my favourite minions...

I have never knit an earflap hat – well, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever machine knit any hat. So, where does one start?  A few weeks back, I mentioned that Valery, a newbie mk-er from San Diego had told me she was knitting earflap hats and they were selling like hotcakes every time she took them into her workplace. She gave me her pattern source, which was a bulky machine pattern from the San Diego mk guild site (Knitten Buds) and I used that as a starting point (thanks Valery and thanks Knitten Buds!). Went to Michael’s and Wal-Mart in search of minion-coloured yarn – it should be a bright, lemon yellow, I think – suitable for the mid gauge machine.
When I checked on-line, minion hats are mostly crocheted, and since I’ve spent most of my machine knitting career trying to get the crocheted-look on the  knitting machine, felt it only appropriate that I do that again. The eye is the big challenge because it is a circle and knitting a circle is not the easiest thing. If you haven’t seen the movie (Despicable Me 2), the minion is a small cartoon character, bright yellow in colour like a big jelly bean on legs, with one or two eyes, wearing goggles (that’s the way I see them anyway) over the eye(s) and dressed in denim overalls with black hair varying from a single tuft to individual sparse strands.
So, back to the circle for the eye/goggles – I thought the chain cast-on would make the outside nicely so incorporating my ‘outlining the patch pocket’ idea – did the chain (35, 42 ns) in gray, knit 1 row and then took it off on waste yarn. Using white yarn, cast on ( 5, 6 sts) and shortrow a circle, hanging a chain stitch from the edging on every row, graft it together and Bob’s your uncle! a minion eye! For Nate, I used a brown button – he and minions have brown eyes. Rhiana, she wanted 2 green eyes to match her own.
I made the original pattern – it turned out too small of course, but gave me the general idea. After adjusting stitches and rows, the size was okay, but I didn’t like the top of the hat being gathered into a circle so I reworked it using the ‘decreasing evenly across the row’ several times that results in a spiral top – this is good – probably not what you’d do if you’re wanting to mass produce but I’ve got the time for my grandkids! (and a mid gauge garter bar! nah-nah-na-na!) I did the earflaps in a denim-look yarn  to simulate the minions’ jeans and added hair – put a tuft on Nate’s and for Rhiana, I unraveled some black WCD from a steamed Boondoogle swatch that had some lovely kinks for curls…
anybody want the pattern? here's the link to the PDF… 
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A041462a5-a915-4d62-a343-9f0225812913