Pattern starts at the top, lots of increases for the first handful of rows, then SC spiral for 50-ish rows. I did 13 rows each of color 1 through 4, so 52 rows before brim in my hat. Very easy, bordering on mindless, difficult in a different way :-) Brim is short rows of BLO. Again easy enough, but unwieldy since 80% of the hat is finished at this point, went way slower. First 80% took about 8 hours (2 hours per color), but the brim took about 4 hours. I don’t see any visible difference between starting with the brim, working into the side of those rows, SC spiral for the hat body, then HDC together in the last rows, but I suspect it would go faster. That being said: I love this hat! Cute as a slouchy, or flip up the brim for a more traditional hat. BLO has plenty of give, would fit a huge range of head sizes. Will definitely be making another, probably testing my design to see if it really is faster/looks the same… only have 50gm left of this gradient kit, so I’ll need to decide what yarn to use for the other 25gm needed, and buy another pompom from Amazon.