Purling and Percolating

The final Christmas gift hat, and my absolute favorite is this one. A few years ago, we were visiting family and my son showed his cousin the game Plants vs Zombies.  My nephew was probably 4 at the time.  Since then, he has become obsessed with the game, playing it, asking for themed birthday parties, building lego pea shooters to place in his yard to protect his house, and the whole bit.  It was very easy to pick his hat! I spent hours searching ravelry and the rest of the interwebs for a pattern for a hat that was to my liking. After a lot of looking and finding only a few patterns, none that were quite right, I set about making my own. Again, this is a hat with the base hat from Knit Guru's Minion Ear Flap Hat First Generation: This was it when it was completed.  I was in love with it.  It is a little flawed in that because it has three leaves, it should also have angry eyebrows.  (One leaf means no eyebrows) A few weeks after Christmas, my sis...

After finishing up the first two hats, I was really on a roll.  And the ear flap hat base from Knit Guru's Minion Ear Flap Hat was my inspiration.  The hats pictured were both using that pattern, with different pieces sewn on.  However, I have since updated how I do my ear flap hat, making a nice edge, changing a few dimensions and clearing up some areas that I found a bit confusing. The final hat I made for the nephews was based off of Blaze and the Monster Machine.  I have never seen this guy and it took some serious time and planning and tons of tossed out parts and pieces to put together.  However, I don't think it looks terrible.  It might not look exactly right, but a toddler won't know much difference, right?  Nevermind the grumpy model in this photo. My Kids have been my hat models and don't always appreciate having to do this. I didn't write down how I did this.  But again, this was the basic ear flap hat, with a combination o...

I should probably give thanks to my nephew and his love of Where's Waldo, because that was a huge inspiration for me.  I have gotten back into knitting big time recently, and I really wanted to make something fun for him for Christmas.  I decided to make him a hat like Waldo's.  It's a basic beanie with a basic pom-pom on top. (I've learned to do much better ones.. this one needs a serious haircut!) I then used some crochet glasses and stitched them to the hat.  I decided I could see the glasses becoming an issue if they went down over his eyes.  Maybe I'll update the hat and send him a new one with better glasses.  Unfortunately for my first nephew, he's also gotten one of my first original creations, and I've learned a lot in the last month as my fingers have been knitting like crazy. Another nephew of mine is in love with minions, so I made him a minion hat using a free pattern I found, from the Knit Guru .  It turned out fabulous!  I made...