed?

Sometime during the Covid-19 quarantine, I saw this t-shirt and just had to have it.  This is exactly what I expected I would do during a quarantine.  What could be better for an introvert like me than an excuse to stay at home and read books???  And I tried.  I really did.  And I certainly had the time.  There was a period of about 8 weeks when I barely left the house.  Simply sitting outside for awhile during the day was a big deal, it seemed. 

Our church has a song our children sing that goes, "Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green? Do you fish in a stream, or lazily dream on the banks as the clouds go by? [Chorus] Is that what you do? So do I!"  (I can't find a vocal version, but here is a piano version for your listening pleasure.). Throughout this quarantine, this song has been running through my head, with the words changed rather slightly.  My version goes like this, "Oh, What Do You Do in the Quarantine, When All the World is Closed?  Do you cover your face, and stare into space, and wish you could socialize?  Is that what you do?  So do I."  Sorry.  Sometimes I just have to get these things out of my head.

I am an avid reader.  I read all the time.  During the first 10 weeks of 2020, I read 22 books.  (I keep track of my reading on Instagram.). During the quarantine, you would have thought I would have read at least a book a day.  Certainly several each week.  But no.

Since the quarantine started, I have only "read" 4 books, and 3 of those were audio books.  All but one were long-time favorites.  I must have started a dozen or more books, read the first chapter, or maybe two, and put it aside.  It seemed that nothing could hold my interest, which is very unusual.  A response to the world situation?  Probably.  I've heard that others are having this issue too, which makes me feel somewhat better.

I didn't binge on Netflix either.  I watched all the Harry Potter movies early on.  They were on my list for Spring Break before there was a quarantine.  I watched The Fellowship of the Ring (but not  the others in the series,) the Patty Duke version of The Miracle Worker (I really have no idea why,) and the Disney version of A Wrinkle in Time.  It was this movie that got me listening to audio books at least.  I hated it.  I was so mad that they had changed the story so much from the book, that I just had to see if I remembered the story correctly.  I did. 

I had planned to teach A Wrinkle in Time this quarter, but of course that didn't happen.  I hadn't seen the Disney version of the movie before.  When I teach a book that has a movie, I like to have students discuss what was different.  Some differences are caused simply by time - every page in the book is a minute on the screen, they say, and most audiences today aren't going to sit through a 4-6 hour movie.  Those days are gone.  But Disney's A Wrinkle in Time is an example of filmmakers who changed some very important things about the story.  For example, the characterizations of the witches are all different than L'Engel wrote them.  The writers made some startling changes for this all-star cast.  And, they left out my favorite part of the book - the part with Aunt Beast.  This is the focal point of the story because it's where Megan realizes she has to go back and get Charles.  But they changed all that, and it just didn't work for me.  It might have been an interesting discussion with the kids though, so I probably would have shown the movie anyway.  Still, I was disappointed.

But I think I'm mentally focused enough to read  now.  I've got a backlog of good books that I intend to read this summer.  Stay tuned.

What I actually did during the quarantine, of course, was work from home and sew, which have already been documented here.  How did you spend the time during the quarantine? 

The Great Purge of 2020

It hardly seems possible, but we've lived in our house 30 years last October.  Kids grew up, and we put the old stuff in storage. Kids left and we put what they couldn't take with them in storage.  Furniture we didn't need?  Put it in storage.  Clothing we couldn't wear any more?  Storage.  Household stuff the kids might want someday?  You guessed it.  Storage.  We emptied - and refilled - the garage several times over the years, then branched out into storage units.  We. Have. Too. Much. Stuff.

So last week, the husband and I were discussing the situation and he agreed that it was time to do something about it.  Of course, I've been casually talking about it for months years, and maybe the inevitability - and expense - of it has finally made some impression.  I was more than pleasantly surprised at his easy acquiescence to the plan.  Grateful too, of course.  So Saturday morning, I actually started in the bedroom and purged some things, just to get off to a good start.  Then we grabbed breakfast and headed over to our storage units.  Yes, we have 2!  Yikes.  We worked like crazy.  No photos, sorry.  I hate to admit that I didn't even think about it. 

I'm no Marie Kondo - who could, or would want to, live with only 30 books? - but I felt pretty ruthless about getting the stuff out of there.  We filled the bed of the pickup 4 times and took 4 loads of stuff to the thrift store to donate.  We filled the bed twice more with trash.  We only quit when Doug came back after the 4th load and said that they stopped taking donations at 4:00.  I had at least 2 more loads ready to go!  It was so depressing to have to put all. that. stuff. back in the storage to wait until next week.  But, on the upside, that storage unit is now organized enough that I know what we're keeping and what we're donating.  Each child's stuff is waiting for them to go through it and do their own decision-making. 

The other storage unit isn't so overwhelming.  It contains a shocking amount of Christmas decorations - which obviously need to be culled and purged - and I know we will keep almost all the rest, but it will fit in the other unit, and shouldn't take more than a day to do.  So, from 2 units to one is a good start I think.  I'm hoping to get this part completed by the end of the month.  Yay for monthly savings!

Naturally, we both came home exhausted and sore.  We have definitely found muscles we had forgotten about.  

Then, after zoom church today, we worked on the house a bit.  My SIL needs a quiet place to work from home while he is here, so we rearranged a bit so he had a quiet work space with a decent internet connection.  Our internet is good, but is kind of spotty on the other side of the house, so internet was definitely a priority, and was a huge factor in the space we chose.

One of the things I always do Memorial Day weekend is bring home the bin of toys for the grands to play with during the month they are visiting.  Yesterday, while we were sorting and purging, we found 3 more large tubs of books and toys.  That is the mess you see in the photo above.  I sorted the toys from 4 large tubs to a large tub, a medium tub and a bookshelf. 

