It’s been growing steadily, out of the limelight, and now the knitting part is over.

The last time I made one of these, I timed it at about 24 hours to do the knitting, make the tassels, and trim the ends. This time *felt* quicker in some ways, but I accept that as a thoroughly unreliable measure of anything.

I wove in ends as I worked – this time I measured out a length that went from my wrist to my elbow, which was enough to weave all the way across to give a consistent look throughout, rather than the first part of the join looking different to the rest. I don’t like the look of it quite as much as a plain join with ends sewn in, but my goodness it’s so much quicker.

So now I just have to make the tassels (all 24 of them), wash and stretch the scarf, and snip off the remaining ends. It’s already at about 11 feet long, which is longer than the pattern expects it to be. That’s because I use a bigger needle – I like it to be a bit looser, and also this way I need fewer stitches to get a nice broad scarf. I like the looser finish because I don’t want it to look brand new, even when it is. The Doctor’s scarf doesn’t look brand new. It’s been through a lot of adventures, you see.

I can’t say for sure when I started this project. I know it was before 13 September, because that’s when I took it on a road trip! And I know it was after 27 July because that’s when the yarn arrived. It’s been done in fits and starts, round about other things, with no particular deadline in mind. It’s a gift for a friend, in exchange for many, many craft supplies that she wasn’t using any more. She has a Tom Baker style coat to wear it with and everything.

This is my sixth DW scarf (as well as a half sized one for a tiny baby), and you can read a bit more about the others in a past post. The recipient said ‘it doesn’t matter if the colours aren’t exactly right’ which was, frankly, ludicrous. Not make it as screen accurate as possible?! Outrage! Nonsense!

I did my usual deliberation over the colour selection, and for the first time I recorded how much of each colour I used. I’ve noted the colours and weights here for the next, almost inevitable, iteration.

Pattern (standalone website)

Colours – all Hayfield Bonus DK:

• Purple – 37g or 114 yards
• Moon – 87g or 267 yards
• Bronze – 47g or 144 yards
• Golden – 30g or 92 yards
• Scarlet – 56g or 177 yards
• Slate Grey – 57g or 175 yards
• Khaki Green – 59g or 181 yards

I cast on 42 stitches on 5.5mm needles. I would change out the Khaki for something more green (Forest Green, maybe), it was too similar to the grey. And the Bronze… the Bronze was OK, but might be worth looking at Hazelnut for comparison.

While the knitting of the scarf is not my favourite, the delight on the recipients’ faces kind of is. Sharing love through geeky knitting is pretty special.