Adventures in Knitting: Fourth Doctor Scarf (coming soon)

[locker_monster]

Well, it's happening. I'm going to knit my very own Fourth Doctor scarf. :-)

I purchased the yarn online yesterday. Quite a bargain, too. The yarn was super cheap and it was on sale. It cost me just over $30 for 14 balls of yarn. One skein can sometimes be half that price. So once I get back from my vacation I can cast on and start knitting. I won't be aiming for the entire 12 feet simply because I am short and a 12 foot scarf would be much too long. Happily, Four's scarf varied in length over his tenure, so there are patterns that are shorter but still screen accurate. I'll probably aim for the season 13 length, which is about a foot shorter than the original length. I really don't want to be tripping over it when I wear it.

The scarf is made up of a garter stitch, which is just knit stitches, so I won't have to be super focused while I'm knitting. I think I'll re-watch some of Four's episode while I knit; it will motivate me to end up with the finished product I'm watching it on the screen. ;-)

When I started knitting, I had no intention of making one of these scarves, but it's kind of the Whovian knitter holy grail. I hope I don't get sick of the scarf or of knitting while I'm doing this. But once I'm done, I'll have to come up with a Fourth Doctor cosplay. I mean, how can I not? I'll have a piece of the costume that I made myself and it wasn't made out of cardboard and duct tape.

Comments

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your scarf! I knitted one for my husband a couple of years ago, and that's a bit of a story. I started it long before I ever watched the show, and I wanted it to be a surprise, so I ordered the yarn and knitted it in secret, for a half hour before I went to bed each night (we sleep in separate rooms; I snore). I did this for months. I then saw the modern show and got completely obsessed with it, and decided we needed to have Fourth and Fifth Doctor costumes for Halloween. There wasn't time to finish the scarf the way I was doing it, so I finally had to tell him about it when it was about half done. I was then able to work on it during normal hours and finished it in about a week.

By the way, if you want the scarf to be screen-accurate, it's a garter rib stitch, not a garter stitch. You have to cast on 2n+2 stitches, and then it's knit-knit-purl-purl for each row. (The 2n+2 makes it so that knits on one side match up with knits on the other, making the garter part of the garter rib.)

It sounds like a pain to switch every two stitches, but after a couple of rows, it becomes natural. When I was done with the scarf, I couldn't knit straight because I wanted to automatically switch into purls every two stitches. :)

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

That's right. You mentioned before that you've knit a Fourth Doctor scarf. I can ask you for advice!

Did you slip the last stitch of each row? I keep reading that the scarf had a slipped stitch edge, but some sites say that it didn't. And how did you transition from one colour to the next? Did you knit a few stitches with the tail of the old yarn with the new yarn together? Or did you just start with the new colour?

I don't mind switching every two stitches, but I just want to zone out with a garter stitch. I want to knit this scarf but I don't want to be knitting it forever. ;-)

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

Ask away! Happy to help!

Yes, I slipped the last stitch of each row. I understand that if you don't, it makes a weird diagonal stripe along the edge. Take a look here for images of the difference between slipped and not slipped: http://www.doctorwhoscarf.com/s12.html (That's the website I used for my scarf pattern. It's very thorough.)

Yes, to go from one color to the next, knit some stitches with the tail of the old yarn parallel with the new yarn. That way, you'll only have one tail (the new yarn) to thread into the scarf at each change.

I have seen scarves with garter and with garter rib, and I don't think you'll be disappointed with going garter. Main thing is to have fun with it!

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the slipped edge looks nicer. It's a straight edge instead of a bumpy one. Excellent, I'll go with that one.

I need to gain experience with switching to another ball of yarn, so the scarf will let me practice that a lot. Did you weave in the ends as you went? I watched one video where the lady showed a method to weave in the tail yarn as she went along with the working yarn. I hear that weaving in all of those tails at the end of the project is kind of tedious.

You think this scarf is easy, but there's a lot of things to consider before you even start.

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

I just worked all the tails in at the end. I didn't find it to be tedious at all - it went pretty fast, maybe 20 mins to a half hour in total.

The scarf will probably go pretty fast for you. I'm a very slow knitter (I've never taken the time to learn how to hold the yarn efficiently to increase my speed), and I think I was doing about 8 rows an hour.