Migraine Minnie Mouse Hat

I have been suffering from frequent migraines for the last few months.  It's ridiculous and very frustrating.  *sigh*  Invariably I end up taking the heavy duty meds, passing out for hours, and then when I wake up and the migraine is gone, I get a buzz of creativity and inspiration.  Since this is usually in the wee hours of the morning, it ends up being a good time for crochet.

One night I made a hat, mittens and scarf set.  I think it was also in a post migraine early morning stint when I created Kaylin's flower purse.

Last night was a similar post migraine creative output.

Apparently my niece may have a Minnie Mouse themed birthday party.  My sister had posted a few Minnie Mouse themed pins on Pinterest.  One pin of a toddler in a Minnie Mouse hat and pink tutu and that's all I needed for inspiration.

Here's what I came up with...

It was really quite simple.  Here's how I made it...

I crocheted a toddler size beanie with black worsted weight yarn.  (You can find a great resource for calculating crocheted hat sizes here.)  You can't tell by this picture, but I actually created a bit of a peak at the front of the hat to more closely resemble Minnie's head.  I'll have to update a picture once this is on Kaylin's head.

Then I crocheted 4 circles for Minnie's ears.  I whipstitched two of the circles together (back sides facing in) leaving about a two inch space unsewn.  This allowed me to put the gap against the hat and sew the ears on in two seams.  The ears stay up nice and straight this way.  Can't have a Minnie Mouse with floppy ears, after all.

To make the puffy crocheted bow, I started with 5 chains (middle of the bow), and increased at the beginning and end of the row every third row until my bow was wide enough.  This ended up being 11 sc wide.  Then I started decreasing until I was back at  5 chains.  Continued to crochet with increases and decreases to make the other side.  Ended with the 5 stitch row and whipstitched this to the beginning.  (To get an idea, think of what an untied bowtie looks like and you'll get the idea of what the crocheted bow looked like before I sewed it together.)  To make the center of the bow, I crocheted a little 3-row sc rectangle and sewed it together at the back.  I used a safety pin to pin it to the hat.  I think eventually I'll use a ribbon bow but yarn is what I had on hand.

Came together very quickly and simply.