Intarsia and the eggplant hat

A friend has asked me to make her an eggplant hat, like one her favorite childhood teddybear wore. :o)

Having someone else expect a finished product makes me stay on the ball and get things done in a reasonable amount of time, so here we go.

The picture up top is what she found for me to work from. I found a soft acrylic yarn in a great deep plum color - I'm going to have to get some more and make myself something with it. So far, I've gotten about 4 inches completed.

I spent a little time this weekend playing with intarsia, since I've never tried it and will need to use it to work in the leaves at the top of the hat. I plotted a pattern and worked this little guy up:

Fun! I pulled the main color a bit too tight when I picked it back up at the end of the rows, so the swatch ended up being a little puffy instead of laying flat. I'll need to keep that in mind in the future.

I still need to figure out how to make the twisted stem at the top of the hat - maybe some combination of i-cord and ruffling? I guess that's something else to play with when I get to that point.