Little amigurumi crochet hat (and beach ball)

Hi there! Bizzy Bear is taking a vacation so we’ve changed his outfit to something more summery. 

I wasn’t planning on sharing this particular look, because it’s very simple, but since the crochet tutorials seem to be the ones that receive more visitors and interest, I’ll leave you the pattern here ’cause, hey, you never know when you’ll be needing to make a hat for a toy 😉 (And I’ll also tell you how to make the Nivea ball).

So, the hat is very simple, it’s all single crochets worked in the round, nothing fancy, but this is how I made mine.

I used a little ball of cotton I had lying around and a 3 mm hook. 

I started with a magic ring and 6 sc in it.

Row 1: 2 sc in each sc from previous row (12).

Row 2: sc in first sc from previous row, 2 sc in next. Repeat till end of the row (18).

Row 3: sc, sc, 2 sc in next. Repeat till end of the row (24).

Row 4: sc, sc, sc, 2 sc in next. Repeat till end of the row (30).

Now it’s time to leave a gap for the ears. What I did was work 2 groups of 15 sc. back and forth for 6 rows and then joined them together for the brim. So the pattern will follow this way:

Row 5: 15 sc, chain 1 and turn

Rows 6 to 10: repeat row 5. Fasten off and cut the yarn.

(In the picture you can see only 5 rows, but later on I realized I needed an extra one to fit the ears, so I came back and made the 6th).

Repeat Rows 5 to 10 in the other 15 single crochets we abandoned earlier. When you end row 10, don’t fasten off. Instead, continue with a row of sc to connect the two sides of the hat.

You’ll have something like this:

For the brim: 

Row 1: Work 2 sc in each sc from previous row BUT working on the FRONT LOOP only. Meaning that you insert your hook only through the part of the “V” that is closer to you. This way:

It’ll end up looking like this:

Now, depending on the type of brim you want, you have different options here. I kept making 2 sc in each for a second row and this is what I got: 

Too wavy, but it could work if you want something like this: 

Image from Shein

Since this is not the kind of brim I was looking for, I undid the last row, so back to just after row 1 of the brim, and instead I made 1 sc in each for 3 more rows (so, the brim has 4 rows in total):

This is the hat:

Now, what’s with the Nivea beach ball??

I don’t know in the rest of the world, but here in Spain the Nivea beach ball was very popular when I was a child. Here, the Nivea beach ball meant SUMMER.

I did a bit of research and it seems that the ball first appeared in German beaches in the 1930s! but wasn’t officially popularized as a promotional item until the 1950s.

You can see some old pictures and commercials involving the famous ball in Beiersdorf’s webpage, like this one from 1967:

I guess childhood melanoma wasn’t something parents in the sixties worried about…

The ball arrived to Spain quite later on, like everything else back then, in the 70s – 80s, and it was literally received as a gift from the heavens, because they were thrown from small planes flying over the beaches. I don’t recall having seen it myself, but it’s part of our popular culture. Apparently, according to this article, it was quite difficult to get one, because the plane would only fly 1 time over each beach each year. This is forbidden nowadays, by the way, for many reasons including littering plastic objects into the sea.

Anyway, stop with the digression! Back to the pattern!

For the ball, I followed a simple pattern. I used this one from a blog called Trapitos. But here I leave you an alternative in English from Hello Sewing, it’s really really simple.

For the Nivea brand, I traced the logo in a little piece of freezer paper, cut the letters out with a craft knife, and applied regular acrylic paint with a little sponge. I didn’t need special fabric paint because I’m not going to wash the ball anyway. 

Here some pics of the process. (And some free subliminal publicity of Scottex, sorry for that XDDD)

When you sew the pieces together, don’t forget to leave a small gap to turn it inside out! Fill with stuffing and sew the gap.

Someone is ready for summer! 🙂

I’m curious by nature, so I couldn’t help reading a bit more about the story of Nivea, but this post is already long enough. You’ll probably need to go back to your lives or something! I’ll leave you this website, though, in case you wanna know more, in Spanish and in English.

Take care and use sunscreen!

☀️ 💙 🌴