Oliver's Christmas Spider Hat: a free pattern

I had decided to knit hats and mittens from the luscious Malabrigo Worsted I picked up for 20% off at my local yarn shop during their annual birthday sale. I had finished my daughter's and planned to embroider little flowers on her hat, but couldn't come up with a good (easy/beginner) embellishment for a boy's hat. Friends gave me ideas like stars and rocket ships, sailboats, etc... but I wasn't exactly sure how I'd do that, and I wasn't sure that Oliver would be into it.

Then the concept of bugs came up, and it reminded me that I had seen patterns for bobble spiders out there. I ran across this pattern for Spider Socks using that lovely spider. I realized that considering the hat I was making was on size 9 needles the gauge alone probably won't allow me to put the big spider pattern on a toddler hat, but her teeny spiders were perfect! Sadly, they were written for knitting from the top-down, but my hat was going from the bottom up. So I came up with a slightly different pattern for the spider and spread it over the course of the hat.




Soooo... here's my version of the spider, worked on reverse stockinette:

Worked in multiples of 9 stitches, in the round.

Round 1 & 2: Purl
Round 3, 5, 7, and 9: P1, slip 7 with yarn in front (be careful to leave it loose enough that you can attach it to your spider which will be on round 10, these will form the legs) P1.
Round 4 & 6: Purl
Round 8: P4, K1, P4
Round 10: P4, work bobble [knit in front of loop, knit in back of loop, knit in front of loop, knit in back of loop, knit in front of loop so that there are now 5 stitches in the bobble. Turn project around and purl across the 5 bobble stitches. Turn work and knit the 5 bobble stitches together through back of loop.] take the 4 slipped sections from rounds 3, 5, 7, and 9 and put them BEHIND the bobble, so that the bobble looks like the spider's body and the legs appear to come from it. P across.

Round 11 and as far above as you like: P4, K1, P4

I decided to do my spiders at various heights, to make it more interesting.