A few weeks before a friend of mine was due to have her baby on 4th of July weekend, I decided to knit her two little hats. She had shared pictures of baby hats with oversized animal ears on Facebook and I felt I could grant her wish. I quickly searched ravelry for patterns to make a mouse and a bunny hat and found this and this. I purchased superwash wool in the appropriate colors and began what I thought to be a simple little project.
I just finished yesterday, 3 months later. What the heck took me so long??
Making the hats was the easy part. They are small and quickly flew off my size 9 needles. I used the picoted cast on for one, which was fun, but decided to mix it up and add a seed stitch border to the white hat. Both came out nice.
My big hang up really, was on the ears. The pattern for the rabbit ears was clear and concise, telling me exactly what to do, but (typical) I refused to listen! I experiemented with bigger ears, more tapered ears, tried different ways of seeming the ears. I think I made 6 rabbit ears total... and I am pretty darn sure that rabbits only have 2!
In the end, I ended up making the rabbit ears exactly as the pattern describes. The same size, shape, and method. No imporvisations neccessary. duh. How can 376 ravelers be wrong? Its funny how that happens.
The mouse ears were less complicated. I let the pattern (free, here) do all the work.
In the end they are a little lopsided, one rabbit ear is (somehow) bigger than the other, and some of the pink yarn shows through the white... but who cares? I had to let my perfectionism go on this one. It's going to be worn by a baby, who is going to steal the attention away from my knitting for sure. No one is going to say 'that seam is off', or 'that mouse ear is slightly more round'. No, they are going to be speechless when they see the adorable baby Matilda wearing my hats.
