Community Corner
Downtown Scarf Bombing Chases November's Chill
Nearly 230 hand knit scarves were festooned around Downtown Easton Saturday, each adorned with a tag inviting the finder to take it if they're cold, or even if they just like it.
More than 200 fuzzy, warm random acts of kindness appeared on Downtown Easton streets early Saturday morning, aiming to keep city dwellers a little warmer this winter.
About half a dozen volunteers for “Chase the Chill...the Original”gathered together briefly around a clothesline festooned with colorful hand-knit scarves on Northampton Street shortly after sunrise, and gathered up the donated creations, draping them around parking meter posts and other easily visible and accessible locations.
The scarves are intended for anyone who needs one or likes their find.
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The event, in its second year, is organized by local life-long needlecraft worker and author Susan Huxley, who said she was inspired to throw the “scarf bombing” after seeing a number of her economically disadvantaged Downtown neighbors shivering in the cold for lack of warm clothing for winter.
“I wanted to do more. Something that allowed people the freedom of personal choice and the dignity that comes from not having to qualify for aid or be exposed to sometimes well-meaning but smug donators,” Huxley recently said in a pre-event interview with Underground Crafter.
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The scarves were mostly knitted locally, with members of Huxley's Saturday knitting club and the Palmer charity knitting group “So Others May Be Warm” donating many, along with individual knitters and crocheters. Most were local, Huxley said, but other donations came from outside the region, as far away as California.
The project, popular last year, has gained even more steam, she said.
Last year, about 80 scarves were “bombed”—this year's count was 228.
“This year went very well,” Huxley said, adding that she thinks having some of the scarves displayed in the Easton Public Library for a month encouraged additional donations.
The lucky finders of the warm woolen goods obviously thought so too, for a quick check back revealed that many of the scarves disappeared nearly instantly, which was no surprise to Huxley.
“It goes very quickly,” she said.
More about “Chase the Chill...the Original” can be found on the project's Facebook page. Anyone can participate, and the group takes donations of yarn as well.
“So Others May Be Warm” is a charity knitting group that meets every Thursday from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at the Palmer Branch of the Easton Library. For more information about the group, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.
