I went through a phase in high school, and my thanks to Robert Osborn for fueling it, where I watched all of Hitchcock’s films. Imagine my shock when the weird romance novel I’d been instructed to buy for my ninth grade English class showed up on the tv schedule with Hitchcock’s name attached. I’d assumed Rebecca was a smarmy romance from it’s red satin cover art but it wasn’t! I’m old, so I recorded it on VHS, and I watched that tape over and over, at least a dozen times, until I absolutely had to use the tape for something else. To be honest, I didn’t read the book, and still got an A on my essay. In later years I did read the novel, and while I love du Maurier’s work, I prefer Hitchcock’s retelling.

The de Winter shawl is inspired by the staircases at the de Winter estate, Manderley, as portrayed in Hitchcock’s film. There are a few frames where the two staircases, which merge into one mid-way, are shot at an angle so it appears as though they don’t quite match up. This fleeting detail embodies the film for me; the inability to articulate what is wrong, but teetering on the edge of sanity nonetheless. The deWinter shawl uses stockinette stitch and garter stitch to create an asymmetric texture. It looks stunning in a solid color but I also enjoy making it with color shifting, long repeat yarn. The runs of color are manipulated so that your stripes vary in width, and don’t always appear on both sides of the shawl.

Includes a mini photo tutorial on working the modified short row technique used in the pattern.