The Roasted Chicken Hat

A few months ago, my sister sent me a photo of a hat that looked like a roasted chicken or turkey and said she wanted me to make her one. She runs marathons and a lot of runners wear funny outfits and accessories to stand out in the crowd. All I had to go on was the photo -- no pattern. I found some yarn that looked like the color of a roasted chicken (Lion Brand Yarn's Vanna's Choice) and I bought some turkey legs to get an idea of the proportions of the leg. The hat base was easy, just a simple stockinette toboggan with a ribbed border. The legs were trickier. First, I tried knitting the leg on double-pointed needles, but I quickly saw that the results probably wouldn't hold the shape well. So I turned to crochet, working from the small end to the large end. The results were not realistic. Finally, I tried crocheting from the large end to the small which did the trick. The legs are spirals of single crochet stitches that gradually increase and then taper off. The frills were made by a couple of rounds of single crochet and then a round of chains attached with slip stitches.

Here's a photo of my sister wearing her new chicken hat: