Tracy Stacey, from Ballasalla, has knitted 1,200 ’ear saver’ bands for key workers, to prevent discomfort from wearing face masks all day.
The bands sit at the back of the head and have buttons attached to each side, which the face masks’ ear loops can hook onto instead of chafing directly against the skin.
Tracy told us that key workers had been stopping by her house to pick the mask bands up, which each take her about 15 minutes to make.
She first got the idea to make the bands after speaking to a friend whose daughter is a paramedic and had described them as a ’godsend’.
So far, around 250 bands have gone to Noble’s Hospital.
During a recent stint as a patient there, Tracy had even been knitting them for the staff from her hospital bed.
’I’d say "what’s your favourite colour?" and they’d tell me, and I’d go: "come and see me in 15 minutes".’
As she is shielding until she gets her second vaccine dose, Tracy began knitting to keep her mind occupied, having only learned less than five months ago.
She explained that once people had found out what she had been making , people had been sending her donations of wool, and more than 1,000 buttons.
Tracy said she had stopped at 1,200 bands ’just for a little break’ but plans to continue making more in the future, joking that her bedroom ’looks like a workshop’.
She also plans to send a couple of hundred to Canada via her friend Samantha, because apparently no one had heard of the bands over there.
’I said: "Right Sam, you need to start knitting, because people are going to cry out for them".’
Stacy continued: ’I felt led to do it because I think god would have wanted me to.
’It just started off as a hobby and a bit of a giggle, and then it just kind of grew.
’Covid’s going to be around for a long time and I reckon so will these’.
Speaking about the attention that the masks have received, Tracy said: ’I don’t want to take away from the real heroes out there - the key workers, and the doctors and nurses, my home carers.
’It’s not about me, it’s about them.’