The Doctor Who Scarf

Not in the Tom Baker sense, obviously, although one of those might help reduce my piles of ends of balls.

I'm really stacking up the finished objects at the moment with this latest addition to the blocking pile. It is most of a skein of Colinette Parisienne in 'Jay', started on the 17th of March in Paris (this was no coincidence), finished yesterday afternoon while I was waiting for the new television to be delivered.

I called it the Doctor Who scarf because I would pick it up once a week to knit on during Doctor Who, and the quality of the episode could be judged by how little knitting I got done. 'Daleks in Manhattan' added several inches; 'Blink' achieved a record with only two stitches knitted, both of them wrong. It then became a Torchwood repeats scarf, then a Torchwood DVD frenzy scarf, and this week became a Queer as Folk scarf. Perhaps I should rename it the Russell T Davies Scarf.

The pattern, such as it is, is my own. I cast on 140 stitches on 5mm needles, knitted 4 rows, then worked a row of knit 2 together all the way across (70 stitches). Knitted another 4 rows, then repeated the knit two together row to get 35 stitches. The 'lace' is "K1, YO, S1 K2tog psso, YO, K1", worked a total of seven times on the odd rows, with the even rows knitted. I continued in this fashion until I got bored and began to worry about running out of yarn, then a row of working into the front and back of every stitch to get to 70 stitches again. Knit 4 rows, another row of increasing as before back to 140 stitches. 4 more rows, then an Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast-off. It badly needs blocking.

At only £6.95 for the yarn, these are definitely cheap frills.