Are you a Whovian? I know a few! One of them is my friend Amy Williams, whom I met when we were both working at JoAnn. She tackled this knitted afghan even though she hadn’t done a lot of knitting in the past, and hadn’t knit at all in about 7 years!
If you aren’t familiar with the BBC America TV show Dr. Who, this blue police call box might not be as thrilling. But for those who watch, the TARDIS afghan will bring a smile to your face. This is The Doctor’s space ship, and it is “bigger on the inside!” New characters regularly exclaim that when entering the TARDIS.
That’s kind of how this afghan is, too… in this picture you might think this is a very cool lap blanket. After all, 700 pixels across your screen can represent anything. But it is bigger in real life than you can imagine from the photo! Ready?
This Dr. Who TARDIS afghan is a whopping 7 feet wide by 10 feet long. That’s about 2m x 3m for those who speak metric. HUGE, any way you measure it!
Here’s a link to the “near life-size” TARDIS afghan on Ravelry and it is FREE! TARDIS stands for “Time And Relative Dimension In Space.” FREE stands for “For Ridiculously Energetic Enthusiasts” in this case. I just made that up — creativity in action ;) But really?! Seven feet by ten feet? That’s love!
Here’s more of Amy’s Amazing Afghan Adventure:
Amy herself didn’t know that she could knit something like this! It came across every time we’ve talked about featuring her TARDIS afghan here on 2 Create in Color; that she would get it done someday (maybe) was as much as she would promise. And this was after she must have already had (I am guessing) 90% of it done!
An inexperienced knitter — any beginner level crafter — who wants to tackle a project beyond their confidence level is wise to have someone more experienced give their opinion and advice. A friend of ours at the store did just that, and with Nichole’s advice, Amy made some changes to the pattern and got started.
If you compare Amy’s TARDIS afghan to the pattern (link above) you can see that she didn’t do the white/gray shading around the main part of the blue police box. Months of knitting and hundreds of rows later, her confidence had changed. She says, “By the time I got to the top of the TARDIS where the light is I decided that I had worked into enough skills to try to make the light shine. It was harder then I thought it was going to be but it was worth it.”
Amy began this monumental knitting project at the end of May 2013, with the goal of having it done by November for the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Who in November. The Anniversary was a Big Deal to Whovians! It was worthy of a project like this, but due to a major sewing project, a vacation, and some totally understandable burnout she finished it on New Year’s Day 2014. I think it is absolutely amazing to start and finish a project of this size in 7 months, especially with all the other things she does!
The TARDIS afghan frequently went to work with Amy so she could work on it during breaks and at lunch. It wasn’t long before it wouldn’t fit into a knitting bag, tote, or basket so she “finally settled for a giant blue IKEA bag. It was my best friend. When the bag showed up, the girls at Jo-Ann’s began to call it my child, as a child could fit into the bag. Regularly they would ask how my child was doing.”
As you can imagine, Amy kept herself company with quite a few hours of TV while knitting: Formula 1 racing, Downton Abbey, and of course Dr. Who!
Here are the stats:
Size 9 circular needle 36″ long
Red Heart worsted weight acrylic yarn in a heathery gray, royal blue, white and black:
- about 12 skeins of gray
- 6-8 skeins of the blue
- 2 skeins of white
- a few skeins of black — since she wound shorter lengths of black onto yarn bobbins to knit from, it would be hard to keep track!
- weight: over 5 lbs (I’m guessing 10 lbs!)
Amy says about her yarn choice, “Now that I am done I wish I had used a nicer yarn, but when I started I could not imagine spending that much money on something I wasn’t sure I could do.”
I say, we all have budgets and that’s a LOT of yarn so the cost still wasn’t cheap with lower priced yarn. But this TARDIS afghan is priceless!
Thanks so very much for letting me share your amazing afghan here at 2Create, Amy! And thanks to your friends (relatives?) at Longnecker Photography for the photo to use.
If you have any questions for her, ask away! Have you ever taken on a huge project like this?
Gail
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