The name and mission statement of my blog is Knitographical: my life in random knitted things. I think that is what this scarf will represent, hence its name.

Day 1: Found and printed out lots of ME patterns and charts. I’m planning random Dr Who references - daleks, tardises, sonic screwdrivers as well as sheep, houses, tea cups and saucers and random flowers for starters. I vow to keep good notes on what patterns I used and where.

Day 2: Cast on, Tried a crochet provisional cast on but twisted the chain too much to successfully negotiate picking up the bumps on the back. Did a long tail cast on in waste yarn instead. First section. Steaming teacups cream natural colour on a warm brown background. Yarn used is Cleckheaton County Naturals from stash. Used just the coffee cup motif from Gimme Coffee Socks. It’s clearly a tea cup on mine though!

Day 3: Finished the tea cups and completed the next section. Little European style houses. Taken from Building mitten pattern. Used tweedy green and rust coloured yarn. Decided it was time for a tardis. This is just one of the patterns I plan to use from these awesome Dr Who Fairisle charts. This is the stand alone pattern for the 3D tardis. Background colour pinkish cream and dark blue for the tardis.

Day 4: Finished Tardis.

Day 5: Decided I needed words. So ‘knit’ in grey on purple background. Used letter charts from Knitting Letters book. Did this section twice as the first go I ran out of purple before I ran out of letter…. Used Garamond font type the second time. It looks better anyway. Used the leaves pattern from as the leaves begin to fall in the same colours as the Federation hat. Modified this from a 16 stitch repeat to an 18 stitch repeat by adding one extra stitch between each leaf. Began sheep using stranded sheep scarf. Again modified for an 18 stitch repeat by adding 2 stitches between each set of sheep. Background dark green Cleackheaton country naturals 8 ply with creamish fawn sheep.

Day 6: Finished 2 repeats of sheep. Then purple and bright blue (Cleckheaton Country again) circles from Circle Socks. After all what is maths without geometry?

Day 7: Finished circles. Next foxes. Pattern from Fox in the Snow mittens

Day 8, 9, 10 and 11: Unfaithfulness to this project. Stuck for next piece of inspiration. Also getting child home from Europe and washing and helping other child move.

Days 12, 13 and 14: Inspiration strikes again. Daleks from the awesome Dr who fairisle patterns in dark grey and mid grey (a mohair wool / blend). Lovely 1970’s wallpaper from The wallpaper had it coming again mittens. Teal and light apricot orange inspired by my favourite aunty’s / godmother’s dining room wall paper from my formative years. Words again, purl in pale baby blue grey on gold background. (These took 3 goes. 1. Purple and Red. I ran out of wool. 2. Blue and pale lemon writing - can’t spell - messed up setting up rows to spell purl!). Then Squirrels from a Knitty hat pattern. Squirrel is one of those words my husband cannot pronounce properly and it is a source of great stirring at our house. “Dad say Squirrel!” Giggle, giggle, giggle.

At this stage summer intervened in a big way and the cowl got limited love for the next month or so. I knitted little bits and pieces every now and then when the weather was cold enough to cope with all the weight of a couple meters of cowl in my lap.

Next was a tribute to my daughter’s Winter Smoke beret. I knitted a section of the pattern from the iconic Selbu modern beret in the same subtle combination of winter white and light grey as my daughter’s beret.

When I was a teenager, my Aunty often got me to complete unfinished knitted garments for her. To reward me she gave me a copy of Kaffe Fasset’s original knitting book, Glorious Knitting. My favourite pattern is this book is Zigzag and I have made four garments using this pattern over the years. I decided to incorporate a tribute to my teenage Zigzag jumper which was knitted in rich jewel tones of red and purple against a rich creamy / grey / lemon background. I love this jumper and reluctantly sent it off to the op-shop when my biceps no longer fit in the jumper. It always had disproportionately narrow sleeves and whilst teenage me was a stick figure, adult me has more muscle definition

I’m my previous working life I was an electrical engineering assistant and worked on everything from small scale electronics to high voltage equipment. The circuit board designs of Microprocessors socks from Knitty in traditional circuit board colours of green and gold are a homage to this set of skills.

A ball of gorgeous hand painted yarn in teal, blues and purples just had to be used in the cowl. A pale mint green tracery of flowers and branches on the variegated background came next using Something Floral - a free fingerless mitt pattern.

My final section is pinkish fawn ampersands on a khaki background with tiny read accents. The pattern for this is We call them Ampersands. The original is a free hat pattern. I love a good ampersand - great name for a punctuation mark. (Doesn’t some punctuation have great names?)

On Saturday 7th March I knitted the last two sections and on Sunday 8th March I Kitchener stitch grafted the two ends together. It has to be my neatest Kitchener stitch join ever. I was so happy with it it.

And this is where it went slightly wrong. I soaked it and rather than squeeze drying it is a towel as it is too long, I spun it in the washing machine. Now I do this with my handknits quite often, but this time I stuffed up and it was on heavy duty rinse and spin - not delicates / woolens as I thought and some sections of the cowl have felted slightly. I now have felted tardises and daleks, and the olive gold yarn I used for the leaves has also felted (but not the background). The awesome 1970s wall paper has also felted but the worst section is the last one - the ampersands.

It’s still awesome but some of the stitch definition has gone!