Owl Cap

I searched all over the stores for a character hat for my 10 year old, and it seemed like everything was either too young or too ugly or too...something.  So I decided to try making one myself. The hat in the picture is an owl (without the triangle nose).

I had this inspiration that I found on Pinterest--which I absolutely love--but I knew my 10-year-old would scoff at the "cutesy" factor, so I had to modify.

 I started with a basic pattern for a hat with earflaps. The link to the pattern I used no longer works, but I found this one that is similar. The earflaps in my pattern were only about 14 stitches, and I thought that was way too small, so I almost doubled that number. I had a lot of trouble counting the stitches to place the earflaps. Instead, I just found the center back and measured an equal distance to find the placement.
In my pattern, for the last row of the earflap, the instructions said to crochet two, then skip two, then crochet two. This created a little hole that allowed me to feed the yarn through...a great way to attach the ties at the bottom. After feeding the yarn, just braid and tie.  I did the same thing for the ears--just worked the strands through the cap and braided.The ties and the "ears" are made from braided yarn.
I wanted to keep it subtle, so I chose two colors that were fairly close (brown and tan) and stuck with those for everything. The eyes are just made from simple crocheted circles, and I stitched them on with yarn.  Here are some close ups: