Knitted Mud Track Skull Hat - Pt 1

A few weeks ago I received a commission from an acquaintance about a hat.  Of course it couldn't be just any hat, and surely not a simple one, it had to be a 100% custom order.  While I love these, there are always more pitfalls involved than I realize unfortunately and that can be a real pain in the butt.

Initially the order started off shakily as it took more time than I anticipated to work out the details.  Thankfully I have my cross stitch charting program and a nice photoshop program that allowed me to great edit the base image from which the chart would be made.  Of course my eyes were bigger than my stomach as the design I ended up with was a good deal more complicated than I anticipated.

These...

Became this...

Now for those who have used charted designs before you know that what will come of a purely square graph on a small scale will not be such nice pretty line work.  But what resulted is still pretty great I think.

Even so however, the design is merely a guide.  While I tried to adhere some stitches just didn't want to behave...

Be sure to check out "Knitted Mud Track Skull Hat - Pt 2" for more pictures!