I threw out will donate tons of magazines and books (even quilting ones!, although I really can't see myself making a lot of those 90's style quilts - ever! and the hairstyles, fashion, and countrified designs made me laugh) to make room for the kids' books.  After 10 or 11 weeks of quarantine - their schools closed more than a week before ours did - one of the things grandma is going to make sure of is that we  reading every day while they are here, so finding the books was a thrill.  We will do the library (it's on their wish list) if we can, but we're still at 25% occupancy, so it's a bit uncertain. 

Of course there is more to do tomorrow, but I feel pretty good about what we've accomplished so far. 

Do you need a cap to go with that gown?

It seems I just can't help myself.  I keep talking quilts, but I keep making medical gear.  First masks, then gowns, and now surgical caps.  My friend who gave me the fabric for the gowns gave me some smaller pieces, and I just can't let it go to waste - and it doesn't seem fair to just shove it in my stash and move on - so the other day, I sat down and made several of these surgical caps.  They were easy, and like most other projects get easier the more you make.  And this fabric was so cute, they were fun to sew.  And they go pretty fast, I made 8 caps in about 4 hours, including the time it took to make and eat dinner.

The pattern is here.  There is also a video tutorial if that's your thing, but I'm too impatient to watch people sew seams - I've been doing that since I was 5 so it's not a mystery to me - so I prefer to skim down to find the place where it explains what to do if I'm stuck.   I know others get a lot more from video, so choose whatever works for you.

You can get 2 caps out of about 1/2 yard of fabric if you're careful how you cut.  I had to piece the ties on one of the pink caps, but I don't think that's a big deal.  The part that confused me was how the tie ends worked, but once I saw what she did, I realized it was genius. 

The only thing I did differently was to put a piece of elastic in the back.  People have different sized heads and I think the elastic may make it fit a bit better.  I used a piece of 1/4" elastic about 3-1/2" long, and attached it using the same method I've been using on Barbie clothes and hospital gowns -  feed it through the casing just until the end of the elastic meets the edge of the fabric and sew it down, then feed it the rest of the way, remove the safety pin, and sew that end down.  Now it is anchored firmly in the seam and can''t come loose. 

I have enough fabric for about 6 more surgical caps, I think.  Guess I should get on it.  They don't make themselves. 

EDIT:  In between the time I wrote this and the time it was to be published, I used that fabric, and managed to get 8 caps out of 1-1/2 yards of fabric by piecing two of the caps along what should have been the fold.  And - bonus for me - they're paisley, and I've always loved the way colors play together in a paisley.

Maskmaker, Maskmaker

So, here we are.  Spring 2020.  Covid-19.  Quarantine.  I've been making masks.  Masks and gowns.  Masks ad nauseum.  If you're a quilter, it is likely that you have made a few (or hundreds) also.  This seems to have been the theme for Spring 2020.  I see them everywhere.  On Instagram.  On FaceBook.  Everyone trying to help.  Everyone coming together to do a little something to help.

For me it started one morning during Spring Break while I was perusing IG as part of my morning ritual.  My niece is a doctor.  The morning  that the CDC said it was ok for medical professionals to wear scarves, bandannas, or whatever they had instead of the protective equipment they were used to, my niece posted that it was not OK.  That medical professionals needed protective equipment to stay safe themselves as they treated infected patients.  But there wasn't much left in the stockpile.  It had been used and not replaced.  My niece was aghast (really, weren't we all?)  She heard stories from her friends in Seattle and New York that they were using bandannas or t-shirts over their faces to protect them from getting this virus.  By that evening I had made my first mask.  So had my daughter.  She researched mask patterns on the internet and tested what she found.  As we talked, I decided that a 3-ply mask made of quilting cotton had a pretty good record of stopping particulates, was easy to make, and could be made from items we mostly had on hand.  We had no idea what this would become. 

Everyone who knows me knows that fabric is no problem in my world.  In fact, I had done the calculations and bought 12 yards of fabric, just to be sure I didn't run out.  (Like that could ever happen!)  My goal was to make 100 masks.  But I didn't really think to buy elastic.  So Saturday morning, when it was reported that elastic was also in short supply, I posted the problem on my FB page, and a friend asked if she could help.  She ended up doing the legwork, finding it in a local shop, with a limit of 20 yards per person.  She bought me 20 yards.  I sent my husband after 20 more, and ordered another 50 yards on eBay.  I started making masks in earnest.

On Sunday morning, a friend tagged me on FB in a group a wonderful lady had started a FB group to make masks for medical professionals here in Pensacola.  I was all in.  I invited everyone I knew who sewed, and kept sewing.  By the end of the week I had made more than 100 masks.

And then there were 200. 

I was well on my way to 300 when the mask maker's group put out a call for people to make masks for our hospitals from a fabric that was reported to filter 99% of particulates and could be autoclaved and re-used.  I signed up.  I made 100.  And then another 100.  And then a third 100.  The need was met.  We could stand down.

Or, we could join another group that was making hospital gowns for nursing homes.  I made gowns.

A dozen the first week.

And we got feedback.  People wore them.  They were helping!  I recognized some of the ones in this photo that were ones I had made!

So I made 10 more the next week. 

And then I had to take a week off.  My neck and shoulders couldn't handle the constant sewing. But the following week I made another 4.   And then somewhere in there I finished off the masks I had cut out.

My mother always said that busy hands were the antidote to a disturbed mind, and I find that to be true.  This quarantine and the situation with this virus are just so uncertain.  So, if I'm honest, I made masks and gowns to try and help, yes, but also to keep busy and not give my mind the chance to dwell on what's going on. 

And maybe, just maybe, it made a smidgen of difference to someone I don't even know.  I hope so.