About year ago, I wrote a column about a drive to provide warm hats and scarves to a humanitarian group — AMAR ICF — that would distribute them to Ukrainian refugee children living in Romania. I am a volunteer for AMAR. I was asked by its leader — a baroness living in London (I’m not making that up) — to spearhead the project. That was in the fall of 2023. She had no instructions beyond, “Please collect warm, handmade hats and scarves for children ages 3 to 16 and figure out how to ship them to Romania.”

The Ukrainian refugee families, which consist mostly of mothers with children, couldn’t bring much with them when they fled ahead of the Russian invasion from their towns into neighboring countries, including Romania. Now it was winter and they needed the warmth of hats on their heads and scarves around their necks.

The baroness added they also needed the warmth of knowing someone cared enough about them to do something like this, to show they were still loved and not forgotten.

I asked how many she wanted. She paused, thought for a moment, then replied, “300?” I remember thinking to myself, “Pshaw! We can do better than that!” But to her I simply said, “Yes. We will do it.”

The requests went out, the word of mouth rolled forward like a tidal wave, surging into ever widening circles of individuals, church groups, youth groups, senior citizens centers, school groups, knitters’ guilds, other humanitarian organizations and beyond. A trickle became a flood, then a deluge. Meanwhile, a generous company stepped forward to ship, at a deeply, deeply discounted cost, everything we could collect.

Within weeks, we galloped past that paltry 300 hats and scarves mark without looking back. By the first big deadline of Nov. 1, when our shipper still had time to get them to the children by their December Christmas celebration, we topped 2,000. By our final deadline of Feb. 1, when our churning wheels of creating, collecting, matching, tagging, bagging and shipping finally slowed to a halt, the baroness was beyond astonished by the 3,262 hats and scarves (ten times 300!) shipped to Romania to be received, worn and loved by children that not one of the creators would ever meet.

I’m not sure what pure love looks like, but I suspect it could be the vision of women (and a few men) hunched over their knitting needles and crochet hooks, creating simply because they want to give unconditionally, to bring warmth and joy to an unknown child, to join the growing group of those who said, “I finally get to do something for the people of Ukraine.”

We’re doing it again. The baroness recovered from her shock and, realizing the potential of the multitudes here who give for the sake of giving, asked if I thought we could do it again. “How many?” I carefully asked.

“5,000?” she replied.

Yes. We will do it.

There’s no doubt we will. There are enough good people here to do it. Again. If you’re curious, come see us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/hatsandscarvesforukraine. If you participated last year, join us again.

A heartfelt “Thank you” to all you who made and gave last year’s thousands of gifts. An equally grateful “Thank you” to all you who will make and give them again.

As the holidays appear on our horizon, it’s gratifying to know there really is such a thing as the perfect gift.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.