A couple of years ago, when my son was a senior in high school and his class was having a Christmas bazaar, each family was asked to donate 10 craft items. Since knitting is my only real craft talent, I thought, “What could I possibly knit 10 of?” I hadn’t heard of knitting washcloths at the time.

I decided to make up a bean soup mix in a bottle and knit a Santa Claus hat to put on it. I ran out of red yarn after about 3 hats (this was BS - Before Stash). It actually turned out to be a good thing, though, because I was forced to be more creative and make all sorts of different little hats.

This pattern was formerly hosted on knitting.about.com, where this description can still be found via archive.org.