Who would have thought that when I first got into making face masks about three months ago I would get so busy I’d have to close the shop! What started out as a good way to use up leftover fabrics has turned into some kind of mass production with me spending 15 hours a day in the sewing room.

Time to introduce the team (AKA the family) without whom this would not have been possible: my part-time 16-year-old “apprentice” who does just about all the cutting for me now. It’s the ironing next for him (not as simple as it sounds!). Then there’s the eighteen-year old who takes a lot of the photos and is our chief model. He has (a little reluctantly) offered to help with the straight sewing (we’ll see how that goes, I’m known as a bit of a hard task master – hence the reluctance, probably), and even my husband has started to help, putting in nose wires and threading the elastic (apparently, he did not know that you use a safety pin to thread the elastic through the tunnels! Honestly….!) I think really he’s worked out that this is the only chance he’s going to get to see me these days…. And I keep a wee dram in here as a reward for him at the end of the night. Shame that it’s not tax-deductible.

My daughter has turned into chicken girl supreme, looking after our menagerie of ducks and chickens whilst I’m busy in the workroom, and the youngest is doing all the local deliveries in our town. He keeps getting street names mixed up mind and it’s happened on more than one occasion that I got a message about wrongly delivered face masks… Doesn’t bode well for a nine-year old who wants to be a geography teacher!

I have to bribe them all of course, or I’ll be accused of child slavery. Shop prices have gone up slightly this week in an attempt to pay myself something approaching a minimum wage (and have some left over for bribes…). If you use coupon code 5prozent (valid until the end of the month) at checkout though, that will be just about the old price. As always, any questions or feedback, do get in touch!

Kathi