[AlderRose]

I start thinking, "THIS is my favorite shawl shape!" then see one shaped differently, and have to amend my thinking! I've made triangular, a modified triangular, rectangular, half circle, elongated octagon, crescent, and square. I've yet to try a circular pattern but am keeping my eye out for the perfect design.

I knit with all colors, tonals and even variegated yarns because I give most of my shawls away. That way I always can rationalize casting on another one. I love making them, but there's no way I could wear that many shawls.

My favorite designer is Dee O'Keefe. I have books by Sharon Miller, Elizabeth Lovick, Elizabeth Zimmerman, Nancy Bush, Susanna E. Lewis, Sirri Reimann & Aime Edasi, and Galina Khmeleva & Carol R. Noble. I like playing with the designs... making them mine.

My favorite commercial yarns are those with a wool/silk blend. I love the way my hand spun, sheep to shawl, yarns knit up and block. I like alpaca and llama fleece but prefer that it be blended with wool or maybe silk.

 

[AlderRose]

Borders. I like knitted borders where you pick up on one side for the body and have searched in vain for a book of lace borders! Anyone know of any? I love LilyAnna by Dee O'Keefe.

I like the knitted on borders, too. Sharon Miller and Elizabeth Lovick both have lace knitting books with those kinds of borders in them. Once you grasp the idea, you can mix and match and come up with borders of your own. Then you have to do the math and figure out how your design will fit onto the garment. That's where I get lost!!! The MATH!

Lilyanna's border was extraordinary, but I like the other knitted on borders that Dee O'Keefe has used, too.

Dragonflylace,
I could sit and look at Nancy Bush's book on Estonian lace for hours. One of these days I'm going to get brave and knit a shawl with nupps in it.

 

[AlderRose]

My very favourite circular is this one from Golden Hands in the 1970's. You pick up the stitches along the border, in six segments and knit into the centre.

That border is something else!!! Totally gorgeous!

 

[AlderRose]

I know one I don't like - the triangle that is big enough to wrap nicely, which makes the point half way to the floor (I am short). I like to be able to sit without having to pull my shawl up, so I don't want mine too deep.

Have you tried the modified triangle like this one? This is Dee O'Keefe's "Mayapple." She's done others, too.

 

[AlderRose]

Can anyone put up links to these designers, please

I know Dee O'Keefe's designs can be found on Ravelry and maybe Craftsy. You might check those two sites for the other designers, too.

At the risk of sounding extremely naive, please clue me in on "Golden Hands."

 

[AlderRose]

I need to add that the magazines were intended to start you at the very first steps of each craft, and every project posted in following weeks was designed to elevate you skill level so that after some time, you actually were pretty much of an expert. I have the magazines from the first one - so if I want to learn to tat, for instance. I just go to the early volumes when they introduced tatting, and start at "how to hold the shuttle".

Thank you for the information on Golden Hands. It sounds like a really good magazine. I remember a little magazine called the "Work Basket" that had all kinds of crafts in it. It seems that my Grandmother got it. I somehow ended up with one or two of them, but it doesn't seem as thorough as your Golden Hands.

 

[AlderRose]

Many of us are old enough to remember when cashmere was truly a luxury item, so expensive that only the wealthiest could afford a small scarf. Suddenly in the past 15 or so years it's everywhere at very affordable prices. Curious, I wanted to know why. So I googled it. What I discovered was disturbing. Cashmere is the soft under fleece produced during the extreme cold winters in China and Mongolia. It is harvested by hand. So far, so good, okay? Now enters the need to increase supply to meet demand. In this endeavor, herds have to be increased, leading to over breeding, and decreasing the overall quality of the product. If the problem ended there, we might say "so what?". However, the impact of increasing the herds is having devastating effects on the environment. When sheep graze, their tendency is to eat the plants right down to the root, leaving nothing for regrowth. We aren't talking about a couple hundred animals destroying a few acres....the herds are huge. Their simple need for food is literally creating deserts where there used to be grasslands. The long term effects impact the entire planet. In addition, the animals themselves are suffering from lack of adequate nutrition. That's it in a nutshell. If you want to know more, you can Google like I did. There are a number of informative articles.

I was going to ask the same question, since I have a few pygora goats that produce a luxurious undercoat over the winter. But I understand the overgrazing thing. When one of my sheep or goats is employed as a lawn mower in the yard, it heads straight for the dandelions. After eating the blooms, they gnaw the thing down to ground level. I only wish the dandelions would not return. LOL! Our small heard has cleared all of the blackberries and almost all of the thimble berries and salmon berries off the 7 acres of pasture that we have. They like the wild huckleberries: blue and red, and sallall, too. They also like to bark fruit trees and eat fir sprouts. It would be very easy to allow our property to be eaten to the ground.