Master Yoda

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." ―Yoda, to Luke Skywalker^[src]

This project came as a request/commission from a friend for her husband's birthday this year. He is a big Star Wars fan... heck, they had Darth Vader at their wedding. Yeah. 

We started off, like I do, cruising Etsy for a crochet pattern for a Star Wars character and quickly decided that Yoda was the most recognizable and the cutest in crochet. I decided to go with the pattern from Inner Child Crochet for My Friend Yoda. I chose that one because most were creating a pretty small Yoda (like 5 inches tall) and I wanted mine to be a bit larger like something you could actually play with. When he was all done, he is about 8.5 inches tall, and perfect for hugs.

The pattern was fast and simple and came with came with the full body, belt, hooded coat and a light-saber. I already had every color I needed, including a very excellent green for his skin that I found in the bottom of my bin. I had only part skeins of each color but that turned out to be more than enough. (I might make a second one for me :P)

The only changes I made were minimal. Instead of the simple black eyes they used, I used a pair of 12mm black safety eyes and affixed them before stuffing the head. Once stuffed, I first used a bit of the same green yarn to embroider a large bump with two smaller bumps to the side for a nose. Then, I used a darker green to embroidered his wrinkled brow, outline the nose and give him a grin. 

Aside from that I decided to leave off the light-saber and instead give him his cane. I did this for two reasons: The cane is his original prop from the films and I felt like it was from his time as a wise teacher, and this Yoda is a gift to a teacher... more meaningful I feel.

Since the cane was not part of the pattern, I will share what I did to make it.

Cane:

In dark brown like belt. 

Magic Circle with 5 sc.

Sc around until reach the height you like (about 15 rounds)

Then do 2 sc in each, 10 sc.

One more row of sc around. 10 sc. 

Bind off and leave a long tail. At this point I inserted a folded pipe-cleaner into the center so that if you like it can be a crooked cane, but also to keep it from curling or being floppy. Once you have your core in, fold the top in half and sew it up to make the handle. I then put it up to his actual hand and took the tail over, secured it and went back over again to make a little strap so that it can actually stay on his hand or be removed. It can also be tucked under the sleeve to give the illusion he is holding it. :)

Really, really freaking cute. I kept laughing while making it and that is always an excellent sign.
Total time to completion: 12 hours. 

Blathers the Owl

I mentioned that I was going to start work on a Blathers crochet toy back in this post from June of 2013. I posted this picture on Instagram in August of 2013. Needless to say, this has been my most ambitious crochet project ever. Period. I tried to keep this as on model as possible from his look in AC:New Leaf.

Plans and more plans.

Colors: Dark brown for body, wings, tail and eyebrows. White for eyes, wing stripe, chest plate and toenails. Light brown for face plate, inside argyle, nostrils and inside mouth. Medium brown for argyle outline, eye outline, leg bands and eyebrow dots. Dusty pink for cheeks. Bright yellow for feet and beak. Green for bow tie.

The owl in question.

I started out with the chest. I knew I wanted to make the argyle pattern on his chest in granny squares as I was working up a lot of them at that time. So I made the smallest granny square and outlined it in the proper colors of his argyle. I then also made small triangles to complete the edge pattern. I then used the tails to tie the squares and triangles into the shape of the argyle on his chest. I then had to make the white belly for under the argyle pattern. I then sewed the argyle onto the white chest plate.

Next was the green bow tie. A simple enough thing after that chest... make a rectangle of sc and use a bit of green to cinch the center. Voila, bow tie.

With that detail finished I could then approximate and create the body to go under the chest plate. The body was done in a circular fashion from the base up. Increasing as I went along to make it tall enough to accommodate the white chest piece. It also had to be wide enough since the chest piece does not wrap around the sides at all.

Sewing chest plate to body with the aid of stitch markers to hold it in place.

Once that was complete I made feet in what I hoped was a good proportion to the body.
The feet are done in yellow and were a single leg piece with a foot "bulb" at the bottom, onto which I sewed the toes which have white toenails. The legs then got brown lines embroidered onto them and were stuffed.

After the body and feet were done, I moved on to figuring out the wings. I spent at least a month on them since I kept changing the shape. I wanted them to have a bit of a swing to them rather than just be straight down to the side. So they took about three start overs to get right. Once I had one done, I had to then make 3 more since I wanted them to be a bit thick since the body was already so large and a single layer would be too tiny. One of the trickiest parts was getting those three end feather bumps just right. Three rows were dedicated to that shape, one in brown for the base of the feathers, one in white to get the stripe, and one more in brown again to finish it off. So I made 4 wings and put two together, with single crochets around the edge, for each wing to get a nice heft. I did not stuff them as I did not think it needed it.

