Doctor Who S13 Inspired Shawl in Grey Scale

I used the same eyelet lace shawl pattern found here, and used my previous grey scale Doctor Who scarves for inspiration with the colors:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5, bound off but not finished

Day 5, closeup on bind off edge in grey chenille flecked with silver!

Day 5, closeup on edging

Great way to wear it, if you have no arms!

Sassy stylin by Sammi!

The shawl measures approx 119" from tip to tip & about 28" down the center spine. I knitted it on a pair of size 11 US 29" circular needles, using Deborah Norville Everyday Soft Worsted Weight Acrylic Yarn in Black, Steel, and Mist from Herrchners. 

Doctor Who Scarf Saga: Blue Beauty

Dang. I forgot I never published this blog. I had uploaded all the pics via my phone app & wrote all the text from my desktop & saved it. Then I tried to add another pic thru my phone app & it blanked out all the text, so this has been floating around in my draft folder for awhile now.

Hot on the heels of the Season 13 Grey Scale Scarf, my client asked me to do the same sort of thing in shades of blue. I went over to www.herrschners.com and ordered some beautiful Vanna's choice yarn in Aqua, Sapphire, Colonial Blue, Dusty Blue & Silver Blue. 

Day 0 The Madness Awaits

Whenever I start a project, I inevitably have a moment of being unsure if the colors will work together. This typically lasts until I see all the colors together, and then I'm flooded with relief and confidence about the whole project. No exception here. Once I had all five of these colors together, I knew I had a hit on my hands!

Day1, Lookin GREAT

Day 2, approx. 43 inches!

Day 3, 71 inches

Day 4, 90ish inches

Day 6-110 inches (yea I skipped a day, sue me)....

Bound off but not finished...

Tasseled but not blocked

Closeup on stitches after blocking...

14.5 feet of Pure Blue Beauty, nice and soft after 48 hours wet blocking & stretching!

I don't think I mentioned this, but my client was one of my Gally family, so I brought it to him at the convention! He was very happy with his purchase & it was a great feeling to see him wearing it so well!

Doctor Who Scarf Saga: Gray Scale Variant

You'll remember from  last time that I was about to start on a photorealistic Season 18 scarf, using this pattern. As you can see, this particular scarf is done in DK weight chenille yarn in 3 colors: purple, orange & burgundy. I ordered ample skeins of Lion Brand Chenille in Terra Cotta, Amethyst & Claret. The killer thing about this scarf is that the pattern calls for you to use a super thin chenille yarn & quite small needles. I had ordered thicker yarn, hoping to cheat the gauge & get the right width with less stitches on a slightly bigger needle. When the yarn arrived, I could see there was quite a bit of variation in colors, and even though it was knitting up super-quickly, after the first night, I could see that it wasn't what my client had in mind. 

Lovely, but not photorealistic.

.

I sent my client the picture above, and he confirmed what I'd been thinking. So I did a little deeper research and re-ordered the yarn. Coincidentally, one of my co-workers at Ho-Livier's had asked me to do a shorter version of the Legendary Gray Scale Scarf, and as I have quite a bit of that yarn left over, I put the Chenille down and got started on it. Since this scarf is shorter & not as wide, it took me about 4 days for this lil gem to come off the needles.

Before warm water blocking & 20 mins on  low heat inna dryer

...and after, with glam tassels attached

Modeled by the client

It measures about 6" wide by 7 ft. (including 6" tassels.) long.

That chenille yarn still hasn't come in yet, but I did get another order for one of these in the interim...isn't it lovely when things work out like this? 

Doctor Who Scarf Saga: Gray Scale pt 2

I kept on trucking with the Season 13 monochrome variant, and this is how it went. 

Dec. 3rd, 85"

Dec. 4th, 114"

I thought I had another shot of it on Dec. 5th, at 152 inches, but apparently not. By that day, I could see that I was coming into the home stretch and was getting sort of frantic about it. This scarf was like crack cocaine--I stayed up too late, didn't eat much & just kept on stitching. Everywhere I went, on the bus, on breaks at work, EVERYWHERE. 

I was so elated when I bound off the very last row right before  my shift started at Ho-Livier's that I had to take a pic without weaving in the ends...

Dec. 6th--D-Day!! 167" before blocking & adding tassels

I wasn't going to block it, but I didn't like the way the yarn was creasing

I am so neurotic. I know these color changes are not bad but they kinda make me wanna rip the whole thing back & do it over...

I really need better lighting, you can barely make out the 6" tassels I added..

So here's a close-up.

I used Deborah Norville Everyday Soft Worsted Acrylic Yarn (2 balls each of the Black & Steel, and 1 ball of the Mist),  and when I finished the actual knitting, I noticed that the scarf was quite stiff and had some creases in it that I was unhappy with. Since the yarn is machine washable, I put it in the washing machine (on warm) with a load of clothes, and then hung it to dry. According to the label on the yarn, it is also possible to put it in the dryer, so when it hadn't dried after a few hours (it is cold today!!) I put it in the dryer on low heat with a dryer sheet & a dry towel for about 10 minutes. I came out nice & soft & the blocking makes the ridges in the knitting pop out a lot more. 

I'm thrilled to death with how this turned out & so is my client!

Now I'm heading back to the needles to start working on a Season 18 Replica Scarf!

