Just another hat

After about eight months, I finally finished the hat for my friend James. This is one of those projects that kept finding its way back into the UFO basket for me to pick up again several months later. The pattern is based on the Half Pipe Hat from Son of Stitch n' Bitch, but with a few modifications to make it more flattering. First, the hat was originally made with two strands of worsted weight yarn held together to create a chunky yarn. A quick search on Ravelry made it obvious to me that the chunky yarn was way to thick for a double brim. Since I already decided to use Hemp for Knitting's Hempwol, a light worsted, for the project I decided to do a quick gauge swatch and rewrite the pattern at a finer gauge. I cast on 108 stitches on US5 needles and then followed the pattern for the lengths of ribbing and stockinette stitch. Then, when I came to the decreases I made another change to better suit the hat style and gauge. To replicate factory-made versions that are sewn at the top I decided to do four sets of double decreases (I used sl1, k2tog, psso) every other round around the top perimeter of the hat. After 11 decrease rounds, when 20 stitches remained, I grafted the remaining stitches. The final change I made was on the brim itself. I felt the original version was too big so I created a smaller version with a greater arc to better fit an adult head. All-in-all I am happy with the hat and can't wait to mail it off.