Very Valerie

This is a digital file with a pattern to make the shawl, not the shawl itself.

My friend Valerie recently passed from an aggressive form of lung cancer. She was an extraordinary person; in addition to being an accomplished artist and passionate activist, she was kind, warm, thoughtful, and fun. I designed this triangular shawl in her memory and imagine that she would have enjoyed wearing it. I labeled each section of stitch patterns with a word I associate with Valerie: spark, nurture, joy, and spirit. The stitch pattern and associated abbreviations in the “Nurture” sections are adapted from Nancy Marchant’s book Knitting Fresh Brioche.

The shawl is worked top-down in one piece from a garter tab cast-on. It features sections of textured stitches and two-colour brioche, using two 100-gram skeins of fingering weight yarn in contrasting colours. Directions are both written and charted.

Low Vision Accessibility: This pattern is available in a low vision accessible format as a separate PDF with the pattern file name in ALL CAPS LVA. It is written in 24 point Arial font in all black text on a white background. All text is left-justified and has no italics. All of the directions are fully written out. This pattern is also screen reader accessible and has been reviewed and tested to work with a screen reader. It does not contain any parentheses.

I had a request for the brioche charts to not have colour, so I have added a separate PDF page with only the red outline for repeats.

Uses: two skeins fingering weight yarn in contrasting colours, 100 g. or approximately 400 yds/366 m each colour

Offered free for personal use or charity.