Despite my best efforts, two of my children are slightly Dr Who obsessed. They love watching all the Drs and discuss the episodes they watch in great detail. My son also enjoys the many elements of Dr Who costumes. He has his own bow tie, braces, sonic screwdrivers and an overcoat.

I am not really into Dr Who, mostly due to the childhood nightmares I would have if I ever caught a glimpse of Daleks and their perpetual cry of ‘exterminate’. The one Dr Who I do remember is the one with curly brown hair and his very, very long stripy scarf. I am told reliably that he was the 4th Doctor played by Tom Baker.

Just over a week ago a Facebook friend posted a link to the original BBC knitting pattern for the Dr Who scarf. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and before I knew it I had printed the pattern and showed my son out of interest. Well, he got super excited and was convinced I was just going to make it for him, and so now I am knitting a Dr Who scarf.

It is a very straightforward knitting adventure and is growing quite quickly, but not as fast as what Joshua would like. At least once every time he sees me working on the scarf he asks, “how is it coming?” at which point I will hold it up for him to see if it is ‘scarf-y’ enough yet. We have had lots of fun comparing the growing project to a flannel, a tea- towel, a shirt collar and the latest comparison to a very small person’s scarf. After each of these discussions he declares how awesome it looks and tells me to keep working on it for him.

The end result is supposed to be close to 3 metres long, and after 1 week of working on it in my ‘down time’ it is now heading towards 1 metre in length. We are getting closer to the point where he would be happy for me to declare it ‘finished’ so that he could begin wearing it sooner, but at any point before the pattern is fully complete it will not be able to be really called finished. It won’t be as it was originally designed to be.

This project calls to mind a verse from the Bible in Philippians chapter 1 and verse 6 which tells me that “He (that is God) who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion.” You see, we are also a work in progress. Often we might like to believe we are ‘finished’ or ‘finished enough’, but our Creator God has more work to do on each of us. If we decide we are done before we actually are, we will miss out on becoming all He wants for us.

Yes, it is harder work to be patient in the finishing process, but there is beauty to be found in the meantime. And the end result will be worth it because I believe God’s design is perfect and worth striving for.

As for me, I had better publish this post so I can get back to working on the scarf before he notices I am otherwise engaged! “Geronimo!”

Be blessed.