September 21, 2020
Welcome to the Lichen & Joy pattern and art project.

The Lichen shawl pattern is both a set of instructions as well as a stand-alone art project. The imagery you see here, and within the pattern, was created by six different fiber artists, each of whom created a self-portrait of joy while wearing the shawl.

These artists of the global majority and I worked together throughout the summer of 2020, during various Covid shelter-in-place mandates. The shawl sample traveled from coast to coast, from one pair of hands to another, to spotlight joy.

Our world is full of a great deal of uncertainty, brutality, and chaos felt by all of us yet horribly amplified in the lives of Black people. Joy is both harder to hold and more needed than ever. Feeling deep joy as a person who identifies as Black, Indigenous or as a Person of Color is an act of rebellion and resistance. As a white woman, it is my honor to bear witness to this joy.

Please join me in honoring the images each artist has created and to revel in Black Joy, Queer Joy, Trans Joy, and, most of all, the joy of resilience.

I invite you to see the beautiful images here, to leave a comment or word of honor on this pattern page, and to knit the shawl if you would like to more tangibly support the project. I will be giving away community-supported versions of the pattern on Instagram and invite you to follow me at littleskeinanne.

—Anne Vally

About the pattern
The Lichen shawl is the second design in my Beatrix Box subscription series. Yarn kits will be available for non-subscribers at littleskein.com beginning September 25.

• It’s an asymmetrical triangle, knit on the bias.
• It uses two skeins of sport-weight yarn, and looks best with a hand-dyed speckle and a semi-solid.

To knit this shawl:

• You should know how to knit, purl, reduce and increase stitches.
• Be able to follow a chart for simple texture or follow written instructions

This pattern has been tech edited and test knit.