R2D2 Earflap Hat

In exchange for my sister painting the kit for the swap baby I did in October, I told her I'd knit her an R2D2 hat with earflaps.

Have you ever had a project that it seemed that everything and anything that could go wrong, would? Well, this was one of those projects!

I figured out the graph (which took several revisions to get it right) and then did a test run-though of the pattern to figure out the approximate size he'd end up.  I bought the yarn and then did the cast on.  My cable came off of the needle in the middle of casting on, so I had to start over!  I knit about 10 rows and realized it was ending up way too big, so I pulled it all back out and started over with only 5 pattern repeats instead of 6.  After I was knitting awhile, my cable broke, so I had to rescue my stitches and switch to a different needle!  I was 3/4 of the way done and I wasn't liking how it was looking.  The stitches looked pucker-y.  So I ripped it back about 20 rows and restarted.  Next came time to figure out the earflaps.  I had my sister try on the hat and see where the flaps needed to be, but after I got them both done, they didn't seem quite right, so I had her try it on again.  Sure enough, they weren't wide enough after all!  So I ripped them out again!  I still had to figure out the fleece for the lining and it went semi-well!  In the end, I think it turned out okay, although I really wasn't 100% happy with the top of the hat!