Crochet Sorting Hat

A very Harry Potter obsessed friend wanted me to make her a Sorting hat. It was pretty good timing to be honest as I am currently re-reading the Harry Potter books at the minute, I read them when they first came out and had the urge to re-read. I do however need to get my hands on the films just so I can compare the books to the film just for my own interest. I've never really been interested in the films.

Here is the finished product:

The pattern (below for link) I used is ace and really easy to follow however when I made it the first time it was way too small. At the end of the pattern it says to add extra rounds and increases until the hat fits. If I had have done this the face would have been a really small face right at the top of the hat that would just have looked utterly wrong.

I used chunky yarn as suggested in the pattern however I did not have the size hook that was suggested so I used the size down but made loose stitches. Anyway, as I said, it turned out small so I took the whole thing back and used two strands of yarn to make the hat bigger and the yarn thicker. This time the hat and face were bigger but still not big enough so I took the whole thing back again for a second time and used three strands of yarn. This time the hat turned out just too small to fit on my head so I added a few rounds with increases until it fit. I think it still looks OK.

For the brim I changed back to using one strand of yarn as I would have run out of yarn otherwise. The brim turned out too small and looked rather odd:

It does look tons better after I added a few extra rounds (see first picture). So I'm not sure if it's the yarn that I used or the fact I used a smaller size hook (even with the loose stitches) that made the hat so small but I figured out a way to make it work.

So I used three balls (100g each) of Stylecraft Chunky, 1004 Dark Brown and a 8.0mm hook for the pattern that can be found Here. I think it's a great pattern even if I did have to make it multiple times to get it the right size. Due to having to use three strand of yarn to make the hat I did not need to stitch the mouth or eyes afterwards as the pattern suggests; the face can be manipulated and stays put due to its thickness.