Sam's soccer hat

These are pictures of a hat I designed and knit back in November for Sam, a very cool kid I know who is also a soccer star at the ripe old age of 5.

I searched all over the internet for a soccer ball pattern, but couldn't find one. I ended up stealing a black and white image of a ball and transferring it onto knitting graph paper. I knit the white ball and black pentagons into the hat using intarsia, which required working a section of the hat back and forth instead of in the round. (I had to seam up the gap when I was finished, which ended up looking OK.

I added a white outline to make the ball appear rounder and stitched on the black lines between "spots" when I was finished using a backstitch.

Sam also requested that I add his name to the back of the hat so nobody in his class could steal it, so I did that in backstitch as well on Thanksgiving day.

Here's a picture of Sam wearing the finished product.