Wing v2, this was not used but it is close. Final design had an angle to the top right side like the bottom.

After the wings... I was burnt out. This was around September of 2013. So much time and frustration had gone into it, and it was already so much larger than I had thought it might be. I put all the colors and hooks into a bag and set it aside. You can see from my posting history that I made a lot of smaller things in the mean time. Blathers sat, headless, in the shed.

It was only recently, in February of 2014, that I ran out of projects to work on. I also was out in my shed more since I like to work out there when the weather is nice. I kept seeing that bag of parts. I had a small disk that I had started that was supposed to be the head. I picked it back up from there.

This time I was a little smarter though. All those other projects helped cement in my mind how increases and decreases should be done. I also had new tricks for invisible bind offs and color changes.

So the head I only had to restart once. I got all the way through it and stuffed it only to decide it was too small for the body. Blather's head in the reference image is just as tall as his whole body and wider too. However, I did not have to start from scratch, since as I went along writing the pattern, I left stitch markers in place at certain rows. So I only had to rip out half of the head, start widening more than I had before and keep going.

I stuffed the body and head and attached them together at the neck. I wrote the head from the top down, and the body from the bottom up so that both openings at the neck had the same number of stitches so that I could simply line them up and sew them together. Once the head was on and the body complete, I sewed the legs and wings into place.

This pic does not really do justice to how large he is.

At this point he was faceless, and I was faced with another daunting set of details to work on.

So I procrastinated and made his tail. Since the wings were in place and the feet as well I could make a chain and lay it on to the backside to see how wide the tail should be. Since you can't really tell how it looks I kind of made one up that I liked and was similar to the wings and in the same way, made two tails and single crocheted them together and sewed it on the back so it peeks between the legs a tiny bit. He cannot stand, of course, but I held it up in the same position as the reference image to make sure.

A tail.

Stalling over, it was face time.
I started with the eyes. They were a simple enough shape. White circle with a row of medium brown on the edges. Black pupils that started as circles and with an extra row to make them oval.  Sew the pupils into place on the eyes and set aside.

Next I did the cheeks. In dusty pink I did a the same circle shape from the eyes without the edger row, since they look a tiny bit smaller than the eyes in the reference image.

Next was the beak and mouth. The easy way would have been to have a closed beak and make a cone shape in yellow, stuff it and then embroider a line for the mouth. But no, that was too easy to do. Instead I made an inside mouth circle about the same size as the eyes with a bright yellow center and light brown edging like the inside looks. Then I made a bottom beak piece in bright yellow and sewed it along the bottom edge of the mouth. Next I made a top beak and sewed the top half of the inside mouth up underneath and inside the top beak. So the top beak overhangs the inside mouth. That made the mouth into a shape kind of like a hand puppet (like muppet mouths). I also added one row of sc to the edge of the beak to make it smoother once it was all sewed together. I embroidered the nostrils on the outside and stuffed all the ends inside the top beak.

All along this process I kept laying out the pieces onto the blank head to make sure they fit and were to a good size. I used quite a few large stitch markers to hold them on the face in the approximate positions to see how it looked all together.

Next was what I am calling the eyebrow ridge. In the image you would think I could just do two long rectangles for the eyebrows, but I needed to also make a triangle center piece since the light brown under the whole face would be easiest to make as one giant oval. So I would need a piece to cover up the light brown face plate between the eyebrows.

I started a triangle shape from a chain that I had laid between the eyes as I had them pinned on the face. I then widened it to continue slightly laying over the curved eyes, since in the image the top of the eyes outside line goes under the brows. Once it was wide enough and tall enough, I branched off one side to make one eyebrow, complete with last row to get the three tiny feathers and then went back to the base and crocheted the second brow to match. I finished the outside edges with a row of single crochet as well. Then I had to make the dots for on the brows. I used the same outline color from the chest and did 10 small circles. I used their tails to sew and tie them down to the brows.

