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!!

Super Ball Weekend Recap

Yes, that baby blanket is still up on those round needles. I'm thinking I may rip it all back & restart as a single strand.

Anyway, as you may have seen on Facebook, the blessings have been plentiful! An old friend from my home town saw my Amazon Wishlist post for a hanging torso mannequin & guess what? She got it for me plus an extra surprise that should be here soon! The torso mannequin (AKA my new boyfriend, Gary) is a great display item:

Saturday, I got a ride to Lowe's to purchase some lighting for my space at the Market & afterwards my Homegirl Stacey came by for Crafty Saturday night accompanied by "Jacques Brel is Alive & Well & Living in Paris" onna DVD player. She was sewing a dress for Gallifrey & I got started on a black scarf with Mardi Gras colored ends:

I cast on 11 stitches with a combination of Grey Lion Brand Homespun Yarn along with Bernat Baby Blanket Summer Day Yarn & knitted that in straight garter stitch for 15 rows & then I did the body of the scarf in Black Lion Brand Homespun Yarn, slipping the first stitch, to create a braided edge. You will notice that I lose almost 2 inches in width when I dropped the Bernat yarn out of the piece:

Super Ball Sunday was a night at the Frenchmen St. Art Market for me & unfortunately it was not the extravaganza I had hoped for. In fact, I didn't even make my booth fee back, & my Bitter Knitter identity briefly took over. However, I was blessed with a ride from one of my fellow Marketeers with a minivan so I didn't have to be trying to deal with Taxicab Madness at 1:30am!

I am thinking I will be making a ton of stuff in the coming days with this Mardi Gras colored yarn to prep for the big day, watch this space for more deets!

I have to rush off to my Job now, but I'll be posting this scarf (& many others) on Etsy later this evening.....


Thanks for reading!!

The Saga of the Doctor Who Scarf

As a lifelong fan of Doctor Who, (*if you don't know what this is, Google it. I'll wait.)  that iconic scarf worn by Tom Baker in the 70s is at the heart of why I wanted to learn to knit. It wasn't OK for little boys to knit or do any sort of girly handicrafts in rural South Lousiana (I won't even get into what happened when I got into my sisters' cross-stitch), so I guess I just filed the idea away along with winning on a game show or going to Europe as Lovely Things That Will Never Happen to Me.

Well, life is funny sometimes. Life is so funny that in my time, I've done all those things and then some. In fact, this is the 4th time I've made a 4th Doctor scarf...and the 1st time I've gotten paid to do it (!!) The 1st one I gave as a gift to a fellow Whovian colleague of mine when I was a grad student. The second one I wore to Gallifrey One (Yes, the Dr Who Convention) in 2010, which I gifted to my amazing roommate, Josh, at the end of the event. The third one I wore to Gally last year. For the most part, the other fans reacted favorably to it (I even got a shout out from Eric Roberts about it) but some were a bit put off & one or two were a bit scathing, over the fact that I did not  replicate the original, but instead used multiple combinations of yarns of varying size, color, and texture, as you can see here:

My whole take on this is that I'm not interested in exactly duplicating the amazing work of Begonia (or was it Magnolia?) Pope down to the least detail. You can easily buy an exact duplicate of that scarf from any number of websites. I did follow the exact proportions of the color blocks (as I found them here: http://wittylittleknitter.com/chapter-12/) but I decided to vary the yarn choices as I had literally hundreds of leftover balls of yarn from my compulsive crafting.

For the latest regeneration of the iconic accessory, my Gally pal, Jason, comissioned me to make the scarf, following the same pattern, but using black, hot pink, purple & TARDIS blue in Velvet Chenille (microfiber) yarn as the palette. Unfortunately we were not able to locate any TARDIS blue, but we substituted a sumptuous Amethyst Chenille and on January 9th, 2013, I started to tackle this pile of yarn that had arrived courtesy of http://www.yarn-paradise.com/ 

What follows is madness a pictorial timeline of this odyssey of creation.

Day 1: I started by casting on 40 stitches (the original calls for 65, but that is worsted weight yarn), and after a few rows, saw that it would be entirely too wide to be functional, so I pulled it back and cast on 30 instead. I used size 13 (US) needles (also a variation on the pattern, so I used half as many rows) and worked on it from 4:00pm til 7 & then had some other stuff to do & I came back to it around 8pm & then got involved in my DVR & next thing you know it was midnight & the scarf was about 31" long by about 12" wide. 

I am already a bit worried about the difference in the blocks Chenille Amethyst & the other 3 Velvet Chenille yarns. Later on I fix this by using double strands of the Chenille Amethyst.

Day 2 January 10. Got on the 10am bus & started working. Had to go to my job at the Med Skool, so I didn't get back to the scarf until 8pm & I stitched til about 1am, catching up with old episodes of Caso Cerrado on Telemundo. My finger joints were aching, but the scarf was about 51" long by now:

Day 3. January 11. On & off from noon til midnight, with big breaks for meals & laundry & facebook games. Approx. 69" 

Can you see how the Amethyst Chenille color blocks look different in the earlier part? My nerves were in a fray.

Day 4.January 12. Resume work around 3pm, continue til 1:00AM with a dinner break someplace in there. Too long to measure without folding in half. Approx 90"

Day 5. January 13. I realize I am getting dangerously obsessed with this Columbian telenovela called Pablo Escobar, El Patron del Mal when one of the scenes upsets me so much I tear this yarn:

 However, I am the Witty Knitter, so I cheerfully fix the flaw & work intermittently from 1:30pm til about 2am, & end up around 110"

Day 6 January 14th. One month til Gallifrey! I work from about 1pm til 11 (intermittently at best) & end up about 130" 

Day 7. January 24. After all those busy nights at the Frenchmen Art Market, I returned to the Scarf with renewed determination. From 8:30pm til about 3am, ending up about 142"

Day 8. January 25. Beginning to feel fatigued. Big Laundry Day. Knit intermitttently from 4:30pm til 2am, pausing at 152"

Day 9 January 27th. Today is the day I will complete working on the length of this scarf. I work from 1:30 til 2:30pm & then break until about 5pm & just Can. Not. Stop. until 3:00am when I bind off the end & measure it to see that it is now 186"  (or 15ft, 6 inches) long (!!!)

  

Day 10 January 28 weave in all the loose ends of yarn, & oh lawd run a lint roller over everything. This Velvet Chenille is messy!! I seriously had to use at least 5 strips of lint roller to clean up my immediate area (and the scarf itself). I haven't dared to fool with this carpet yet.

But as you can clearly see, the effort was more than worth it:

My client has given me lots of positive feedback from what he's seen online! I can't wait to give it to him at Gallifrey!

If you're interested in one for yourself, or a loved one, feel free to get in touch!

xoxo

The Witty Knitter