LA Love Scarf Delivery

From Bridget Fonger, Founder of the Love Scarf Project:

The Love Scarf Project at City of Hope was truly heart-warming this year as we delivered a few days before Valentine’s Day to a very appreciative group of patients in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit.

Scarves had been sent in from all over the country. We had single scarves come in from many people with sweet cards, a couple of whom said this was the very first scarf they knitted! Everyone who sent in scarves expressed what a joy it was to knit for the patients. And, one lovely group of knitters in Arizona (who have their love of the Twilight book series in common) knitted up a storm in honor of actor Peter Facinelli.

One of the women in my Pilates class has a mom who got her friends together to knit like crazy the last month before delivery. She delivered a HUGE bag full of lovely scarves – and they are already starting on next year’s scarves!!!


My friend, Sa Winfield, from college yet again was personally responsible for inspiring knitters all over Southern California. Finally she was able to join us for delivery so she got to experience the joy of letting patients choose scarves.



The most amazing thing about this year’s delivery was that all but two or three of the patients we delivered to were MEN! In the past it’s been more evenly divided or more women than men. Luckily we had tons of scarves – probably 150 --- because the thing that we ended up doing was giving a scarf to the male patient AND a scarf for him to give to his wife or girlfriend as a Valentine’s gift. This made a lot of these men very happy since they have no way to shop, etc.

One of the more magical moments of delivery day was when we let the daughter of one of the patients choose a scarf for her mom, who wasn’t feeling well enough to have us come in her room. The daughter chose a few scarves for her mom, herself and her sister. We later found out that this family of women had sold everything they had – literally everything – in Iran and gave all the money to the City of Hope for their mom’s bone marrow transplant. They didn’t realize that the money they gave to City of Hope wouldn’t cover expenses like their own housing, medicine for their mother, and other incidental expenses. So, they couldn’t have appreciate the love any more! And, in our broken communication attempts the daughter said to me “I don’t understand everything you say, but I do understand that you want my mother to know that this scarf is to tell my mother that people think of her with love…” So moving!

Overall, it was a spectacular delivery day. Every patient got the perfect scarf for them – perfect color, texture, length, etc. Every male patient got a scarf for a woman in his life, and even the nurses got one as our way of saying thank you for all the love they give day and night!

There was a lot of LOVE SCARF love in the air. Thanks to every single one of you who either knitted, told someone to knit, helped spread the word in any way, or even just held a good thought for us. Your knitting needles, energy, resources and HEARTS make this project live on and continue to warm the hearts of these patients who can use all the love we can give them.