"Do your hats do things? Mine do. Who said fine art can't be fun?""Do your hats do things? Mine do. Who said fine art can't be fun?"
An experiment in structure, motion and color.One of my favorite hats, the Noddin Noggin is a breakthrough in yarn art. It can move in three different directions at once and transfrom into a smaller hat. There are already artists trying to copy my design.
With only yarn (no wires and etc.) this hat will hold its shape and form. My aesthete in art is to create solid architecture, that is beautiful — and made only with yarn! Even seasoned crocheters ask me if my hats have wiring in them (they don't).
I had dreamed of making hats like this for a few years. I understood yarn very well, but not enough mechanics. My breakthough came in 2006. Right after I closed my gallery and went on the road, the drive shaft went bad on my VW Vanagon 4x4. My buddy told me he would help me out in fixing it. This meant, mostly, he sat there with a cold beer while I crawled under the truck and took his directions. I spent a good part of a week tending to it, whether reading manuals or trying to get hidden bolts undone. I lived and breathed that drive shaft. As a result, I learned how they are put together. The Noddin Noggin is a perfection of my yarn U-link, or Donut, found in the shaft.
The Noddin Noggin literally moves with you. If I went out and tried to check out a woman, the hat gave me away. A slightly nod of my head in the direction of the beauty and my whole hat bobbed at her. You aren't discrete in this hat. You will be surrounded by smiles and compliments on your look.
I used a thick, 15% mohair yarn. This hat is warm enough for a cold winter in the northern United States and in Canada. It is still appropriate for early spring and during autumn. I wore the original for a full winter. It eventually ended up as a gift to my first teacher in crochet — I told her to pick any hat and she could have it. She chose the happiness of this thick, fun, warm and wonderfully colorful folk art.