This corrects an earlier version of the story.
Christine Shively didn’t know the bald woman she saw coming out of the hospital’s cancer ward last summer, and she hadn’t crocheted in more than 30 years.
Still, with time on her hands, and the woman’s image fresh in her mind, Shively went home, brushed up on her skills and began crocheting brightly colored “chemo caps” she would then donate to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Knots-Of-Love, the organization Shively founded in her Newport Beach home, was born within days.
Giving back to the community was nothing new to Shively. She was the outgoing president of the Adoption Guild of Orange County and was looking for a way to “touch the lives of strangers.” She just had no idea she’d be the one to start something.
Shively had learned to crochet from her mother and grandmother when she was 6, and said the first cap she made “would have fit a bowling ball,” but she wasn’t giving up.
“I [finally] made one that fit my head perfectly, and the next thing you know I had made 20 of them.”
She also enlisted the help of friends, who were more than happy to start “knotting.”
Lynn Gravesen is Shively’s friend and tennis partner. When Shively mentioned she had been talking to friends about helping out, Gravesen jumped at the chance to participate.
“I thought it was a great idea. I had been looking for something to do, and this just fell into place,” she said.
Gravesen makes the caps while she’s watching TV. It keeps her hands busy, and it’s time well spent, she said, because it’s going to a good cause.
“Personally, I had no idea the need for something like that was as great as it is,” Gravesen said.
Shively wanted every cancer treatment center in Southern California to distribute her Knots-Of-Love caps. She started her own website, made calls to cancer centers, hospitals and oncology offices, focusing on places that didn’t already have caps similar to what she was making.
