Today when I stepped outside to walk my dog Clooney, and my cousin’s dog, Thor, the temperature hovered at around freezing, and a persistent–if not stiff–wind was blowing. All of this was a visceral reminder of why this is the time of year I crochet more hats.

I crochet more hats, because more crochet hats are needed.

I have a collection of hats of varying degrees of warmth because some days are very cold, and some days are cold, but not that cold. In addition to the fact that not all cold days are as cold as other cold days, different hats have different personalities and degrees of casualness or formality, and since I can make hats, I do.

After finishing up my first Viking crochet helmet for a baby:

I got started on a second, and today, that is where I kept my focus.

While Thor used me as a human blanket, I worked diligently to complete the pieces for the second crochet Viking helmet, and with the help of a dog who refused to leave my lap, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I finally had all of the pieces crocheted:

All that was left to do was weave in the ends and put it together.

But, as I am being careful to use what I already have, there were quite a few ends to weave in. While I had enough blue yarn on hand to make the helmet without buying any more, the blue yarn that was handy had been frogged from another project, so the base of the hat had a a dozen or so ends to weave in as I hadn’t had a single length that was enough, but once the ends were woven in:

I turned my attention to the horns. They can be a bit fussy and difficult to get right, so I thought I should work on them while I was still fresh, and in relatively short order, I had them done:

Tomorrow when the sun rises on a new day, I expect that I will be able to finish assembling this crochet Viking helmet, and then I will move onto the next crochet hat, moving forward one stitch at a time.