A twist on the classic striped scarf, and a fabulous way to learn or practice your two-color brioche skills. Although unintentional, we couldn’t help but notice the echoes of Olympic gold medallist Alysa Liu’s trademark hair in this striking scarf, and so it’s named in her honor. Does someone want to tell her that her hair reminds us of syncopated brioche?

The core patterning is easily memorized, but you might find you need to pay careful attention to the edge stitches.

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
As written, scarf measures 7 inches/ 18 cm wide and approximately 68 inches/ 173 cm long.

See Pattern Notes for tips on customizing width and length.

MATERIALS

Yarn
Rowan Pure Wool Superwash Worsted 100% superwash wool, 219 yds/ 200 m per 100 g ball
MC color 190, Raisin; 1 ball
CC color 102, Soft Cream; 1 ball

Yarn Characteristics
Rowan Pure Wool Superwash is a perfectly plain and smooth solid-colored easy care wool. It’s soft but with a bit of structure. This design looks best worked with a smooth yarn, in two strongly contrasting solid or nearly-solid colors.

Recommended needle size
always use a needle size that gives you the gauge listed below - every knitter’s gauge is unique
spacer US #7/ 4.5 mm circular needle, 16-20 inches/ 40-50 cm long

Notions
1 removable stitch marker or safety pin, to mark the RS of the fabric
yarn needle

GAUGE
Approximately 15 sts/17 rows = 4 inches/ 10 cm in two-color brioche

Note: Gauge is not critical for this project but working at a different gauge will affect finished size and yardage required. Gauge is a challenging thing in brioche. Stitch gauge is hard to measure as it’s effectively ribbing, and there’s a lot of lateral give in the fabric; and row gauge is weird because there’s confusion about how to count the rows – do the A and B pass count as one row, or two? In this case, I’ve counted the vs of stitches in a knit column – making the A and B pass as a single row.

Construction method: Worked in one piece, short edge to short edge. Although it’s worked flat, you do need a circular needle for the two-pass two-color brioche.