I gave in today and made my own mask. It wasn’t to wear into town to protect me against Coronavirus. It was to put on in the house to filter out the pollution coming from fires like the one near Mountaineer.
The Chinese masks I bought are not comfortable: the material is scratchy and it traps heat. They’re OK for the short times I’m out of the car in town, but not good for several hours.
I have said I thought it should be relatively simple, and it was.
I took an old, all-cotton sheet and put it through the wash. Then I cut a section along the edge wide enough to make ties, and long enough to fall to my chest.
As I said the sheet was old, and when it was made the salvage edge was somehow separate. When I went to cut along it, it tore along the line. No cutting needed. All I needed to do was cut down from the ends of the ties.
It looks more like a strange false beard or a long bib than a mask, but that’s OK. No one’s going to see me.
In the same way our luck with fires may have run out, our luck with Coronavirus may not have changed. We had 13 new cases reported on July 7, the Tuesday after the Fourth of July weekend. The virus wasn’t contacted over the holiday, but a small backlog in tests must have developed.
Since then, our 14-day total has inched up by one a day to reach 39 today. Tomorrow may be when we begin to see the effects of the holiday, if any.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated July 9.
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