So my grandson, who’ll turn three next month, is crazy for the game Angry Birds. The story goes that he even fixed the internet connection on his mom’s phone once when he was 2 so he could play. So what do you give a 3-year-old gaming superstar? (It’s a rhetorical question.)
Unfortunately, the only kid sized mannequin available for a photo op had a head that wasn’t exactly head-shaped. So the hat is stretched over a block-shaped head with Bart Simpson hair… which would be fine if it was a Bart Simpson hat (hmm…) But hopefully you get the idea. Perhaps when the hat is unveiled Young Sir will consent to be photographed in it and I’ll get a better shot.
Anyway, the particulars are that the yarn is mostly Plymouth Encore Chunky, with a touch of Cascade 128 Superwash (left over from the Question Everything Hat) for the beak. Needles were my trusty Hiya Hiya US 10 circulars (except for the eyebrows, which I did flat on Clover US 10 DPNs). The pattern is… not so much. Funny story, that. There was, once upon a time, a pattern on Ravelry and I was hot to buy it because it was better than any of the others I’d found. But nowhere on the Ravelry page was there a link to be found or any other indication of how one might purchase this fine knitting pattern. So in the fullness of time (actually just a couple of days) I emailed the designer to inquire as to its availability. And regrettably, the makers of the Angry Birds video game took exception to this work and not for nothin’ would they license it for sale. So what you see here is a reverse engineering effort done from the photos from Ravelry along with whatever other graphics I could find. Which means I can’t tell you how I did it because (a) Big Brother at Big Video Game Company would probably send Green Pigs after me and (b) I honestly can’t remember because I was winging it (pun intended). But in a general way…
For the most part, it’s just your basic beanie until you get to the bottom where the white part starts. I’d never done intarsia in ribbing before… or actually at all except for one other time. Feathers on the head and the tail are done in Magic Loop sort of like you’d do the fingers of a glove. The beak is just a basic cone stuffed with polyfill and the eyes and eyebrows were done flat and sewn on with black yarn (so as to get the outline around the white). For sizes you can use the usual size charts for hats… I shot for 16" for this one and based the gauge on the finished dimension I was going for. (Yes, I know that’s doing it backward, but if you don’t have a pattern to begin with does it matter?)