Once I was happy with all the bits and had them in approximate place on the face, I could create the light brown face plate to go under it all. For this step I used a piece of paper and cut out a shape that I laid over all the bits on the face. This way I could have a template to work from that I knew would fit the area. With the paper template I simply chained and increased and decreased to match my paper shape, with the exception that at the top I added some center decreases to get it to fit the curved face better. Of course, all that work is underneath the beak and eyebrow piece, so you can't see it anyway, but it makes it all fit and sew down nicer.

Face details sewn down to face plate.

Once the face plate was done, I needed to sew down all the face bits onto the face plate in the right spots. I added a little stuffing into the beak cavities and centered that down first leaving the top beak unsewn and open. Then the eyes were next. Then the cheeks since they sit over the top of the bottom of the eyes and fall outside the edge of the face plate as well. Then I tacked down the eyebrow ridge. This is why I had to leave the top of the beak open since it goes under the beak but over the eyes.

Once all the pieces are down on the face plate I took that whole thing and aligned it onto the head right. Then I used corresponding yarns to sew it onto the head. The eyebrows only got half sewed down so that the top bits came up and off like in the image.

Done.
Time to completion: ???? 100+ hours maybe. If you tried to make a new one from the pattern** I have written, maybe 50 hours? No idea.
Difficulty: Painful. Frustrating. Meticulous.
Completed Height: (Feet to Head) 18 inches
Completed Width: 11 inches

**You might have noticed I have not supplied the actual pattern for this guy. If you would like to make one of your own, email me. I will share the pattern for a nominal fee, as I put so much time into him.

With me. So you can see how large he is...

A Lowly Worm

Guess it will be baby birthday time again... I've attended several one year old parties in the past few months and have yet another baby shower on Friday.

It is another "guess the sex" party and I guess they are waiting find out what it will be. As someone who needs a plan for everything, not knowing seems so stressful to me. It also makes getting gifts really hard as nearly all baby clothes are color coded pink and blue for the gender binary. So once again I was in the store looking at the toys and thinking, why am I buying a toy when I can make perfectly good ones...

Then I starting looking at children's books and thinking about what I liked and remembered. Suddenly Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm was in my head, shortly followed by the thought that he would be super easy to crochet and away I went. I bought The Adventures of Lowly Worm to go along with the toy to round out the gift.

Note: As I do not want to get in trouble, please do not use this pattern for creation of toys for profit or sale. Make Lowly for friends, family and as gifts only.

Lowly Worm from the Busytown books by Richard Scarry

Once again I feel this would be a great yarn consumption project, I already had every color I would need: Black for details, white for the eyes, collar and shoe bottoms, brown for skin, blue for the shirt, dark green for the pants, and red for the bow ties and shoes. I also decided I would make his hat and figured I could use the same dark green from the pants and pulled a mustard yellow for the hat trim. Hook size I used is 4.25mm and I tried to stuff as I went along. Also, this is not strictly amigurumi since I am going to make the rows flat with a chain at the beginning of each row so the clothes line up right.

I decided to start at the foot and work my way up. Instead of amigurumi rounds, most of this is in rows so that the colors line up at the seams. Unless it says otherwise assume that to finish a row, you slip stitch to the first single crochet and chain one.

Shoe and Ankle
Using white
chain 9, turn and do 8 sc down the chain, 3 in starter chain to make a turn around and 8 back up the other side of the foundation chain to make flat oval shape,
2sc in next sc, 6sc, 2sc in next 3 sc (toes end of shoe), 8sc,
Switch to red yarn and attach at heel end where you stopped with the white.
1sc around in back loops only, slip stitch to first, chain 1
1sc around in both loops, slip stitch to first, chain 1,
1sc around in both loops, slip stitch to first, chain 1,

1sc around in both loops, slip stitch to first, chain 1,

bind off and then attach red yard at tip of the toe and sew top of the last row of stitches together from the toe to about a little more than half way up the shoe, make sure the top of the shoe after sewing is flat. I stuffed the shoe and then embroidered some black laces on the top of the shoe that can actually be tied :) The shoe itself is a little bit of a high top, so attach red at the place the sewing stops and add another row of single crochet around the ankle area. Try to make 12 stitches, I did it by adding one extra at the back seam of the shoe. I bound the shoe off since I wanted the leg seam at the back.

Pants

Switch to dark green

Attach at back of shoe, sc in back loops only around 12 sc, slip stitch to first, chain 1.

Do 17 rows of green, sc around in both loops again, 12 sts per row.

