I liked this hat so much I knit it twice. I have an unnatural fondness for knitted deer. I knit this one sans “frolicking” deer in consideration of the recipient and only knit it as a one-sided hat.

My gauge was only slightly smaller than the original at 5.75 sts/inch. The original is written for a very large size (which she does warn you about in the pattern), but it also has to accommodate the bulkiness of being two-sided. South Louisiana weather does not require a quadruple thickness hat, so that’s why I made it only one sided. Hence, I decreased the cast on to 108 stitches, thereby decreasing the number of repeats of the motif/chart to 3.

After casting on, I knit one round in the main color and then worked a Latvian braid. After finishing the last row of the braid, I began with the first row of the chart. I worked the remainder of the pattern as written.

Because I decreased the number of cast on stitches by one whole motif, the hat ended up being disproportionally long as compared to the original. This resulted in a “slouch” hat which I rather like. If you want a beanie with the same number of cast on stitches (108), you would have to delete some rows and probably modify your decreases.

Please PM me with any questions! (“,)