Eyeball Hat

This post features the eyeball hat I made for the one and only Nick Tran. If you follow my blog, you may recall I made another mario-themed hat for Nick a while back (seen here and pictured to the right). For his PhD work, Nick studied a collection of diseases that result in vision loss. The diseases he studied resulted from degeneration of the retina, which is the primary neuronal tissue in the eye supporting vision. The retina is composed of photoreceptors called rods and cones which detect light and additional neurons that process and send light information to the brain.  To see more of Nick's work, click here.

To celebrate Nick's accomplishments, I made him this eyeball hat. I considered making Nick a rod and cone patterned hat, but decided an actual eyeball hat would be much cooler. I began by knitting a white hat for the base. Then I crocheted the pupil (black) and iris (brown) in a flat circle using this tutorial. When transitioning from the black to the brown, I simply switched colors. My flat circles usually end up like shallow bowls which was perfect for this hat. When I was satisfied with the size of the pupil and iris, I tied off the end and used a yarn needle to sew the crocheted piece to the top of the hat. I then added the "gleam" with white yarn and the blood vessels with red yarn. Nick asked for lots of blood vessels which gives the hat a rather creepy (but very cool and nerdy) appearance.