Shirt
Switch to blue
Change colors and do the first row of 12 sc around in the back loops only, always slip stitch to first and chain 1 to next row.
Do 15 more rows, sc around in both loops, 12 sts total per row.

Collar
Switch to white,
Change colors and do three rows sc around in both loops., 12 sts

Lowly's Bow Tie, In red
After I finished the three collar rows I took out my hook and made up the bow tie so that I could sew it into place before moving on. I find it is easier to attach things while I can tie it all inside and hide the ends in the stuffing.
Chain 5, sc across, chain 1 and turn.
Do 8 rows. Bind off. Wrap red yarn around center of rectangle to create the gathering for the bow tie. Tie the wrapped bit off and use it to sew onto the front of his collar.

Lowly's neck and head
Switch to brown and put hook back into open working loop.
Change colors and do first row of 12 sc around in back loops only
Do 5 more rows of brown 12 sc around
sc, inc,* 18
2 sc, inc,* 24
10sc, 4inc, 10sc, 28
12sc, 4inc, 12 sc, 32
sc around, 32
14sc, 4inc, 14sc, 36
Next 4 Rows: sc around, 36
sc4, dec,* 30
sc3, dec,* 24
sc2, dec,* 18 - stuff most of head here and try to stuff the rest as you close
sc1, dec,* 12
dec around till closed, bind off

Eyes Backs, make 2 in white
magic circle 6,
increase around to 12
sc, inc*, 18
Do a slip stitch into the next stitch and bind off
Then sew to head, on either side, once pupils are affixed.

Eye pupils, make 2 in black
magic circle 8, slip stitch to first sc
bind off and sew on to white backs.

Don't forget to also embroider a smile on the face, in black.

Lowly's Hat
In dark green
Magic circle 6,
increase to 12,
sc, inc, 18
sc 2, inc, 24
in back loops only, sc 24 around- at this point I did a slip stitch to the close the rounds, to go to rows, so the hat is even all around since amigurumi has uneven rows.
in both loops do 2 more rows of 24sc around.
sc, dec*, 18
sc around 18,
sc 2, inc,* 24
sc 3, inc,* 32
sc 4, inc,* 36
sc 5, inc,* 40
Now going to make the brim:
ch3, all in front loops only, tc in next 8 in front, dc in next 4, hdc in next 2, sc in next 3, hdc, dc, 2dc in one, 2dc in one, dc, hdc, sc in next 3, hdc in next 2, dc in next 4, 8tc. Should have two empty stitches left before the end of the row. Leave them empty and use the tail to sew up the brim back seam to get it to stand up. Using the front loops means there should be a clean row of loops to help it bend back up.

Hat Band and Tassel
Chain 28, slip stitch to first to form a loop. Chain 1 and sc around. Slip stitch to first and bind off leaving tail to sew down to hat.  Before you sew the band on, cut and tie a few lengths of yarn to one side and knot into place. Then fray yarn out to get the feather/tassel. Then use the tail from the band to stitch into place on the hat.

Place hat onto head, if this is for a responsible child...
For younger kids, maybe leave a long tail on the magic circle and sew onto crown of head to keep the hat with the toy but still allow it to be taken on and off. In this case, sad as it made me, I stuffed and sewed the hat on to the head so it cannot be removed.

Done! Time to completion, 5-6 hours. Skill level is easyish. Difficult bits are all the details and sewing as usual for me. Lowly is 17 inches tall from the sole of his shoe to the top of his hat.

Other thoughts: Might put a rattle toy or bell inside the stuffing of the head if looking to make it amusing to babies. Or consider making Lowly longer and tying him into a loose knot like he does in the books. Or maybe find an articulated spine, braided pipe cleaners, or use one of those wooden toy snakes that move, inside the body, instead of so much stuffing to get it to wiggle and be a bit sturdier.

Large Pineapple Doily

So, I have this really nice table I was given by my grandmother. It is hardwood of some kind. About 32 inches round, pedestal base with three legs at the bottom. The top also has a mechanism so that it can turn around like a giant lazy susan. I personally dislike it for the few facts that it does not go with my decor, by being much nicer than everything else, and that it takes up a fair amount of space. In my last move it got a bit scuffed on top from the lousy movers I hired.

In an effort to be able to use it and put stuff on it without feeling guilty, or damage it further, I decided to use my skills to make a doily for the top of it. Perhaps then I could at least use it to hold some books or something.

