Hat update

I finished the earflap hat! And I modified the hell out of it!

Yep, that old urge to mess with the pattern struck again. I went with the two white stripes! And I only really followed the pattern as far as the crown of the hat and the front flap. I totally omitted the back flap and for the earflaps I ignored what it told me to do, went down a few hook sizes, just used one strand of yarn, and made them a lot smaller. Then, when I crocheted the "fur" lining, I realized that it would look great as one of those russian type hats (What are they actually called? All I know is that the girl in Balto got one like it as a present...). So I flipped the earflaps up and tied them. So basically, the finished hat looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like it was supposed to. I do like it, though.

Only one problem: The hat is waaay too big for me. It doesn't really stay on my head. It doesn't even fit my brother (a.k.a Owen of the Gigantous Noggin). But there is NO WAY i'm undoing the hat to fix it. So whatever.

I'll post a picture as soon as I get a good one!

Dilemma

So, I am currently crocheting this hat from the newest issue of "Crochet Today" (a really cool magazine):

But I changed the brown to navy blue, mostly because the brown I had looked yellow and sickly with the white trim. Well anyway, I have the crown of the hat done, but I'm afraid that I will run out of the blue yarn. So I was thinking about striping the rest of it to conserve yarn. What do you think of this:

(MS Paint - looks real professional, doesn't it?)

Do the stripes look good, or stupid? I can't decide.