The ubiquitous Four Scarf makes up a good deal of the projects on who_knits. During (or perhaps a bit before) last year's Good vs Evil Knitalong, several discussions were started about what types of scarves the *other* Doctors might wear, including a FO or two of a Ten-inspired striped scarf. After the KAL (of course, I had intentions of making several projects . . . and still haven't finished the first one I started—sorry, Murray!) I decided I would attempt to make a pinstripe TenScarf for lowc's Christmas present. One, she's a knitter too (and when she *finally* joined who_knits I had to stop posting updates); Two, she's the one to blame for my Who obsession; and Three, I was pretty sure she'd love it. ^_^ Two big problems (??) however: first, I had to come up with a pattern; second, I'd never made a vertically-striped scarf before . . . and I was making a pattern for said scarf! To attempt to be sneaky, I referred to the Scarf as the "Covert Knitting Project" in my regular journal and on Ravelry (I was also sneaky in colour names—I believe I had the blue as "light" and the brown as "dark").

One of the tricky bits, I found, was that I had to figure out how much yarn I was going to need beforehand . . . because I couldn't just stop a few stripes early if I ran out of yarn—like I could do if I were making a horizontally-striped scarf. I had to do a bit of knitting maths to figure this out—I'm not going to post it, but if anyone wants me to, let me know and I'll type it up as well.

Before the pattern, however, how about yarn picspam?


The actual colour for Williamsburg is slightly lighter than in my stash picture—it's a lovely medium teal-ish blue. And WotA Chocolate really is the exact colour of chocolate (somewhere between milk and dark) . . . yum. ^_^ (I may or may not be mostly copying my Flickr and Ravelry stash notes.)


My camera is a bit wonky as my yarn colours never turn out quite true . . . but are usually better when taken *without* flash. The Chocolate is just about on in the picture on the left (taken without flash); the Williamsburg is far too faded. In the picture taken *with* flash, on the right, the Chocolate is obviously far too dark—nearly black!—while the Williamsburg is a bit too blue and not teal enough.


Pinstripe TenScarf


(Yes, the wrong side *still* looks like pinstripes!)

Materials:
* KnitPicks Wool of the Andes worsted weight (110 yds/50g), 4 skeins Chocolate (MC) and 2 skeins Williamsburg (CC) [or brown and teal-ish blue in another yarn; you should have about twice as much brown as blue yarn]
Note: I purchased 6 balls of yarn because my knitting maths gave me a total yardage of 530 yds (rounded up to 550 as WotA comes in skeins of 110 yds). I only ended up using three *full* skeins of Chocolate and not even a full skein of the Williamsburg (to be more exact, I used aroundish 3.75 skeins of Chocolate and maybe 90% of a skein of Williamsburg) . If you have extra, you could always make a matching hat—or mittens!
* US Size 9 (5.5 mm) circular needle, 36"/90cm length
* Place markers (Highly Recommended—especially for casting on all those stitches!)
* Tapestry needle (e.g. your trusty Chibi)
* Point protectors or rubber band (these are very long rows)

Gauge: KnitPicks suggests a gauge of "16 sts and 24 rows to 4"/10cm using US size 9 (5.5 mm) needles." I got 4.5 sts and 7 rows to 1 inch, so approximately 18 sts and 28 rows to 4in/10cm. However, as this is a scarf, gauge doesn't really matter (unless you're very picky about that sort of thing).
Note: This pattern would probably also work well for crocheting. I don't know how much yarn you would need, though.

Size: The projected size was 6 ft by 6.5 in (approx. 1.83m by 16.5cm). My finished dimensions were 80 in by 6.5 in (or approx 2m by 16.5cm).

Directions
1. Cast on 324 stitches loosely in Main Colour (Chocolate, or choice of brown). I would suggest using the "use both ends of the skein/use two balls of yarn" method** to cast on and placing a stitch marker every 20 sts or so to save your sanity.
2. Work 6 rows in garter stitch.
3. Switch to Contrast Colour (Williamsburg, or choice of teal-ish blue) and work 2 rows in garter.
4. Repeat four times, for 5 brown stripes and 5 blue stripes total (40 rows; approximately 6 inches/13cm).
5. End with a brown stripe (6 rows). You should now have 6 brown stripes (one at each end) and 5 blue stripes (46 rows total).
6. Bind off LOOSELY. I would almost suggest binding off a little looser than you normally do—this is the length of the scarf and binding off too tightly might cause it to curl in on itself.
7. Weave in ends.
8. Block if you wish and if appropriate for your yarn choice. I didn’t.
9. Wear with your Converse and save the universe! ^_^

**I have no idea what this method is actually called, but it is a sort of modified long-tail cast on using two different strands (either both ends of the same skein, or one end each from two different skeins of the same yarn). I found it on page 28 of When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters by Marion Edmonds and Ahza Moore, 2007. The short version: make a slipknot using both strands and place on your needle. Cast on the required number of stitches using the long-tail method, but DO NOT count the slipknot. When you've finished casting on, cut one of the strands (leaving a tail to weave in) and continue knitting with the other. On your next row, unravel the slip knot when you come to it—it's served its purpose and is no longer needed. The best thing about this method is that "you can't run out of yarn when you're using at least half a ball to cast on with" (Edmonds and Moore, 2007).

More pictures!



The following were taken by the lovely lowc, who is a much better knitting photographer than I am (I can never think of interesting knitting poses. Also, her camera photographs yarn better).



This is a free pattern, but I would ask that you please not sell the pattern or finished projects. Thank you.