Saturday, January 21, 2006

Whooooooo are you? Who who, who who?

I love The Who! But today we are not talking about that Who.

Today we are talking about:






That's right, Doctor Who. My husband loves Doctor Who and even has an autographed picture of Tom Baker. If you don't know, Doctor Who is one of those shows kind of like the James Bond movies where the actors are different but the idea is basically the same. There have been something like 10 actors playing this dude. It has recently been reincarnated on the BBC, starring Christopher Eccleston, who I think is really cute but I'm attracted to tall, lanky, geeky guys.

Anyway, if you'll notice in that last picture above, the 4th or 5th Doctor sported quite a scarf. The story goes that the director (I think) bought up a bunch of sport-weight wool in random colors and gave it to a lady in the costume department (I think) asking her to make a scarf for the character. She seems to have misunderstood and rather than making a 'normal' sized scarf, she used ALL
of the wool and made a scarf approximately 20 feet long. That's right, I said 20 feet. It wraps around the neck once and hangs to the floor on each side.

What's the point of all this? Husband has asked me to make him an exact replica of this scarf.


picture from doctorwhoscarf.com

Because I am an idiot, I said I would make it. That is how much I love my husband, folks. There is a great (and slightly scary and obsessive) site that tells you exactly how to make the scarf, complete with row counts and everything. My problem is, I don't know what yarn to use to make it. It's supposed to be sport weight. Now, this scarf is designed to hit the ground so I don't want to make it in 100% wool - it needs to be able to go in the washing machine. Superwash would be fine. As would a blend. What do I use?? If the Lion company cared about me and wanted me to be happy they would bring back Wool Ease Sport and that would be perfect, but alas...I don't think my personal happiness drives their business decisions. Also, I refuse to spend hundreds on a scarf that is designed to hit the ground. Around here we don't spend big money on things like that unless they are called tires. So what's a cheap-ish lightweight sport yarn I could use for this? Or, alternatively, I suppose I could use worsted and just knit fewer stitches and rows. The whole project would go a lot faster that way too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2 comments:

Jenn said...

I would check ebay for wool-ease sportweight, and I've found some at Tuesday Morning and Hancock Fabrics (30% off), as it's on "clearance." I also found a few balls at JoAnns.
Good luck!

Ruth said...

I was going to say Brown Sheep NatureSpun Sport, but then you said you had to be able to wash it, so that's no good (although you could soak it in Eucalan and let it dry on a sweater rack, which is what I did for Her Ladyship's Hogwarts scarf).

How about Plymouth Encore DK?