Felted Penguin Cap

Yarn: Brown Sheep Company's Lamb's Pride in Onxy; embroider floss

Pattern: Felted Baseball Cap

With a little imagination, you can turn this old-lady style felted baseball cap into something actually wearable. I knit mine in Lamb's Pride worsted from the Brown Sheep Company in Onyx, but I think any wool of the right weight will work fine.

The hat is embellished with some simple free-hand embroidery (it's supposed to be a penguin), and I trimeed some fuzz off after the felting process to maket it a little less like a furry pimp hat. I also recommend making the brim slightly smaller, but this one is knit with the full brim. For the felting process, the top-loading washing machine in my friend's flooded basement ate about $5 in quarters: it is impossible to reset the spin cycle in a quarter operated machine, so you have to take the hat out, let the machine run the cycle, then start a new load. Having two or more machines going at the same time makes things more time efficient, but the whole process was a bit wasteful. If you can get ahold of a non-coin operated machine, things will go better. The pattern comes with pretty good felting instructions and was useful for my first felting project.