I wanted to make something special for my nephew for Christmas this year (I love that little guy – we share the same birth date and the same Chinese year, which is rare. And Awesome. We’re both bulls born in the year of the ox; doubly stubborn.) and I came across the sock monkey hat pattern. There were several patterns available but I decided to go with the one here. 

My first attempt, following the directions exactly, though perhaps with the wrong thickness of yarn, resulted in a hat that was just a bit too big – for my little dog. Bumping up my crochet hook to a J and increasing the rounds of white to 10, the next hat was almost the correct size for the toddler but was better fitted to my tweener. So I decreased the rounds of white to 9, used cream instead, and then followed the pattern the rest of the way, more or less, with 9 rows of grays and 14 sc for the ear flap (instead of 11) and three rounds on the ear (instead of two) for a bigger ear. And I am happy with the result – we even found the perfect eyes. Even better: my daughter’s hand was the perfect size for making the pom pom.

Now the tip of my ring finger on my right hand is a little numb – I’ll have to figure out a better way to hold my crochet needle.

And now back to work on Armand. 🙂