A Bluestocking Knits

Here it is, in all its twelve+ feet glory!  The Fourth Doctor scarf (original aka “Acheson Hero” version), in Cascade 220 Superwash, pattern from DoctorWhoScarf.com.

The Cascade 220 Superwash is okay, a bit splitty, and I’ve never tried it before but I guess fringe does not work particularly well with machine-washed superwash (even on my front-loader’s benevolent hand-wash cycle) —

but luckily I’d made the fringe with 12-inch strands so I had the capability to trim the ends even more, and I will certainly tell the recipient to wash the scarf by hand.  The scarf was definitely more like ten feet before washing, but I hung it up to dry, and it has now gained quite a bit of length, as well as getting much softer. 

What really irked me, though, was that even according to the pattern’s meticulous calculations, I ran short of wool.  Maybe this is why —

Supposed to be a 100g ball.

Grrr.

So this was how much wool I had left —

The labels are either used-up balls or the one I didn’t need after all.  I used two measly feet (for two strands of fringe) of the second ball of gray, but only because I had it — of course I would have just silently made two tassels without gray if I’d had to.

So, to be frank, I think I would recommend anyone knitting this scarf to go with the non-superwash — because the ends of the fringe will look better, and because the woven-in ends of all those color changes will conceal themselves a bit better, and in the long run you will enjoy the everyday wearing of a good-looking scarf enough that washing its 12+ foot length in the bathtub the few times you really need to do it will not be so onerous.

But — it’s a fun knit, I must say.  I’d put pins in at the beginning of each new day of knitting, and as it turns out, this took me eleven days’ worth of knitting, though some were not particularly industrious and one or two were positively heroic. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the thing, here is a photo sequence of each day’s knitting! —

The machine-washed texture, by the way, is a bit looser than the above (pre-laundering) photos though surprisingly not much — presumably its stretching a fraction of an inch for every foot is where all of that extra length came from!

And a few more photos of the “real thing” in action, plus a bonus! —