Baby bear hat - the first.

I wanted to make a baby hat, with ears, for a photo shoot.  I've added ears to things before...

Monster hat

Headphone holder

Little bag

...and the monkey

Bear ears - first attempt

View from the back

Now I wanted to make a fairly realistic animal hat for a baby to wear on a photo shoot. In all but one of the above I'd made two half-circles and attached them as I went along - lying them alongside my 'live' stitches and working thro' both pieces.

I achieved the curve by attaching the ears centre-first, and adding the next stitches out on the next round, and so on.  This worked fine when 'approaching from the rear' as it was fairly straightforward.

 It didn't work so well here. Whilst I loved the ears themselves, I just couldn't get them to sit right. They looked too close together - not even straight - on the first go, so I started again and made the hat in the round.  Now the ears, while quite sturdy, looked pitifully droopy.

Sad ears

So sad...

That's better!

Much more perky

Hurrah!

I had been trying to attach the ears from the centre outwards again, so the ears looked sad, unless the child had his head back - not good. On the last attempt, I attached from the next-to-last stitch to start with, then just bent the ear to where it looked best, and crocheted through both pieces, either from the front or the rear, taking care to match what I was doing with the other ear.
As it turned out, the hat can now be worn in different ways - brim up or down, and even 'back to front' to achieve a different look, depending on the position of the baby.