Olympiad

I finally finished this hat and I feel like it was a bit of an Olympic effort on my part. I was copying the hat that Ralph Lauren designed for the US Team. It looked like this:
The day after the opening ceremonies when the team first wore the hat, I took a look on Ravelry and sure enough- someone had already posted a pattern. I happened to be hanging out with my sister, who's family nickname is Moose. (Long story- she is not a large person, though.) She likes things with moose on them and her 50th birthday is coming up and she asked me to make her the hat. But I was on a yarn diet, only using yarn from my stash. I did have red, white and blue, but a different gauge and, now that I see these pictures together, rather different colors. I cast on and knit all the way up to the moose's nose when I was sure it was too small. Frogged and started over. I am not too good at knitting anything twice, so it was tough going for a while there. But all in all, I am happy with it. The yarn is really nice Norwegian Dale yarn and I dyed the blue. The red is some leftover yarn that Simma got in Germany- I think it is alpaca. The hat is very soft and kind of fuzzy.