Halloween crochet turnip head

I'm not as in to Halloween as Tanith. I'm not sure why - possibly I don't like scary things as much as she does, or I was older when we were living in the US and more jaded. I honestly don't know. I like many individual things about Halloween - I like pumpkins, I like the idea of making food look like other things, I like candy, I like costuming - but I can't work up much energy over Halloween as a whole, especially in Australia. Whatever the reason, I would largely ignore Halloween if it weren't for her enthusiasm.

However I was part of a LARP game last year where I was playing a turnip-headed creature from the land of Halloween, so I thought I'd throw that in to the Halloween posts.

It was an unpatterned experiment - I just gathered appropriate coloured yarns and started to crochet. I began at the top with the light purples, made it big enough to go over my head, and kept going in rounds until it sat like a little cap on the top of my head. As I started to work in white/cream, I switched to rows, just covering the front, and leaving gaps for eyes and mouth. And then at the base I went into a little circle again, and left some dangling roots/chin hair.

You can see the 'roots' and leaves better in this shot

It is surprisingly good as a mask - I can easily see and speak. It is a bit itchy though, and the leaves have a tendency to dangle down and interfere with my vision, so I have to toss my head to get them to fall back at the sides. After the first time I wore it, I strengthened the base of the leaf stems with some pipecleaner to make them stand up a bit more, which seems to have helped.