Doctor Who Scarf Saga: Gray scale pt 1

I was recently commissioned to make a Season 13 4th Doctor Scarf in a monochrome (black to light gray) color scheme. My little fingers were trembling with anticipation as I ordered this beautiful Deborah Norville Everyday Soft Worsted Weight Yarn from Herrschner's & I was giddy for it as the days passed and I tracked my package with mounting impatience.  It felt better than Christmas when I was walking out of the house to enjoy some Wednesday Bus Glam on my way to Ho-Livier's and spotted a package on my porch!!

Open Up!!

Or should I say Allons-y?

Needless to say, I emptied my bag of my previous project & grabbed a ball of each color of yarn and immediately began working on it as soon as I boarded the bus.

I'm using the pattern found Here, which calls for a pair of needles to hit a gauge of  5 stitches per inch & cast on 45 stitches, giving you a width of 9 inches. With the yarn I have, that translates into working with  a pair of size 8 US (5 mm) needles & 41 stitches per row. 

 I stitched a bit more on it to and from work on Thanksgiving & Black Friday after I got home and on Saturday morning, I'd gotten about this far:

19 inches in 3 days..

Mercifully, I was restaurant-free for the rest of the weekend & by Sunday, I'd come a long way, baby..

Can you make out that blurry 42? It's the meaning of life & erry thang

Here we are on Monday & we've surpassed my 60" measuring tape....

Can't wait to weave in all these ends...

!!!

I find myself once again restaurant free this evening, so maybe I'll fire up the DVD player & watch some of the stories that featured this scarf. I don't have much time to dawdle, as I'm doing a Season 18 replica scarf for another of my fellow Whovians next!!

Brand-New Blankie!

As you will recall from my last post, I learned a new stitch, known as the Trinity or Bramble stitch. The whole idea is that you make three stitches from one & then make 1 stitch from 3, thus creating a lovely bobbled effect. Purling across the  alternating rows gives a flat side. I used 6 balls of Bernat "Peachy" Baby Blanket yarn, on size 11 circular bamboo needles. This is my 1st attempt at writing my own pattern. I originally cast on 84 stitches, with the intent of doing k1 p1 in the 1st & last stitches & the Trinity stitch in between. I worked for several rows, and before I knew it, I was ending up with way too many stitches. So I pulled it all back & started again. & guess what? This happened again! And again...ugh.

This is when I learned the value of stitch counters. You can purchase them at any craft store, or you can make your own, simply by cutting some yarn into small lengths & tying them into little loops & placing them between your stitches. In this case, I placed my 1st stitch counter betwees st1 & st2 (so I would always remember to do my selvedge stitch), & then I placed the other stitch counters 20 sts apart (bc 20 is a multiple of 4), leaving my last stitch on the outstide of the last counter (SELVEDGE, BITCH, SELVEDGE is what I kept tellin myself). I got tired of all of this counting, so I only used 62 stitches instead of 84

By the end of Day 1, I had only done about 4 rows, I was tired, I was bitter, & the damn thing only measured about 2" x 21"

This is the bumpy side

This is the flat side

A cross section of the bumpy side.

I went to sleep slightly frustrated but then I remembered that I didn't always know how to knit, and that these sorts of mis-steps are just part of the process. It is important to trust the process.

On Day Two, I found myself so unable to tear myself away from watching RuPaul's Drag Race Elimination Lunch with Michelle Visage that I was stuck in front of my computer with the knitting in my lap. Thanks to lag time, I discovered that I can actually knit while using a computer. I had the most fascinating FB Chat with a guy I briefly met at the Doctor Who convention. Topics ranged from RuPaul to Colin Baker to How Dr Who Made me Gay and back again. I am not yet at the place where I can really take my eyes off the knitting yet, but soon, I hope. I took a break when I got to the end of the 1st ball of yarn, by now the blankie is about 8" long

Aren't my stitch counters cute!?!

Srsly every1 who saw this when I was working on it questioned me bout the stitch counters

Day 3: Worked for several hours, while watching Dr Who: Terror of The Autons Special Edition. Got so engrossed in the show that I somehow picked up 4 stitches! Thank Gawd for stitch counters! I got it fixed pretty quickly, and by the time I went to bed, it measured about 17" long!

Slight variations in dye lots give it a sort of striped pattern

Day 4: Tragedy strikes when I realize that somehow I have reversed the pattern. The bumps are on the wrong side!! This probably happened while I was crying my face off watching a Torchwood Marathon on BBC America. I don't have the oomph to pull this thing back, so I calmly think it over & add another purl row, and things are back to normal. No layperson could ever detect the difference. & Honestly, if some1 got smart with me about it I'd tell them to make their own damn blankie & not question me. I still keep truckin & by the end of the day, she measures about 23" long!

Too big for the table...

...had to be laid onna bed

...& ooh wee, it's the weekend & I head over to Hahnville for some good, old-fashioned stitch & bitch time with my BFF & her wife! My friend & I mostly just talked about Crazy Hoes I used to know and over the course of a 3-day weekend, BANG. The blankie's finished (well, I'm outta yarn) & measures 44" x 21"

Pics really don't do this thing justice

This took me about a week to make, and I learned a lot in the process: the value of patience, the need for stitch counters, and the beauty that can come from something quite simple. Much more than any of that, I feel like I have turned a proverbial corner in my skill level & am looking forward to raising it even higher. 

Thanks for reading!

Praise be!

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