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This Covid Thing is Wee Buttons

Bit of a black dog day today. Actually I am surprised I haven't had more of them in this lockdown period - I suppose I have been careful to keep a bit of a balance most of the time and haven't allowed myself to get too run down... 
But for various reason, fido came calling today... So, I did the work that I absolutely had to do. I put on the required PPE (ie a laugh and a smile for those who didn't need to know) and I downed tools for an hour or two this afternoon...
Actually for some of it I simply sat in the garden and sorted out buttons... and it was just what I needed.

Let me explain. 

A couple of weeks ago I got a message from both our CEO and a member of one of our churches talking about NI-Scrubs and the work that a team of volunteer sowers (seamstresses is too gender specific, and as we can see from the Great British Sewing Bee, another great black-dog-tamer, its not only women who sew) are doing to provide scrubs for frontline health care staff (check out their work on Facebook or in the interview with Mel Dowling on the South & Central Belfast Methodist Service on YouTube for last Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter). I passed the information on to others who were more likely recruits than myself, but I saw on their Facebook page that a subgroup of them were not sewing but crocheting mask holders to protect the ears of health care workers, and they needed buttons for each end of the little crocheted strap. 

Now my mother wasn't a great seamstress but she was a fabulous knitter and crocheter, and for some reason I "inherited" her button box, or rather tub, above, filled to the brim with odd buttons from long forgotten garments, which I dip into from time to time to find a suitable button to replace one that has broken or gotten lost. So I thought that this crochet project would be a suitable home for some if not all of my Mum's buttons, since I would imagine it would have been the sort of project she would happily have gotten involved in had she still been here. I got in touch with the coordinator and eventually had a conversation with the person in question needing the buttons, which she explained, should be 2p sized. So I said I would sort through them and get back to her.

Today was the first chance I had to do it.  But it was an ideal task for keeping fido at bay. An act of physical mindfulness... but one that hopefully is not just of benefit for my mental health but the physical wellbeing of others...

Shalom
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