Keen knitter Valerie Wilson from Ballinamallard has been spending her days in isolation creating “trauma teddies” to comfort children in hospital.

Explaining what inspired her to knit the teddies during her time of isolation, Valerie told this newspaper: “I did them before and I got a nice wee thank you card through the Mothers’ Union and I happened to be tidying up here one day and I came upon the card and thought it was lovely. I have cancer and I was a bit down and the lockdown came then and I thought well I’d like to do something to lift my mind and I had plenty of wool so I just thought I’d try a wee teddy.”

“The time is so long and when you’re not at yourself, like I hadn’t been well and my hands can’t be still, I have to be doing something,” she added. Calling the knitting process “addictive”, Valerie has knitted over 30 teddies over the course of the ‘lockdown’ which she plans to donate to local hospitals.

“I’ll be sending them to the hospital and they take some of them out in the ambulances for children who have maybe been in accidents and are traumatised, they would give them the wee teddy and I believe they were very popular so I took this wee notion to put in my time in lockdown,” she said.