I'm 95% done designing the next prayer shawl, which will be more of a cape, actually, due to not much in the way of lacey holes and lots of cables. It probably won't be for beginning knitters, except maybe for the fearless ones. It will be dedicated to Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices in the Wilderness and also co-coordinator for Voices for Creative NonViolence. More about her when the pattern comes out.
Picture this: the cables will start as a single strand, which grows almost like a vine and spirals, ever enlarging as it reaches the edge until it is a whirlpool. I was thinking of tornadoes, maelstroms and spirals as I designed this, but now I feel it is quite beautiful. There will be elongated diamonds separating each cable panel (the only lace element), and an edge that would be easy to add buttonholes to if one wanted to fasten it around themselves.
Sometimes lace just isn't warm enough for some people. This should WARM them! My lace shawls fall off my shoulders a lot. This should stay on. I looked for cabled shawls and didn't see many at all and nothing like this one. How did it happen? I woke up at 1:00 in the morning with my brain just going. I contemplated God, chaos theory, activists, and the meaning of life, then this shawl popped into my head as a picture. Then I had to figure out how to make the yarn do what the picture required. Like so many other lace patterns, it just flew off the needles almost as if it had been already designed and I just had to remember how it was done.