Felted Kitty Hats

It's not as if they needed more hats, hats are just the perfect transformative accessory and I just can't resist making them.
At all.
   So I saw this kitty bowler hat from Marks and Spencer on Pinterest and I just had to try it. My favorite yarn store, i.e. my mom, ordered the yarn from Brown Sheep and knit up the initial hats from this Fiber Trends pattern leaving the finishing to me.

 If I were doing it again I would make them 1 1/2"- 2" shorter before felting, because I think they turned out long. The ears are double knitted: They look 20 stitches wide, but they are really 40. With two double pointed needles you slip every other stitch on each row so you end up with 2 knit stitch faces to your work. Every third row I slipped with the yarn forward instead of behind.

Once the ears were sewn on and all ends hidden I threw the hats into the wash for some quick shrinkage, but I had to finish up by hand. By that time I was at my in-laws for Thanksgiving, and I found the perfect hat block: A medicine ball! It was all knobby and just the right size as I reshaped and finnessed the hats into shape.

All that was left to be done was embroidering the faces on with a chain stitch.