Ack! Cuteness overload!

Quite a few mod notes to follow. The pattern was great, I just needed adjustments for making it a larger size :)

I was hoping to modify this to a size 12-18 months or so. It is slightly big for my soon to be 12 month old (but still ok to wear) but also fits my 3 year old.

Mods:

used size 8 needles for ear flaps
used size 4 needles for hat garter rows then switched to size 8 needles for the pattern.
followed pattern until hat measured 4 3/4” from the beginning. I started out doing th decreases on size 8 needles but it made the top part of the hat puff out like a mushroom over the patterned part so I ripped it back and re-did the decreases on size 6 needles. This solved the problem.

I needed to change the ears up a bit to make them bigger as the original pattern sized ones look a bit small on my upsized version. Here’s what I did -

CO 14 sts with size 8 needles K6,M1,M1,K6. 16 sts
knit until almost 2” long then decrease as follows:

rw 1- k1,sl1,k1 psso, k10, k2tog,k1
rw 2 - purl
rw 3 - k1,sl1,k1,psso, k8, k2tog,k1
rw 4 - purl
rw 5 - k1,sl1,k1 psso, k6, k2tog, k1

bind off

I also seamed the ears a bit different. I put the ear pieces right sides together (instead of wrong sides), and did the mattress stitch around three of the four sides - the left side, the top and the right side. I left the bottom open. After those three sides were stitched I turned it right side out and then stitched the bottom closed. I then sewed them on to the hat and sewed in the ends. Voila!

His birthday sweater also pictured can be seen here.