For the basic sweater I used another sweater to get the pattern. For the hood I looked at the normal pattern for hoods and then modified it. That part was mostly trial and error... I used up quite a lot of old bed linen...
How's it going with your sweater? If you're not finished yet - over Christmas I'll be at my parents, where I should still have the paper pattern lying around somewhere. I could take a picture of it - tell you where you'd have too tweak it a bit to get a better result. And I could take a picture of mine, to show you what the finished sweater will probably look like.
I actually have not had time to start it, with finals coming up and biting me in the rear. It'd be a great help if you could take a pictures! I always seem to get a better result when I have something to go off.