I looked around the internet for some free patterns. Most are of a style that date themselves to the 1940s when they were written and popular, however the "pineapple" shapes of a few were modern enough looking that I thought they would do nicely. I settled on this pattern: Large Pineapple Doily. It's repeating pattern looked intricate but not necessarily too complicated for a first time doily.

I had a large ball of white cotton thread. I think it was something like this. I also have a ton of hooks including very small ones. So I think my thread is a 10 weight and my smallest hook is a 2.25mm B/1. I figured that would do fine. The pattern, on the other hand, says to use a 30 weight (much thinner, go figure...) and a 12 stainless steel hook. I had to look it up and learned that stainless steel hooks have different classifications than the aluminum ones I have. A 12 is supposed to be 1.00mm.

Basically this means both my hook and my thread are too large. That means that my doily will probably be much larger than the 18 inches that the pattern says it should be when done. This is ok since, like I said, my table is 32 inches. I also decided to keep going since doing it in a larger size means that I can see what I am doing for this first time making a doily, which I understand can be very difficult to do right.

After only three rounds my doily was already almost 4 inches across and there are 34 rounds... I started to think maybe I should get smaller thread like recommended. However, since I am lazy and had already gotten several rounds into the pattern I decided I would keep going till it was the size I needed and then stop.

About half way though first pineapple shapes

Two things happened as I worked. I began to realize that since I only had that one skein of the white thread, that I should try to use it all up. I also realized that I would not be finishing the full pattern. I got up to round 18 and had what looked like only a small amount of thread left, so I stopped there.

After that I decided to close all my points, as I was one row into a new set of pineapple shapes. So after Round 18, I did the following:

Round 19: 3 sc in cluster chain space, ch 1, sc 5 in next space, ch2, *ch2, sc in top of loop*,*repeat across pineapple, ch 2, sc 5 across space, ch 1, 3 sc in top of next cluster, ch1, 6sc in large space, ch 2 over the joint from the row before, sc 6 in next large chain space, repeat from the start, join to first with slip stitch.

After my round 19, I still had a bit of thread, so I thought I would try to get around the outside once more to give the edge a thickness to keep it in shape.

Round 20: sc in each sc, 2sc in the chain spaces, join to first with slip stitch

At this point I did not have enough thread to do a third edger row so I bound it off. 

Finished to my standards.

I laid it out on my table... I would say that there is about 5 inches of space between the edge of my doily and the edge of the table, so that makes it about 27 inches across. I think if I properly stretch it out and stiffen it, I could probably get it to 30 inches as it has a lot of give. I do like the size, but think I will try to find a round glass top for this table, too.

It doesn't look anything like the patterns picture since I didn't even get two pineapples into the doily, but I am happy with it. Maybe in the future I will try it with the right thread and hook, but no wonder old ladies have bad eyesight and arthritis...

Time to complete this: Worked on and off over about a month... can't see completing something like this in one sitting, let alone one week. Perhaps maybe 30 hours total; 3 hours a night for something like 10 days... sounds about right.

Coraline Fan Art

I follow Laika House on Instagram to get peeks at the upcoming movie Boxtrolls and everything else they work on. As I have expounded before I am fascinated by the handcrafted quality of the work that goes into their movies.

So when I saw a post where they were calling for submissions for Coraline fan art, for the 5th anniversary of it being released, I knew I had to enter. Prize is a pair of the limited edition Nike shoes from the 2009 release which I also tried to win at that time.

the reference picture

the sketch with inks

the finished watercolor

Submission was sent on February 6th... we will see what happens. FINGERS CROSSED

Bonus: Me and my little me.

UPDATE: So the submissions are voted on to win. I dislike that, since it's basically a popularity contest and not a random chance to win now. Oh well, at least I had a good time being inspired to make something fun and got to continue to work on my watercolor skills.

Striped Slouch Hat

So I mentioned that I recently went on vacation with my mom and sister, and that I was making one of those cupcake hats for my sister. I of course managed to forget to bring my own hat, and of course, so did my mom. So the only person who had a hat for the cold weather in Santa Fe was my sister.

So, while I was in Houston for a tradeshow before our vacation I made both my mom and I hats. Naturally it turned out that hats were unnecessary since it was warm and sunny the entire time we were there.

The tradeshow was 4 days, after which we would be flying out of Houston for Albuquerque. I needed a pattern that was fairly simple and used few colors. I decided to try the free pattern by Moogly called the All Grown Up Striped Slouch hat. I hat clipped it into my Evernote crochet notebook a long time ago but had not yet needed to make one.

