Since mass retailers offer nothing but some zoomorphic hats on every corner, and I am definitely not interested in wearing a cat/dog/owl/monkey/etc on my head, I had to take matters into my own hands! A few days later I am proud to announce that I will not be joining the local zoo Minneapolis has become, but will be rocking this amazing dark brown crochet hat:

And of course I am not going to leave you hanging! You can make a hat like this as well! I will actually gladly post your DIYs on my blog here and my FB page as well! Or tweet them, whichever one you prefer!

Let’s talk materials first! I used the brown yarn I bought from Salvation Army about a year ago. I tend to buy a lot of yarn, and never using it, or starting a project and never finishing it. This was the case with this yarn. So the old project went buh-bye and the new one is here! I am pretty sure this yarn is mostly acrylic, there might be some wool in it, but since I bought it without a tag, I can’t really tell you. When it comes to the hook, I used a Boye 3.5 mm

I found the original pattern here so if you read Russian you can simply follow the instructions given, if not, below is my attempt at translating/describing a crochet pattern!

You are going to start by following scheme 85, start with 4 chain, slip stitch the chain to form a circle. ROW 1: Chain 3, 9 double crochet into the circle. ROW 2: Chain 3, 1 double crochet into the chain of the previous row, then 2 double crochet into every single crochet of row 1. ROW 3: chain 3, double crochet into the chain of the previous row, 1 double crochet, 2 double crochet into the double crochet of the previous row, keep going around the circle.

Now you are going to add leaves! That’s the fun part. To make the leaves follow scheme 85 a. The leaves are added over every 2 rows, it looks like they are added every other row, but you have to crochet the row first, so the illusion is every other, when it’s actually every 3rd! Every leaf is crocheted around a double crochet of the previous row. A leaf consists of a single crochet, a double crochet, a treble crochet and a double treble crochet! Once you are done with one leaf, skip 4 double crochets of the previous row, attach the leaf at the bottom of a double crochet of the previous row, pull out a loop, and continue on with the leaves!

Now to make sure your hat fits, keep adding a double crochet every 3rd double crochet of a row, then you can do every 4th, every 5th and so on – the goal is to make your hat fit well, without it looking too weird!

I really hope the description made sense, let’s talk about finishing off! I simply crocheted a row of double crochet and then crochet over with a row of single crochet. If you want to, you can finish off with the row that has leaves! I know everyones head is different, but I think this pattern is pretty universal! So good luck and share your pictures of the hat with me here in the comments, or on Twitter!

Happy Crocheting,

Zhenya