Doctor Who is one of the most polarizing shows in pop culture. Fans love it for being the ultimate adventure show where the lead character can travel through time and space to save the universe four-hundred times over. Critics ridicule it for being overly-complicated and too cheeky for its own good as a British export. No matter what your personal view is on the series, chances are that at some point as a kid you happened to flip past PBS and caught a rerun of the classic series from the ’70s staring Tom Baker and his ridiculously long scarf.
The Fourth Doctor, as he’s known by fans (played by Tom Baker), had several variations of a patterned-scarf that he wore most everywhere he went. The scarf was created by mistake when a costume designer for the show asked knitter Begonia Pope to make one using the yarn they were given, and she inadvertently knitted a twenty-foot scarf using ALL the yarn. In that moment, geek culture would be given one of the longest running symbols of fan appreciation to date. with a following so big, there are websites dedicated to it with instructions on how to make your own. Being a fan myself, I wanted one! But I can’t knit. Lucky for me, Salt Lake City has a vast geek community with great crafting talents, which led me to my friend Stacey Gray, who was willing to knit me one for my personal collection.
Gray had become a fan through the more recent seasons, and was immediately shown the scarf and those websites by her brother once she was hooked. On the crafting side, she had a lifelong interest in knitting going back to the blankets her grandmother made, but had only recently taken up the art herself.
“My brother has been wanting Tom Baker’s scarf since he got into it,” says Stacey. “This past summer, I finally learned how to knit just so he would stop bothering me about it. In the course of my research on his scarf, I found the pattern for this one, and decided to learn how to crochet with it.”
The scarf itself has an abnormal thread count and color pattern, depending on which variation you find online, not to mention specific colors for the truly obsessed fan. The specific pattern used on mine doesn’t come out to twenty when knitted. In fact, this one is only eleven feet upon completion, which is perfectly fine because even when it’s double-wrapped around my head and going down my body, it still almost hits the floor on both ends. Gray herself used her phone to compare colors of yarn at Joanns.
When I asked Stacey about the process of making it, she boiled it down to simply being a series of knots.
“You decide how wide you want the scarf, then you crochet and count rows and follow the pattern. When it comes time to switch colors, you drop the old color from your hand, and start using the new color as if it’s the old one. Then, BAM! New stripe. I made it on TRAX and at work, so I was constantly picking it up and putting it down. It probably took me about 40 hours.”
Suffice it to say, once I received my scarf for Christmas, I was adoring it. The scarf itself is very warm, which has been a plus in the winter months where we had temperatures in single digits, and long enough to wrap around the body. Plus, it is kinda cool to see how many people are fans when they recognize just a portion of the pattern. Like a Star Trek insignia or Ninja Turtles mask, that scarf will forever be a childhood conversation starter.
For anyone looking to get a Doctor Who scarf made by Stacey, she can’t say with certainty that it will happen right away, as she’s currently working on her senior thesis with a full-time job, but if you’re willing to wait and have the cash, the price for yarn (not including labor) is $10-$40, depending on how long it takes her. You can reach her through Google voice at (385) 202-3863.
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