My husband has been asking for this hat since I started knitting. I kept saying “no, no, it’s so ugly, you’ll never wear it!” and then MADE IT SECRETLY! HA! I AM TRICKSY! He is very pleased.

I started out trying to be screen accurate by tripling my yarn while knitting using a chain ply to get the required gauge but it was eating yarn like nobody’s business - I used up my ball of orange before I’d even knit 2”. The hat would have worked out to be 7-8 balls which is half a sweater on his head, no thanks! So I went down to a single strand of yarn, and cast on 100 stitches to get a big ol’ hat.

I also made the dangly bits twisted fringe because I couldn’t bring myself to have raw strands hanging off there. Sorry, detail geeks! I did make the ugly curly stockinette ear flaps with unfinished edges, though ;)