Recently a couple of friends learned to loom and made hats for their grandchildren for Christmas. In both cases, all recipients were impressed and their parents also expressed interest in receiving hats. I've dug out my looms and begun making hats again to give them some ideas for variations.
Here are some of the hats with explanations for anyone who is interested but not sure what to do. All of these hats were made with the green Knifty Knitter. My local Dollar Store has had a great selection of novelty yarns.
Fun Fur is an easy way to dress up a hat. When you're ready to use it, just add 2 strands of it to your regular yarn. Since the fibers tend to collect on the inside, I turned this hat inside out and added a pompom.
The type with bobbles never seems to go as far so this hat has a band. Try using a toothbrush to pull the fur through to the outside of the hat. Most of the bobbles will have to be pushed through individually. I kept a little of the fancy yarn to put in the pompom.
In this hat I alternated 3 rows of of the novelty yarn with 4 rows of the regular yarn. There was only enough for 2 sections of the novelty yarn with a little left over for the pompom.
This hat was removed (without decreasing stitches in the last row) on waste yarn. Then I laid it flat and seamed the top.
Instead of a brim, I knit 4 rows of garter stitch (k, p, k, p). The body of the hat is in the knit stitch. When long enough, it was removed on waste yarn and seamed closed. The corners were gathered to look like ears. I made the earflaps following Isela's directions in
Loom Knitting Primer , added pompoms, and attached them last.
A simple way to dress up a hat is to put in a few rows of purl stitch. On this hat, I knit 4 rows, changed to white yarn and purled 2 rows, changed back to the colored yarn for 4 more rows of knit stitch, put in 2 more rows of purl using the white, and then finished off with the colored yarn in the knit stitch.
The basket-weave look shown here was done by knitting 3 stitches, purling 3 stitches, and repeating all the way around. When doing the purl stitches, I dropped one strand of my basic color and picked up a strand of a coordinating color to make the pattern stand out. After completing 4 rows, I reversed the pattern.
Here's my attempt at a cap with a bill. I started with the bill by wrapping 13 pegs back and forth until there were 3 wraps on each peg. The first row was done by pulling the bottom strand over the other 2. On the next row, I purled but pulled the yarn up through the 2 loops on each peg. Then I repeated the first two rows. The next step was to wrap all the way around the loom until each peg had 3 loops. Again, on the first row I pulled 1 loop over the 2 above it. After that it the regular knit stitch for 12 rows. The top was shaped by dividing it into 4 sections of 9 stitches. Each section was short-rowed and the top was sewn together.
These are 3 of her designs. They turned out a little large for my taste so I left off the loops and use them as hotpads instead. 
Another pair finished. Most of my Sockotta yarn was purchased a few years ago when self-striping yarn was so popular. By now I no longer remember how the yarn forms patterns, so every pair is a surprise. These stripes were so big I just made plain socks.
