Shawls, shawls, shawls

So this is Christmas. Or rather, so christmas is over. It was an especially great one. My grandmother sadly hasn't been all that well during the last weeks, but she started to feel better again with the whole family around. Christmas eve tends to be quite hectic with between 15 and 20 people around, we argue, people race to dinner, race to open their presents and all in all it is usually less harmonic than I hope it to be.
This year was different though. We had raclette, which means less running to the kitchen and people being forced to take some time to eat. And only afterwards we gave each other our presents. Every present was highly appreciated and we had a lot of fun. I gave my mom a whole box of comfort-stuff, like very snugly socks, sweat pants and an extremely soft sweater, plus a book for self-helping you to sleep better. She has been a bad sleeper for such a long time and I know that you can get better at it. I hope she will take care of herself better and I wanted to tell her with giving her all that cuddly stuff. We all had a good laugh when she immediately changed into the new clothes.
The next day we went to my inlaws, also having an extremely relaxed evening. I can say it was one of the loveliest christmas I ever had. Presents include a small Lisek made of felt, a monthly chocolate delivery, bath oil and a spa day. It is going to be great!

I really liked the way the shawl for my friend turned out

It was a light, cottonly yarn, very soft

During the last three weeks I had some time to knit presents. As I loved to knit the cable shawl, I did some more of those. One of them, a pink one, was supposed to be a present, but I made so many mistakes knitting it, that I didn't dare giving it away.

The cables come out nicely with the thick yarn

The next one was a present for my mom. She likes colours I would never wear, bright colours like apple green or orange. So I ordered some of the finest merino wool in orange / yellow. I like the result, it is soft and warm, but you can see I haven't washed it yet, it is less stretchy than the pink one.

soft and warm merino - not my colour, but my mom likes it

Right now I am using some really nice Alpaka Silk to knit a shawl for myself. As it is very thin yawn it takes a lot of time. After wearing my knit cardigan Palma for christmas I feel motivated to knit another one for myself. I ordered some very fine yarn in silvergrey and will knit the following one. It's special to me as my mom gave me the book it is in as a present some years ago and so far I haven't knit anything of the patterns.

My next project