Leading with the info that might be most helpful:

I love this pattern. BUT. It didn’t work for the intended giftee, who is 6’1” with wide shoulders. It had the problem I think a lot of triangular shawls share, which is that the length is too long for the width, at least if you want to wear it “cowboy style.” Obviously the additional angles partly mitigated this problem, but it didn’t help enough. If I’d made it wider to really get around his shoulders, it would have been too long. The guy does not want his scarf hanging to his waist (I mean, I assume :-) ).

My advice, to myself for next time and to others, is to make sure to keep those outside garter stitches very, very, veryvery loose. And I am seriously turning this into a quest to find the perfect way to customize the length-to-width ratio on scarfy shawls like this.

But really (now back to the loving it), it’s just beautiful. I mean, look at it! The Malabrigo, as always, is soft and gorgeous, and I just could not be happier with the colorway: it’s very subtle and goes with everything, but is incredibly rich, too.

My sisters and I agreed we wouldn’t give each other Christmas presents this year since everyone’s hurting for money, so there was a happy ending: I gave it to my 5’8” sister -- and it looks great on her -- and I could justify it by saying that I didn’t actually get her something, but I had this great shawl I didn’t know what to do with.