Well, the hat at least materialised!

Vaguely head-shaped (always a Good Thing in hats, I find), and it will definitely keep off the rain. Some ruffles appear to have made it in there, too which is very reassuring (when I started I think I had quite a severe pattern in mind - good thing my fingers know better!).

Slightly less progress on the horses'-heads front. Firstly, it took a good deal of ingenuity to track down chicken wire. The first three DIY/building materials superstores I tried didn't have any. A friend who's lived here a lot longer than me suggested that there was probably a shop somewhere selling chicken wire alone, but I persevered (this meant a half-hour cycle ride to the Baumarkt furthest out of town) and was eventually rewarded by finding a small selection of large rolls of chicken wire.

This of course prompted my speech, well polished in English but possibly slightly shaky in German, about how ridiculous it is that EU rules do not allow the shop to cut your chicken wire into lengths for you. So, large men in leather aprons and wearing leather gloves, with access to specialist cutting equipment, are no longer allowed to cut you off say three metres of wire; you have to buy enough to fence a small garden, then wrestle with it yourself, invariably ending up looking like something out of a horror film (well, I do anyway). The effect of this speech, to the young man who'd shown me where to find the wire, was quite disconcerting, though - he started blushing furiously when I got to "leather" and I ended up in uncontrollable giggles... Oh well. With some difficulty, I hauled my prey home, and am looking forward to seeing how the heads will turn out!