Thanks to Theresa for more good questions! I do have a knitting font, one that I've been tinkering with for some time. Ages back, I purchased a knitting symbol font from XRX., Inc. (the folks who publish Knitter's Magazine). You can find them at The Knitting Universe. I don't know if the font is still available. I wasn't entirely happy with the font the way it was presented, as it had little boxes drawn around each symbol. I feel I have much more control with just the symbols themselves, inserted in the cells of an Excel worksheet (btw, I have my Excel row height set at 0.14" and my column width set at 0.15").
I have a program called Macromedia Fontographer (macintosh version), that I can use to tinker with fonts. I've done that, and come up with a font that has most of the symbols I need. I've cobbled it together from various symbol fonts, and it's still a work-in-progress. But it definitely is most helpful for lace charting.
Regarding my "shawlette-in-progress," I'm hoping to know the answers to Theresa's questions fairly soon. I've started on the lower border sections of the shawl, which include a 24-row section and a 20-row section. I'm at about row 20 of the first border section. At this point a pattern row and its return row (all purl except for the seed stitch borders) is taking about 45-50 minutes. So progress isn't speedy, but it's coming along!
And yes, Theresa, your question makes perfect sense, and is the very one I'm anxiously awaiting being able to answer for myself. I think the shawl may ripple around the shoulders, and it may not. With it on the needle, I can't quite tell yet. I was planning to put it on a thread and go ahead and block it, and then I got impatient and decided to just plunge ahead and see how it comes out!
Thanks to everyone who has said such nice things about the project. I don't really know if I'll manage to get the pattern ready for sale. I have a sock pattern I've been trying to write up for months now, and I'm not really sure pattern writing is my thing. But we'll see.
Listening to: When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin.
Oh please cobble the pattern for sale, it is SO BEAUTIFUL!!!
Thanks for answering my questions...or at least the ones you can to date! :o) I'm waiting "patiently" and if your theory works out on this, I too would love to buy this pattern if you offer it as it is really stunning.