Fashionable Bobbles

Confuzzled 2025's theme was fashion giving a perfect excuse to make some bobble hats for the charity auction. Not just any bobble hats though, these fit fursuit heads and have slits to let those enormous ears through.

As usual I ended up making two of these. The first being my prototype one which I made using some left over acrylic yarn in blue, grey and teal finished with a yellow pom-pom. The prototype was invaluable in this case for figuring out how to do the ear slits. These were essentially massive button holes made in-line with a row of knitting. In the prototype I casted off as I usually did at the start of the earhole and then casted on normally to fill it back in on the second row. However once completed the earhole was pretty rigid. Given its size I think this worked out fine but it means that it can't stretch to accomodate any sized ear and it significantly affects the shape of the finished hat. You can see in the comparison photo below.

As you can see the earhols are clearly visible in the prototype hay (the yellow pom-pom one). Whereas in the second hat I made the holes are barely visible. That is down to two things I think. The first is the stiches being used. In the prototype I used a rib stitch for the rim but then moved to garter stitch for the remainder of the hat. In the second hat I continued the rib throughout the hat. As a result the second hat has a more consistent tension throughout (since the knits and perls balance out). I also think that the more stretchy cast on and cast off methods I used in the second hat helped though .

These were discovered by watching Nimble Needles video on the topic (you can watch this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7X5oKLd1x8&t=1171s). By allowing the earhole to stretch it is able to sit more flush with the rest of the pattern and becomes less noticeable. It also means that the hat is better suited to a wider range of ear shapes.

The hats were sold separately in the auction and made a total of around £80 which I'm pretty happy about. I think wearables are always a tough sell as people can't check to see if they fit. I suspect I'll refrain from making this sort of thing for the auction again - unless I do one that is custom fit. Still I'm very happy that they have gone to new homes and hope they are a joy to wear!

Confuzzled's charity in 2025 was Saints Sled Dog rescue and the convention raised over £40k for the charity which is astounding!