I’ve made many a scarf in my time. In particular, I’ve made many Doctor Who scarves. Five and a half, to be precise (we’ll come back to that ‘half’ in due course).

It started with one, of course. My sister made me my own Doctor scarf, which I’m wearing in the picture at the top, and I loved it… and so did our brother. So, naturally, it seemed only right to make him his own. Off I went, beginning with a spate of ordering yarns online to try and get the right colours. Ultimately, even if I didn’t think it was perfect, he was delighted and immediately combined it with an appropriately Doctory get-up.

It’s been a big part of the process for me every time, the Choosing of the Yarn. It consists of searching the stash, squinting at screen grabs of Tom Baker, considering the pattern recommendations for real life items to help with colour matching (copper pennies, bosch pears, red onion, turmeric, peanut shells, copper coins, and red bell pepper – yes, those came from memory), and ordering online only to find that at least one tone isn’t right and I need to go back to the stash, or the drawing board (or the yarn shop)… Even having been through the process several times, I’ve never written down my final choices until now.

Last time I went with Stylecraft Bonus DK for most of the colours, ad being moderately content with Bronze (596), Golden (595), Sand (597), and Slate Grey (633). The purple and green came from stash – possibly Stylecraft Special DK in Emperor (1425) and Khaki (1027)? And the red really could have been anything, and I’ve never had a shade that I thought was just right anyway. They’ve been too vibrant for the rest of the 70s palette, or too pink/orange/dark/burgandy… The quest continues.

My brother’s was perhaps a little too wide at 66 stitches, and perhaps not long enough due to 4mm needles. For future times, I dropped the cast on to 45 (somewhere in that region anyway) and 5mm needles for a looser and more stretchable end result. I know that they say you can’t stretch acrylic yarn. They’re wrong – after you’ve soaked it, wrapped it aggressively round the rungs of a clothes airer, pulling until both scarf and airer make ominous creaks, it’ll stretch. It does *look* obviously stretched, right enough, which is generally not what you want, but when you’re trying to achieve fourteen feet of scarf you’ll take any edge you can get.

Scarves two and three were for two friends, and were met with the same level of joy on delivery. I played with the colours I wasn’t too happy with, guessed if yarns in my stash were long enough, made errors in combining yarns of different weights, and my pals were still completely delighted. It’s like there’s a life lesson here, I’m just not sure what it is…

The pattern is easy – miles of garter stitch, and miles of ends to sew in. I’m not one of those lucky few who enjoy weaving in the ends, and the first three times I made the scarf, I got to the end and had to take a deep breath and a quiet sit down before tackling those trailing strands of many colours. On my fourth version of the series 12 scarf, though, I used the Weavin’ Stephen method. I had mixed feelings on the matter. On one hand, it was a true relief not to have to go back to the beginning and pick up every colour change. On the other, the sewn in ends were more subtle than those I wove in with this as-you-go method.

I ultimately decided against un-weaving and re-weaving everything. And you know what? Once again, the recipient of the scarf was absoutely over the moon with the whole thing and it’s quite possible that he’ll never notice those joins, or think twice about them if he does. Besides, the scarf isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s handmade for the Doctor and it’s been through a *lot* over the years. Many adventures, many escapes. What’s a few higgledy joins after all that?

The half scarf was for a newborn baby, whose parent I’d met through mutual love of Doctor Who. I took the original pattern and divided all the row counts by 4, rounding up or down as seemed right. Bit of eyeballing and executive decision making later, I had a sweet, tiny scarf that was still big enough to dwarf the tiny human. Much like the smiley face I’ve put over them does – not a great look, but one that guarantees anonymity!

Fifth and finally, I’ve also rattled up a less common series 18 scarf, in burgandy, orange and red. This one is intended to be a chenille scarf but, being a budget conscious knitter, I opted not to go with the real deal. I used Lion Brand ‘Feels Like Butta‘, which is lovely to work with and wear – there’s no doubt that it’s synthetic but it’s pleasantly synthetic, in my book. Alas, the cranberry shade was a bit too pink for my liking, so I swapped for a now unknown Women’s Institute shade of purple. It wasn’t quiiiiiite as soft but it was the same weight, nice to touch, and the right colour.

The series 18 is even bigger, truly a blanket of a scarf, since the yarn is aran weight not DK. It’s half as long again as the series 12 (if not more), and it has a crocheted orange edge all the way round. Luckily, I’m ambi-crafty when it comes to knitting and crochet, though the first time I tried to crochet I was absolutely baffled as to what to do with the hand that wasn’t holding the needle. I knit English style, and I’m right handed, so I wasn’t used to having the yarn in my left hand and missed the rhythm of the two needles working together. I got over it and now I crochet Octupi.

All in all, the Adventure of the Scarves has been a fun and oddly meaningful part of my knitting life. I timed the fourth series 12 scarf I made – it took 28.5 hours to knit, plus a two-hour soak and a little time to put through the spin cycle in the washing machine and stretch it out. On this occasion I even used my hand held steamer for a bit of extra give – it worked amazingly, no melted plastic in sight, and gave me at least an extra two feet in length. It has been a joy, every time, to see how happy the scarf has made others. My own scarf, the one I didn’t knit, has been on plenty of journeys with me – and even one without me, when I left it on the coach and it went back to Bristol when I got off in Cardiff. One slightly abashed phonecall to customer service and it was on its way back to me just in time for me to head home to Glasgow.

If you like to knit, and know a Doctor Who fan who you really, really like… I can only recommend that you go ahead and make them one. And if you do, write down what colours you used just in case you find yourself tempted to do it again.