Maytham Shawl

The magic of The Secret Garden takes place high in the Yorkshire Moors, in the grand and gloomy Misselthwaite Manor and its rambling estate. Frances Hodgson Burnett found the inspiration for her story almost 20 years before she penned its first lines, when she moved to a noble but slightly shabby country house, Great Maytham Hall. The sprawling, overgrown walled gardens which surrounded the house sparked a passion in the author, who immediately set to work bringing them back to life, ripping out the wild brambles, digging out old hedges, and planting masses of roses.

The Secret Garden is a story about coming alive, and about the power love has to make broken things beautiful again. The flowering of the long-neglected garden and the flourishing of the children are intertwined in every page. The Maytham Shawl is a tribute to the real house that Frances Hodgson Burnett loved, and to the imaginary house, Misselthwaite Manor, which was transformed from a cold, forbidding pile of stones into a home full of warmth and laughter. This is a generous shawl using two colours, in a semicircular shape. The texture and easy lace are inspired by the grandeur of neo gothic architecture, with its soaring arches and columns.

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

The third season of The Shawl Society entices you to embark on a 6 month adventure of mysterious shawl patterns, warm camaraderie with like-minded knitters, and a creative exploration of one of the most beloved childhood classics of all time, The Secret Garden.

More than a century ago, Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote a story about the magic of nature, the power of the imagination, and the gift of friendship. The act of bringing something to life with the work of your own hands is always transformative, whether it is a lost and sleeping garden, or a skein of yarn waiting to blossom into a wonderful shawl.

Yarn:

Yarn needed is fingering weight yarn, 3 skeins of 366m/400yds per 100g skein: for exact yardage used in sample see below.

I used:

La Bien Aimee; Merino Singles 100% superwash merino; 366m/400yds per 100g skein, 3 x 100g skeins,
Colour A: Curious Handmade x 2 skeins
Colour B: Shaela x 1 skein

Actual yarn amounts used for sample in a fingering weight single ply yarn:
Colour A: 155g, 568m/620yds
Colour B: 65g, 238m/260yds

Needles
4mm (US 6), 100cm (40”) long circular needles (or size to obtain gauge)