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!!

Cable Knitting...A New Adventure!

Leaving a comfort zone is never easy, but in my quest to find new knitted all-weather knitted items to make, I came across a cup-cozy pattern that incorporates cables, my worst nightmare!

Well, this sent me down a youtube rabbit-hole of cable knitting videos (with varying degrees of usefulness) and now, after several false starts, (and by several I mean like I pulled this damn swatch back like a dozen times) I think I have a good grip on 4-stitch cabling. Part of the process of learning to make these cables is also learning to read & interpret patterns/charts, so in that respect it is like language-learning to me...exhilarating yet scary, but damn if it don't feel good when you get it right!

I adapted this swatch from the pattern & video you can find on my new fave knitting website:

http://newstitchaday.com/4-stitch-cable/

For this swatch, I cast on 10 stitches (the pattern calls for a repeat on multiples of 8, so I added two stitches for a garter selvedge) and I alternated C4B & C4F in row 5. This little swatch only measures about 8" x 1":

This is the front

...and this is the back

I still have a long way to go to perfecting this cabling thing, but I think this is a good start. Coozies, here I come!! (And it's not often I say that....)

Ooh PS I decided to bind off the swatch right there & test it as a sort of pre-coozie (oof I really don't like how that sounds, but there you have it):

Saving the world really does make me thirsty tho...