Last week when I was out running errands I got a call from my youngest son at a time when he does not usually call, so it was with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation that I answered my phone.

He started the conversation by assuring me that he wasn’t calling because of an emergency, but that he did need to know if I had time to crochet Viking hats for him and a friend in time for Halloween. It was with a mixture of relief and amusement that I said yes.

Relief because it really wasn’t an emergency, and amusement because it was amusing.

At some point in the next couple of days I went to Ravelry and began looking at various crochet Viking hat patterns; when I found one I thought would work, I would share share a photo with my son so that he could weigh the relative merits of each design.

Eventually we settled on one, but as I started to figure out which yarns I could use, I discovered that it was designed using DK weight yarn.

I don’t have the same vast stores of DK weight yarn in my stash that I do worsted, so I broke the news to my son that the pattern we had selected would not work after all, and then asked him what he thought of this beauty by MynKat:

The pattern was available for purchase and immediate download at MynKat’s Ravelry store, so in just a couple of minutes I had everything I needed to get started.

MynKat has included individual instructions for a multitude of sizes ranging from newborn to XL Adult.

There are several elements to each hat: the base, the decorative textured contrast, and the horns. I decided to start with the horns because I had not yet consulted with my son and his friend about what color the hat and contrasting color would be, but I had a partial skein of Red Heart Super Saver aran nearby, so I could get started on the horns immediately, which I did.

The instructions are clear and detailed, but the perfection of the horns is achieved through careful placement of sc and hdc stitches; this part of the project definitely requires a lot of counting, but count I did, and I finished two horns for a large adult size hat and nearly completed a third horn intended for an extra large adult size hat:

I am enjoying this project a great deal, and my hope is that the finishing mojo generated by these Viking hats when they are done will help me make even grater progress on my 2016 North Carolina State Fair project.