So, the first day I managed to find a Michaels near the place we went for dinner and went and picked two colors of yarn, a blue and a gray like the pattern called for. Love those colors anyway.

This pattern was fast. Once you understand the two rows directions it was easy to get into a groove and not need to directly reference the pattern. I love ones like that. 

I love the little tiny stripe that is created by using the back post. Really makes it look detailed. It also gives the hat great texture and makes it feel thick and warm. But the really best part is that since there are only two rows between the color switching you carry the yarn along and never cut the colors. That makes it so fast and eliminates a lot of cutting and attaching. 

The ribbing at the bottom threw me for a little bit of a loop. I got all the way to the end and realized that I had made a mistake since instead of being a brim, I had made a flared skirt. What I had done was instead of skipping I made the up and down ribbing on every stitch, essentially doubling the amount of rows on the brim. So I of course had to rip out the entire brim and start again, but it was much faster the second time around. Duh.

Here I should also mention, that since I wanted my brim to be in the blue color, I added an extra row of the gray to make it a bit longer and slouchier and still allow me to read the pattern right.

Looks really cute on. Not sure if it is because the original image is taken on a mannequin head with no hair but it was not quite as slouchy as I had thought it would be, even with my extra row. I made the small adult size. 

You can tell mine looks a little longer than the one in their picture, due to that extra row. I have since added a little felt pin right above the brim of a little bird and it looks super cute. Total time I would say was about 7 hours for this pattern, but would be less if you didn't add the extra row, and make the brim mistake. I can easily see this in a lot of other colors, so give it a go!

PS: I only bought one skein of each color, and had enough left of each to make my mom a cupcake hat out of the remainders. Check the cupcake hat post to see a picture of that blue and gray cupcake hat. 

Cupcake Hats

My brothers girlfriend is pretty cool. She's a little bit weird and gets our humor really well, but also really smart and structured, which is a good influence on him. Anyway, so we were discussing things I have crocheted over dinner. She has seen the Alot, BananaShark and Dalek that I have made for my brother, and she asked if I could make her a cupcake hat that she saw on Pintrest.

I said of course, having seen many images of them on the internet. And a quick search on Etsy will give you a ton of patterns depending on how you want your cupcake to be frosted and decorated. I decided to get this Cupcake Hat pattern from the shop CrochetSpotPatterns. I picked it for two main reasons: I liked the swirl of the frosting and also loved that it comes in different sizes. I can totally see making some of these for friends children...

She asked for a brown or tan wrapper, white frosting, rainbow sprinkles and a cherry on top.
I love this hat because I can use up those half skeins of colors I have lying around for this job.

The pattern was simple and quick. The top of the hat worked up really fast if you are familiar with making circles and using back loops. The only part that took a longer time for me was the wrapper part around the head. I had to re-look up stitch tutorials to make sure I was doing the front and back post crochet correctly, but after that it was a breeze. I did add an extra row at the bottom where the pattern ends because I like my hats to cover my ears. So I simply added a row of regular double crochet all the way around. I think it looked nice and like the bottom of the cup...

Two things to note on the cherry part... I used the first row as my topside, and since I started with a magic circle I used that tail to poke out the top for a stem on my cherry. Then I had the full tail on the smaller decreased end to sew it down to the hat with. I also stuffed mine with some leftover red yarn scraps.

A cherry.

As it usually happens with these things, I ended up making another one as well for my sister. My mom, sister and I are going to Santa Fe in late February and since it will be cold we will of course need hats. My mom has one I have made already, and I of course have my dragon hat, so my sis would be the only one out. Can't have that.

She liked the picture on the pattern, so hers is brown wrapper, pink frosting and a cherry.

 For the top you leave a loop open...

...to make the icing swirl! Might try a shell stitch for icing next time...

Finished hats...

The white frosted looks better with rainbow sprinkles.

Super cute. Like I said, didn't need a full skein for all any of the colors. Even for both wrappers I didn't use even half a skein of brown. Great yarn consumption project. Total time for each hat was about 5 hours, only because of the wrapper part.

UPDATE: Made a hat for my mom out of leftover skeins from my upcoming slouch hat post. Not sure it reads a cupcake-y as the others do because of the colors. Also the soft yarn made it have a slightly melty shape as opposed to the coarser red heart or standard cheap yarn.