When my mother suffered a slightly paralyzing stroke a year ago, I comforted her the only way I knew how: enslaving her in a knitting sweatshop by stealthy reminders of all the imaginary ways she failed me as a mother. She's been knitting me scarves ever since.
My first request was an Igby Goes Down scarf, which I requested at twice the length. She painfully knit it, each stitch, purl and cast-off a Herculean act of will power enacted against the paralyzed muscles that would no longer twitch in subservience to her mental command. It took her months; the result was a joy to behold. I immediately lost it. And ever since then, I have been asking for ever longer and more complicated scarves. Some of her physical therapy workers hail me as a motivating genius, getting her to use muscles that otherwise would atrophy. But you and I know the truth: the ultimate aim is a dandy hipster wardrobe.
Now, I think I've found the ultimate scarf for her to knit. The Official Dr. Who Scarf homepage has the complete pattern for Tom Baker's epochal twenty foot scarf. There's even some great history on the scarf... apparently, the extreme length and eccentricity of the original came about because the wardrobe designer was handed a bunch of yarn and told to knit a scarf, and she assumed she was supposed to use all of it. I would kill for this scarf: I rather like the idea of a scarf I can use to rapel down a collapsing skyscraper, if need be.
Dr. Who Scarf [Official Site] (Fixed!)
