Knitting: Toddler Panda Hat

We have a set of 2-year-old twins that come to our church, and I wanted to make them something for their 2nd birthday recently. This panda hat jumped out at me as I was browsing project ideas, and so I decided to do it.

I made this one using stranded knitting in-the-round, but there's a lot of yarn wasted on the inside, so I'm going to try it in a few other techniques, too. See?

It's neat, but there's a lot of yarn waste.

I'll keep you posted on any additional panda hats I make and which method seems to work better.

In the meantime, if you'd like to make one, it's a free pattern on Ravelry called Knitted Panda Hat. I don't recommend using anything from the pattern except the chart, though, since most of the comments mention how utterly huge the hat ends up being. I just made a basic hat and added the panda face chart to it.