I read manga, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Okay, maybe I'm just a little bit shy about it. But I can say it on the internet because I can't see you roll your eyes and snort at me.

So I read manga, and one of my favorite manga is called Ouran High School Host Club. Why is this relevant to my knitting? Because in one of the arcs, Haruhi and her classmates go to the mountains to ski for their class trip. Where there's snow, there's protective outerwear, and sometimes even knitted protective outerwear. When I first read this particular chapter, I got really excited when I saw the following panel:

[From Ouran High School Host Club, art and story by Hatori Bisco, Volume 13, chapter 60, unfortunately used without permission, but I hope I can be forgiven. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery...]

I got really excited because Haruhi is wearing a cabled earflap hat. I knew as soon as I saw that panel that I was going to make that hat. The only thing was...things were...that I'd never made a hat without a pattern before, that I didn't know what sort of cable that was, that I was going to have to come up with something on my own. Upon further inspection of the chapter, I found a few more panels with different views of Haruhi in the hat, and so I was able to decide my course of action.

Firstly, I had to figure out what the heck kind of cables those are. After some research, I decided that probably they were horseshoe cables. After that, I tried to find a pattern that had horseshoe cables that I liked [and also had easy directions], and I dug up a wonderful pattern for Bella's mittens from the Twilight movie [however much it pains me to admit it].

So I had the cables. Now I needed a hat pattern. I didn't follow any particular hat pattern, but I did reference Knitty's Swell and Knitty's Cross Country, not only for the head part of the hat, but also for the earflaps and applied i-cord finishing around the rim.

Honestly I can say that this hat is probably one of the projects that I'm most proud of.

Now that I've got all the explaining out of the way, on to the pictures.

Relaxing on some of it's kin.

On my big head.

Detail of the yummy cables.

Detail of the really terrible and unskilled seaming in the back, the only thing I don't like about the whole project. No matter how many times I tried, it still came out like that. Probably it would have been better if I left both ends live [or picked up stitches on the cast-on edge] and grafted them both together, but seeing as I literally thought of that just now, I just did a crappy job at that. Maybe next time.

Earflap, made quite similarly to the flags of Patrick's and Penelope's names.

And lastly, a picture of the braids:

The only thing that's missing is a pom-pom at the top, but I don't know how to make those. Maybe I'll get around to it one day, but I kind of like the hat the way it is now.

Thank you very much to Hatori-sensei for the inspiration, and to everyone I've linked for the unwitting help they've given!

Stats:

Yarn - Lion Brand Wool in white

Needles - CPY size 7 bamboo dpk