The Saga of the Luna Lion Hat, Part 1

I have always been a big fan of Halloween. It’s probably my favorite holiday. For the week or so before, I would watch every Halloween movie on tv, especially Ray Bradbury’s Halloween Tree. Then the night would come and I would pull on the costume my mom and I had picked out and take to the streets, hitting my grandmother’s neighborhood and my own with an ambitiously big pillowcase in hand.

Then I got older and started to plan for Halloween less and less. The last few years, my costumes have been thrown together at the last minute. This hasn’t always ended poorly, as in last year’s Kaylee Frye from Firefly, but I want to put more planning into the holiday. This year I’m starting much further in advance.

I’ve decided that I’m going to be Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. Specifically, I’m going to create this hat…

This is going to be a multi-part project combining crochet and papier mache. I have pretty well-thought-out plans on the subject, but we’ll have to see how they come to fruition. First, I will crochet an earflap hat base to sit over my blonde Luna wig. Then, I’ll get a balloon, put the hat on it, and attempt to papier mache the lion’s head overtop of it. I have used papier mache before, but this seems rather complicated. Then, once that is done I will crochet into the lion head with multiple colors to create the mane. Let’s get started, shall we?