The kids love these so much they won’t take them off -- even to go to bed!!! :) :) :)

If/when I do this again, I’m going to work out a different decrease method, especially if at this heavier guage. The decreases were really obvious and made the hat stair-steppy. Thankfully I think it’s hard to notice when worn.

You can see in pictures the two lengths I tried out. I’m glad I frogged the shorter one. It was cute, but I think the longer one was worth it.

12-20 so much frogging and tinking it was crazy!!! Ended up doing 64 st Double stranded on US8s. 11 rows k2p2. Switch to 2nd color. Stripes 8 rows. Knit 11 rows. K2tog k7. Knit 2 rows. K2tog k6. Knit 7 rows. K2tog k5. Knit 19 rows. K2tog k4. 19 rows. K2tog k3. 19 rows. K2tog k2. 19 rows. K2tog k1. 19 rows. K2tog k1 finish stripe. (6 rows).

29” long. Crown slightly shallow for adult. Decreases v noticeable. Stair step look.

12-9 Aaccckkk. OK so I finished the first hat yesterday. I started with the first three rounds of decrease like they said to do, and then modified after that for length. Because my gauge is so vastly different, the shaping of the head is wrong. Too shallow I think. Then I modified the tail length to be shorter, but it came out REALLY short. I did 10 rows in between the first time (after the decrease with 8 stitches between), and 8 rows in between each subsequent decrease. Not only that, but I skipped the row with 7 stitches between decreases because 6 stitches worked better with the number of stitches I had on my needles. It’s so short, still cute, but so much shorter than I wanted. So I’m seriously considering frogging and starting over. Oh what to do. On the positive side I probably only spent about 5 hours on this one, so I’m not losing tooooo much work.

12-8 frogged again. rib was looking nasty so decided to do the rib on size 8s. Thinking that I’ll do a shorter rib since being double stranded it’s already plenty thick and I don’t think I want to fold the rib when wearing. Also once again thinking that I will do one with red rib and one with white. Otherwise how will two sibs with the same initials know whose is whose? :)

12-7-09 frogged and restarted. Didn’t want beginning to be in red after all. Decided to double strand since I’m running out of time. My guage is 16st = 4” st st. I’m casting on 68 stitches so that it should be about 1/2 inch smaller than the adult woman’s size. I’m totally making up that 1/2 inch number… not sure how much smaller it should be. But the finished width of the original pattern should be only 17.3” anyway which is 4-5” smaller than the average woman’s head circumferance anyway. That seems small!

10/6/09 - I’m working on hats inspired by this version.

They’re for two small-ish kids, but I looked up head size and they’ll be pretty close to adult size heads by now, so I am using the same number of stitches on one size smaller needles. I’m kind of a loose knitter anyway, so I imagine it won’t be much smaller than the project intends.

I’d rather use wool/wool blend, but they’re for a couple of kids in Florida, so I thought it would be more fun for them in a cotton blend. It’s really for them to be able to wear to the novenas and other Christmas events, so I might give them early if finished.