It’s February, so clearly it’s time to start breaking out the posts about Christmas gifts that I made. I always think I’m going to prep the posts in advance so they run in January, but then life happens. This year it was a trip to India that took prep time in January and then a big chuck out of February!

So here’s the first of my holiday gift items: a Glitz shawl made for my sister!

Pattern: Glitz Shawl by Kelli Slack

Kelli is a designer with exceptional taste who does a lot of patterns for my local yarn store. I am always admiring her designs in store, but I think this might be the first one I’ve knit up! It definitely won’t be my last. This is a really nicely written pattern with clear charts and good written instructions. I might have marked a few more things as repeats because of the algorithmic way I think about patterns (and the way my eyes skip over the written instructions when I’m tired), but a bit of highlighting and the chart kept me on track without much trouble.

I did this one exactly as written, which means it was actually the easiest of the gifts I made this year, since I made the rest of them up (and tried valiantly to keep notes on what I did).

I particularly love the little dangle bead detail on in this design. I may have to use the same idea in other projects I do!

Yarn: Teresa Ruch Tencel 5/2

I am so obsessed with this yarn that the folk at my local yarn store tease me about how I have to oggle the new stock all the time, but the colours are just that great, and the yarn itself blocks like a dream and has this perfect drape and sheen. Especially with crochet, it just ups the elegance of pretty much every project I’ve tried it on, since it’s such a light fingering weight and it practically glows with colour.

I have used it for a few projects now (most recently completed: Cadfael), but this was first time knitting with it. The yarn really helps make the “Glitz” that the shawl’s named for stand out, although I opted to go with a blue rather than the metallic tones it was designed for. The blue makes it a bit more like something you might have in an Elsa from Frozen cosplay, but since my sister and I have spent years cosplaying together, I didn’t think she’d mind. And besides, she looks good in blue. (Okay, she looks good in pretty much anything, even when we intentionally do thrift store finds that we can’t imagine looking good on anyone!)

It’s definitely more of a decorative piece than a warm one, so I imagine it’ll be some months before my sister can make good use of it, but hopefully it’ll be a fun wardrobe addition when the weather warms up! It was certainly a fun thing to make.