James's Boba Fett Helmet

To honor the 5th birthday of one of the coolest little Star Wars fans I know (James), I searched around on Pinterest and Google for something fun and Star Wars-related to crochet for him. I loved the tiny amigurumis I found, but you really needed a crowd of them to make an impact. Then, I found this Boba Fett helmet (hat, beanie, whatever) pattern. I actually found a bunch of different ones, but this one looked the best. I purchased the pattern, and when I opened it up, I had a rude surprise. A lot of the helmet's cool details are created using black felt and glue. WHAT?!?! Knowing this would be for a 5-year-old and anticipating that it would be washed many times, this was unacceptable.

I ended up swapping out the biggest piece of felt for fleece (that's on the red & black visor) as I was planning on lining the hat with fleece anyway. The rest of the felt pieces in the pattern were ignored. Also, the hat turned out WAY too small. I know I crochet tightly, but when I used the hook size indicated by the pattern! it turned out too small for a baby (as opposed to being medium-adult size, which would have been perfect since I was going to line the hat with fleece). So, I went back to my good old standby hat pattern (the Hello Kitty Hat) posted on the Crochet in Color blog.

When I was leaving out the felt pieces and improvising what was left behind with yarn, I studied pictures of the Boba Fett character's actual helmet and decided that the pattern wasn't all that accurate anyway. So how much of the actual purchased pattern did I use? Not much. Maybe 30% of the hat came from the pattern. Lesson learned: do my homework before purchasing a pattern. Not that my end result turned out 100% accurate, either..... Oh well. Hopefully James won't mind.

I was so annoyed by the process I went through creating this hat that I never did take proper glamor shots of it before I gave it to the birthday boy. Poor Sonia posed for these cell phone pictures before we had gotten all cleaned up for the day.

Sorry the hat doesn't have an antenna, James.... I just couldn't figure out how to do one that would hold up to a 5-year-old and his parents' washing machine. But this crocheted helmet will keep your head warm and most Star Wars fans will be able to tell that it is supposed to be Boba Fett's headgear.

Happy birthday, little buddy!!