Craft: Fourth Doctor Scarf

Posted by Allison Rose and Nina Avalon

In his seven year long tenure from 1974 to 1981, the Fourth Doctor, played by the marvelous Tom Baker, was famous for wearing his extremely long, multi-coloredscarf.  Nowadays, it is possible to buy replicas from all over the web, but wouldn't it be so much cooler to say that you made it yourself?


For this craft, you'll need the following supplies:

 - Yarn skeins in seven colors:

1. Purple
2. Red
3. Beige
4. Brown
5. Yellow
6. Dark green
7. Gray

 - Nifty Knitter loom and hook
 - Crochet hook
 -  Scissors
 - Ruler
 - DVD case (optional - the authors recommend using a Doctor Who DVD case for optimal enjoyment of project, as they're fun to watch while looming)

Courtesy of Amazon

 Yarn looming is a much easier and quicker way to knit than using traditional needles.  This three-part tutorial will explain how to use the loom, as well as how to add on other colored stripes of yarn.  The tutorial uses the smallest loom, which has 24 pegs.  This loom will make a narrower scarf than the original, so if you're particular about this, you can use one of the larger looms.

Speaking of stripes, each stripe on the Doctor's scarf has a specific length.  For this craft, we recommend heading over to DoctorWhoScarf.com for some excellent scarf patterns.  This pattern, for example, is for the original scarf, as in subsequent seasons, new ones were made.

Now, let's get started!

Scarf

Using the looming method shown in the tutorial, you can add on as many colored stripes as you want until the scarf is at the length you would like.  Use your ruler to measure the stripes.  (Unfortunately, this looming method won't give exact stripe lengths, but they'll be pretty close.)

Allison's scarf got to be about eight feet before she was satisfied with the length.  At that point, she decided to finish off the scarf with the last three stripes, 2 inches of brown, 6.5 inches of beige, and 1 inch of purple.

Decorating with Tassels

The third part of the aforementioned tutorial shows how to decorate the scarf with tassels.  The scarf that Tom Baker wore originally had twelve tassels on it, each tassel using a strand of each yarn color.  Because our scarf is narrower, you might want to use half the amount of tassels.

The video tutorial recommends wrapping the yarn around a plastic DVD case to get the right length.  That'll give you approximately 14 inch strands.  (Now that you know that, though, you don't really need the DVD case anymore, unless, of course, you're going to watch the Doctor Who episodes inside. :P)

When you're done, this is what your scarf will look like:

W is for Who
Scarf made by Allison Rose