Starting From the End

 

Audrey Hepburn, knitting 

Have you ever sat down and imagined that you have achieved your goal before starting out? When I knit, I am actively imagining myself with a wardrobe of sweaters with the flair and simple elegance of an Audrey Hepburn film. After all, she was a knitter, and no one could wear sweaters like Audrey Hepburn.

 

There’s a lot to be said for starting from the end, imagining you have already achieved the outcome you desire. Sales people practice this positive thinking technique all the time. As realtors, we encounter so much rejection when seeking potential clients, that we have to program ourselves to think positively. Interestingly, the lowest rate of suicide is in the sales profession. But imagining a positive outcome is beneficial in any creative endeavor. Visualizing a perfect sweater helps me make better decisions in the planning stages. I didn't used to think about things like this, but then I’ve been taking a different approach to my knitting these days. Before, I was so eager to finish that I hardly took the time to sew my sweaters up properly. Now that I’m starting all over with an empty closet, I have a real motivation to create reasonable-looking garments I can wear in public. So I find myself thinking about the finishing of my sweaters before I begin.

 This elegant cardigan by Kim Hargreaves, Darcy, is next up in my project queue. I’m going to be knitting the cardigan in black, with Karabella’s scrumptious merino yarn, Aurora 4. I know Karabella’s Aurora line well enough to expect that it will produce a high-quality fabric that will last over time.

But just creating fabric isn’t the purpose of my knitting any more. I want a jacket that I can wear to informal meetings with clients. Which brings me to the question of how to finish the cardigan. I’m a little skeptical that a simple seed-stitch triangle is going to produce a stiff collar as opposed to something that will dangle a bit limply around the neck. So I am brainstorming various ways to reinforce the collar before I start.

One option is interfacing. I want to stiffen the collar somehow, and I don’t think it would be too hard to find a lightweight black knit fabric to use as a backing for the collar, and sandwich some fusible or sew-on interfacing in-between.

I am also wondering about the purl-stitch panels that form scallops at the bottom of the sweater. Will they hang evenly? If I lined the entire cardigan from the inside with light-weight black knit fabric, would it help firm the panels on the bottom, giving them a more even and weighted fabric? Or would that create something too bulky for this cardigan? What do my readers think?