Tweed Hoodie

This year I started following one of Russia's knitting gurus - Olga Kondratyeva, who opened my eyes to a number of knitting designs and trends. One of her popular videos is on how to make a classic knitted hoodie - a sweater with raglan long sleeves, a large hood and a front kangaroo pocket.

Back in February, when I decided to knit another of Kondratyeva's designs - a tweed dress, I ordered 400 g of Italian tweed wool mix, but the dress only took 200 g. I had been looking at the bobbin and wondering what to do with it for several months until I finally decided to turn it into a hoodie. In the process I found that the 200 g would not be enough if I wanted the hood as large as I planned it to be (though I'm short I have a long neck and standard hoods usually come short on me, go figure!), so I ordered another 100 g of the tweed yarn (plus a couple of other bobbins :))))  The yarn is Natural Fantasy Condor 4, a wooly tweed with very complex composition - 62% wool, 6 % angora, 10% silk, 4% modal, 18% polyamide.

Pattern: Tweed Hoodie (personal pattern based on Olga Kondratyeva's video tutorials)
Yarn: Natural Fantasy Condor 4, 260 g
Needle: 3 mm (ribbing), 3.25 mm (stockinette stitch)
Time to knit: one month

The hoodie is very warm and comfortable - I wore it yesterday to my Spanish classes and though it was fairly cold in the room I was feeling almost toasting in it. The yarn in the bobbin was fairly uneven and quite coarse but after wet blocking it softened.

I finished the pocket edges, the hood edges and the ribbing with 3-stitch I-cord and I also added some ribbing to the sides of the body for better fitting and to enhance the sports vibe of the sweater. Now, that I'm looking at the pictures and considering the bagging of the elbows, I'm thinking of adding some leather patches to the elbows too. Might be cool if I can pull it off.

And a final note - although I knitted the hoodie for myself, I'm posing in the pictures and I've worn it a couple of times, I decided to gift it to Gaby - I think it is more in her style and she might get better wear out of it.