The Sweatshirt Sweater By Purl Soho Customized

The Inspiration

Last year, I came across an advertising campaign featuring a stunning knitted sweater in a beautiful shade of green (shown below, Eric Bompard campaign). I was immediately captivated by the contrast between the typically casual style associated with streetwear and the luxurious material, cashmere. It added a real uniqueness to this sweater, making it suitable for both dressier outfits and cozy indoor wear. This inspired me to create my own version of this sweater.

The Material And Pattern Selection

The sweater I had in mind was a raglan-sleeved sweater, with a front pocket to maintain the "casual" aspect of the sweatshirt style, and, of course, a hood with a hem to insert a drawstring. I wanted a luxurious material that would allow me to easily pair it with tailored pants as well as a faux leather skirt. I also wanted the option of wearing it tucked into my pants or skirts, so it required a fine-textured yarn. I decided to use a cashmere yarn that I had purchased online a long time ago and had not used yet (I needed about 1200 meters). The Purl Soho Sweatshirt sweater pattern perfectly met my criteria and had the added advantage of being entirely free. The only thing left was to add the hood.

The Hood Hack

It's a bottom-up knit pattern. So, I followed the instructions until I reached the neckline. Instead of creating a ribbed collar as instructed, I knitted a purl row. Then I knitted as follows:

Cut the yarn, identify the center front, and resume work starting from 4 stitches to the right of the center (place a marker). Cast on 5 stitches (which will later be folded inwards to create the cord hem), knit in stockinette stitch the neckline from the marker, and, when you reach the end, pick up 8 stitches from the purl row and knit them. Cast on 5 stitches to finish. Here, the sides of the hood overlap on 8 stitches to avoid having too wide a neckline.
Knit 5 rows in stockinette back and forth, identify the middle stitch of the hood, and place a marker on each side before the stitch before the marker (the goal is to have a nice band of 3 stitches in the middle of the hood).
Continue back and forth, increasing one stitch before the first marker and after the second marker every 2 rows 7 times (a total of 14 increases over 14 rows). Increase two more times every 6 rows (a total of 18 increases over 26 rows).
Knit 14 rows back and forth.
Decrease 1 stitch every 2 rows 29 times. To make the decreases clean, knit the 2 stitches before together and slip a stitch over the second one knit after the marker. You should have 28 stitches left.
Continue knitting only the 3 center stitches (between the 2 markers) and leave the others on hold. On each row, knit the first stitch with the first stitch on hold to the right and the last stitch with the first stitch on hold to the left.
After 28 rows in total, all the stitches have been recovered, and you can bind off the remaining 3 stitches.
Fold the hems inwards and sew them invisibly to the 11th stitch.
Knit a cord of 6 stitches in length equivalent to the hood's circumference plus 30 cm to leave enough length for a knot on each side.
Pass the cord between the 8th and 9th stitch from the edge, at the level of the 8th and 9th row. I did not create openings for the cords because I wanted to avoid them slipping too much in use.

My takeaways from this experience :

I thoroughly enjoyed knitting this model. Cashmere is a very pleasant material to work with, being both fluid and incredibly soft. However, the yarn I had purchased at a low price several years ago allowed me to work with this material for the first time but proved to be of poor quality and ended up stretching quite a bit over time, despite blocking.
The method I used to create the hood in the pictured model did not take into account a 3-stitch band across the entire hood, and the two final parts were joined by a seam. I modified this in the written instructions here because it resulted in a less attractive finish.
I still wear a lot of sweaters, which have the advantage of being very warm while also lightweight. Even when relaxed, they are always comfortable indoors and feel great against the skin, even around the neck.