Dr. Who Knitting Projects

I finally got to watch the new Doctor Who last night, and while I’m not quite sold on the new guy (it always takes me a few episodes) it was still a lot of fun.

Looking for more Dr who knits? Check out this book,

Of course I always knit while I’m watching TV, but so far I haven’t ventured into actually knitting something Doctor Who-related yet. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a ton of great options out there for people who would like to do such a thing; here are a few great ones.

You have to start with the classic Doctor Who scarf made famous by Tom Baker, of course. But there’s also a great sock kit from Lorna’s Laces (made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show last year, but it’s still available) inspired by the same voluminous scarf. Or you can knit a Tom Baker maxi dress. That’s pretty darn cool.

You can also knit a shawl covered with TARDISes, designed by Kate Atherley, or, if you’re OK with buying patterns, a police box slouchy hat designed by CiD Hanscom.

R. J. Daae has a great knit sonic screwdriver, while Raverly user Penwiper, who blogs at Entropy House, has a great Doctor Who collection that includes a stuffed TARDIS plushie, a police box scarf, a Dalek washcloth (Exfoliate!) and a stuffed Dalek. Awesome!

A Bitter Knitter has a pattern for a baby girl’s Dalek dress, and Love Knitting has a great blue but also Dalek-inspired French press coffee cozy. Unfortunately the link to the pattern for all the doctors doesn’t seem to work anymore.

And while that’s 12 patterns for 12 doctors, I do have one more link to share. Misty from the Handmade Podcast is making Doctor Who kits that include TARDIS-colored yarn, a project bag made with celestial TARDIS fabric and a set of Doctor Who inspired stitch markers with designs like a scarf, a bow tie, Big Ben and a gas mask. Scroll down or watch the podcast for more information.

Have you ever made a Doctor Who craft? (I’m never knit anything, but I did once make a TARDIS out of perler beads, and that’s got to count for something.) I’d love to hear about it!

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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