I had the idea for this Remembrance Day hat a couple of weeks ago.  it was supposed to be a felted version of a twenties cloche with a crocheted poppy.  I think I have discovered on Halloween and today why knitted felting was a short lived fad.  Firstly a felted hat has at least 50% more stitches in it than a regular hat because of the shrinkage.  Secondly, the washing machine turns into a real crapshoot.

I spent the last couple of days off and on knitting the felted hat.  I mapped it out on paper and used the (newly recovered) tension square that I had made and lost for the witches hat on Halloween to calculate the stitches. I knitted and knitted, and then put it in the washer and dryer.  I got a pattern for the crocheted poppy from Treasures in Needlework by Mrs Warren and Mrs Pullan, 1870, and threw it in the laundry with the hat.  This morning I got them out and found what I thought was a shapless, unusable mess.

I then set about spending today knitting the second (unfelted) hat and making a scaled down crocheted poppy from my head.  Now I am not sure which one is better.