#yarn beard

So here is the photo that really started this all:

After a lot of searching on the internet and on ravelry I could only find the pattern to make the beard but not the hat. I found some other crochet viking hats but none with that detail that I wanted.

I drew myself a sketch of what I wanted to make to help guide my efforts in creating this pattern. 

I already knew the basics of making a hat and had made a previous bear ear flap hat and a warm toque for my husband. I knew I wanted the hat to have colour changes and thought that would be easy to accommodate (it was). The real issue is I wanted the raised ridges to make it look more authentic. After a lot of searching I found a way to use a front loop treble crochet that is then worked back into the same row in the back loop only that causes a nice raised ridge. 

Once the main hat was completed I added the grey circles to the brim. I took care to finish the circles off in such a way that you cannot tell which was the final stitch, but once I sewed them onto the hat I realized that I didn't need to be so careful. Oh well. 

My next step was the horns. This stuck me for a while as I had never made anything similar. I ended up finding a free viking hat pattern wear I liked that horns (I hated the hat though) and downloaded that. 

I followed the steps for the horns just to get the idea of how to make them curve. Not having done it before I found it so counter intuitive. Where you increase becomes the inside of the curve and where you decrease becomes the outside! Once I understood that I undid the horn and started again on my own horn creation. 

In making the horns I also had to look up some tapestry crochet techniques. I wasn't very through in my research and reading but I soon learned that you need to finish your last stitch of one colour with the next colour you want or everything just looks wrong. 

Here is my final creation: