Nicholas's Darth Maul hat

My incredibly handsome nephew, Nicholas, turned 5 this week!  We are so lucky that we live near him because Sonia loves to play with her cool cousin.  For his birthday, I knew I wanted to crochet him something Star Wars-themed, but I was flummoxed as to what.  As I've mentioned before, there's a shocking lack of fun Star Wars crochet patterns on the internet (for free or otherwise).  For some reason, Star Wars doesn't seem to lend itself well to crochet?  

Anyway, I decided that once again, I would go with a hat.  One of Nicholas's favorite Star Wars characters is the evil Sith lord Darth Maul, so I looked around for a Darth Maul hat pattern.  Some of them were not good (seriously, have the designers even seen the movie?  he doesn't have goat-length horns....), and some looked so basic that I knew I could come up with something on my own just as easily as following someone else's pattern.

I did use one pattern, though....  My favorite graph beanie pattern by Liz McQueen! It makes such a nice, stretchy, well-shaped hat!  Then, I free-handed some horns, stitched them on, added a bit more detailing, and voila: Darth Maul!

Sonia would like you to pretend that she's not wearing a pajama top with a cute little bow on the neckline.  Instead, imagine that she is wearing a scary black outfit fit for a Sith lord.

Here's a good picture of ole' Darth Maul himself:

Yikes.  Not someone you want to meet in a dark alley.

Even Sith lords gotta smile once in a while.

I studied pictures of Darth Maul very closely while I made this hat.  You can kind of see how the black ovals under the horns on the front of the hat aren't stitched down perfectly around the edge, because if I did that, the hat wouldn't stretch properly.

I think I might have placed the horns a bit too high.  If I ever make this hat again, I'll try to place the horns lower.  They also might be just a touch too big.  Oh well.  At least I didn't make them goat-length.

Sonia posed with the Darth Maul action figure that I bought for Andrew during way back during law school finals (I believe it was when he was a 1L).  Too bad she broke his double-sided lightsaber.