Crocheted a hat (or is that crochetted?)

Does it look too much like a purple afro?


It's made from softy-soft angora that I got at a stoop sale. Something about the way the balls of yarn were put together made them incredibly inefficient. It took about five balls of yarn to make this one hat. That seems like a lot, no?

The hat was inspired by the kind of soft, round hat that my mom would wear. We always had a few of them sitting around in our hall tree. As we didn't really need winter hats, we never had hats of our own, so whenever we were going out on an extra cold adventure, my mom would bundle us up in whaterver we had in the hall tree, i.e. her soft round hats. Maybe we also had some kind of manlier-looking hats that my brother got to wear, but I don't remember them.

I remember one specific cold adventure we had to bundle up for: the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. The hat I wore was grey, blue, beige & white, and knit in a sort of starburst pattern. Of course, it was soft and round. We had on hats, scarves, borrowed sweaters, ski windbreakers, and at least two pairs of pants each. It may never get that cold in San Francisco, but it sure felt like it if you stood outside long enough in the fog and wind. Although I can say now, having lived through some actually cold winters: we were totally babies about the cold.

For the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, everyone was going to walk across the bridge to celebrate it. (Which is why we needed to bundle up.) They expected enough people that they shut down the bridge to all car traffic. People in San Franciso started walking over the bridge, and across the bay, people in Marin started walking over the bridge. So many people were celebrating the bridge that when they met in the middle, there was nowhere else to go. And so many people were celebrating the bridge behind them that there was no turning around. People just pushed and pushed onto the bridge until it was completely full of people. I forget how many people they counted, (maybe like a million, or a hundred and eighty thousand) but it was astonishing, and under the weight all those people, the bridge's load-bearing arc flattened out. The bridge was swaying like crazy. In retrospect, engineers said it was probably a pretty bad idea. I mostly remember a lot of standing around. There was a marching band from Connecticut. Also, I wanted one of the commemorative t-shirts soooo bad. We were on the bridge for a long time that day so it's a good thing my mom always remembered to pack snacks.

Another thing I remember about that day is that on the way home from the bus stop, after we finally got off the bridge (at least I'm pretty sure this happened on the same day) a homeless man stopped us and talked to my mom for a while. Then he said that I was, "going to be a heart-breaker one day," and gave me a pair of slippers that he had crocheted.

Speaking of crochet. . .
So I was trying to make a hat that reminded me of the kind my mom used to have. Obviously, I wasn't using a pattern. I made a big, flat circle and the decreased it until it got to about the size of my head. I think I might have made the circle too big, because it looks a lot more like a beret that I remember any of my mom's hats looking. And if I hadn't made it out of soft, fuzzy angora, it might look a whole lot like a rasta hat.

It's loose enough to not make my hair all smashed up and funny looking. And if I wear it with my ponytail shoved up inside (as I have done in this picture) it seems like pretty much the shape I was going for.

But it totally looks like a purple afro, right?