Take a gorgeous gradient of colours and combine it with a need to play with Brioche for the first time and a shawl is born.

The northern lights (or Aurora Borealis if you want to be formal) have always intrigued me – the stunning way the colours dance and play across the sky. So, when I found a yarn cake named after them (Pook GB high twist merino sock yarn colourway Northern Lights) I set out to design a shawl that captured some of the same interplay of colours and two-coloured brioche stitch seemed to offer the perfect route to a squashy shawl that sang with colour.

Coloursong shawl starts with a two-colour Brioche section where one colour dances across another (pulled from the other end of the gradient cake), increases are worked to produce both shaping and pattern in the material. It then shifts to a simple lace section which echoes the pattern created by colour changes in the brioche section, and finishes with some garter stitch wings which give the shawl its crescent shape.

Detailed row by row written instructions (including stitch count) are given throughout the pattern.

This pattern has been checked and independently test knitted (nicmag45).
The photographs show three colour ways:

• Northern lights – 2x150g 100% Merino high twist sock yarn by Pook GB, in “The Northern Lights”
• Purple/grey – Stylecraft Life 4ply 2x100g in shade Heather and 100g of Silver grey.
• Pink/cream – Eden cottage yarns 100g skein of cottage original sparkle 4ply in Honeysuckle and Meadow rue, 100g of Eden cottage yarns Carlisle fingering in Rose bed, 100g of Eden cottage yarns tempo 4ply in Faded bloom.