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> "a lovely old little green rectangular French silver whittling knife"

As a native speaker, but without any editorial training, this feels slightly off to me. My first edit would be something like "a lovely little old", because "lovely little" feels like it should go together. Whether that's due to alliteration or "little old lady" being a not uncommon phrase, I couldn't say for sure.

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I'm with you on that one. I'd say, for example, "We went to a lovely little park", rather than "a little lovely park." The second sounds wrong for some reason.

"lovely" is an opinion, so it fits the rule to put it in front, right?

Not a native speaker, but "a little lovely" kinda sounds like an opposite to "much lovely".

That is, my parsing of "a little lovely park" is ambiguous between "a little (lovely park)" and "a (little lovely) park". With "a lovely little park" there is no ambiguity.

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