Step One--make base hat

I'm still struggling not to smoke. I've made a stack of washcloths, but was looking for something different for a treat. I searched the web and found a pattern that tickled my funny bone and looked like it would be interesting to make. You know how fixated I can be and hats are about my speed crocheting skills-wise. I decided to put each part on the blog as I complete it, partly because I'm having such fun putting things on here and partly because it's going to take me a while to make all the hat parts before I assemble them into the fabulous finished product. So, here's part one--the hat base.

And now I'm going to work on a story because I've been sloughing off my writing to crochet.