Earflap Hats

I drew a name in a Secret Santa gift exchange, and the instructions said to keep the cost down, and that humorous gifts were appreciated.

After last year's gift exchange, I have a fairly good idea what kinds of gifts people gave.  My recipient is outdoors a great deal (and lately, it's been quite cold here  - we do get a bit of winter).  With that in mind, and seeing these hats everywhere I go, I decided to do an earflap hat.

Since I don't know my recipient well enough to know if he'd find a monkey hat, mouse hat, or some other goofy hat funny, I decided to just make a warm fair isle hat.  The darker one is for him - the colors are more muted and masculine than they look in the picture. 

These don't look like they'd fit well, but they do.  I should get a wig stand or something just for photographing hats!

I spent quite a bit of time making the pattern, made a dark-colored one, then tweaked the pattern a little more and made another from some interesting space-dyed yarn I had, using a space-dyed beige/gray as the secondary color and a space-dyed blue/green as the main color.

These are just Stitch World fair isle patterns, #75 and #80 from SW#3.  Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever made anything with these two charts before!  The yarn is a fingering weight, about a 2/12, and they're wool.  The pattern is good but not finished - I have a couple of things I want to change still.