I finished the big orange hoodie!!

Project: Very Orange Hoodie

Pattern: Hooded Guernsey, highly modified

Designer: Debbie Bliss

Available: in Family Knits, among other sources

Yarn: CEY Duchess

Astute readers may recognize this hoodie as one of my “Finish It or Frog It” projects from January.  See the orange bit in the upper left?  Now it’s a sweater, yay!

I bought two bags of unlabelled Duchess from the back wall at Hub Mills — a great yarn shop (yes, I work them and am justifiably biased) that often has great finds along the back wall.  Off-label and discontinued CEY yarns can often be had for a song! And let’s be honest kids — I wouldn’t normally make a kid’s hoodie out of a cashmere blend yarn, right?

Let’s get on to the mods …

First of all, the pattern calls for DK yarn and only goes up to size 4.  I actually made the size 4 for Eli a few years ago, following the pattern more or less exactly.  When he asked for a new sweater, he wanted the same one, only in orange.  Since bright orange can be tricky to find, I bought the bulky-weight Duchess anyway, knowing I’d have to alter the pattern.

I did a bunch of math to figure out how big the finished size 10-ish sweater should be, and how many stitches I’d need with the Duchess (I got 7 sts/2 in), and went to work.  One major change I made was to work the body and sleeves in the round.  I also worked the inside of the kangaroo pocket from picked-up stitches, to avoid sewing later on.  I did use 3-needle bind-off for the shoulders, to give it a bit of structure.  I worked the hood from a “Judy’s magic cast on” center, again to avoid a seam.

To prove that even seasoned knitters can make dorky mistakes, I carefully sewed in the hood …. facing backwards.  Ugh.  Picked it out and sewed it in correctly and was finally done! Eli is pleased, but considers it a bit TOO large — I made a classic mom error and knit with next fall in mind.  But, at least I have a good chance of having it fit him in the next cold season.