Sharon Ryan, age 11, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for her question:

What material is used to make cashmere sweaters?

Cashmere is a light weight fabric softer than a purring kitten. There are lots of similar fabrics on the market and some are called cashmere without actually being made entirely of real cashmere. We also have sweaters of man made fabrics that have the softness of cashmere.

Real cashmere is scarce and very expensive. A beautifully woven shawl made en¬tirely of genuine cashmere may cost more than $1,000. It is made from the soft under¬coat of fleece taken from about ten silky cashmere goats. The weaving of this intri¬cate artistic pattern takes a skillful worker a whole year to finish. Obviously a sweater made entirely of real cashmere would be very costly. Most so called cashmere sweaters contain only a small percentage of fleece from the genuine cashmere goat. If you read the label on the garment, you will learn what other materials have been added to the precious cashmere.

The cashmere goat is a sturdy animal who enjoys life on the rugged slopes of Kashmir in northern India. Some of his relatives live in Tibet within sight of the lofty Himalayas. Their coats appear to be made of long, wavy silken hairs. But these are merely topcoats to shed the rain and snow. The long hairs cover undercoats of the softest fleece to keep the animals warm in the blustery climate. Those that live highest on the slopes tend to have coats of deep honey color. Those on the lower slopes wear paler coats and those in the valleys often wear fleecy jackets of snowy white.

In their native homes the cashmere goats are kept for their meat and their rich milk. The long silky hairs of their outer coats may be woven into soft fabrics, but the genuine cashmere fabric is woven from the undercoat of downy fleece. And each goat has only about three ounces of these fine threads to give. This is one reason why real cashmere is hard to come by and very costly. Another reason is the fact that genuine cashmere goats are very choosy about where they live.

It would be nice if we could coax herds of these fleecy fellows to live in North America. Then we. would have our own, home grown cashmere and there would be more of it to go around. People have tried to make them feel at home here, but so far no one has succeeded. However, a few herds of genuine cashmere goats have made themselves at home in parts of France and Germany. Some of the threads in our cashmere fabrics come from these European herds. Other threads in the fabrics may come from the hand¬some angora goat, whose fleecy coat is almost as soft and somewhat more durable than genuine cashmere. Other threads may come from silky angora rabbits or from certain sheep that have extra fine fleece.

Genuine cashmere has always been a rare and expensive fabric    but we live in an age of miracles. Our clever chemists have created many new molecules for man made materials, often as good or even better than those provided by nature. If you cannot afford a genuine cashmere sweater, you can make do with one of man made orlon. This synthetic material can be woven into a warm, light woolly material that will wash more easily and wear longer than real cashmere.