Easy, fun knit. Brilliantly conceived pattern. This will be this year’s Christmas gift hat. Starting number 2.Video of knitting the hat. Used this provisional cast on. When it comes time to graft the seam (which I strongly, strongly recommend doing rather than three needle bind off) it turns out that garter bumps abut both needles, so you just do regular Kitchener’s stitch as if you were grafting stockinette. This way, you don’t have to worry about matching the 3 slipped stitches in the center because the entire graft is in stockinette. Again, no need to graft garter stitch--the stitch between two garter bumps is always a stockinette-type “V”, so just use regular stockinette Kitchener’s to graft between the two garter bumps--looks identical to garter stitch. Another reason to graft the seam: if you’re off on your sizing, you can always knit a few more or less rows at the very end of the band for fit: since the seam is invisible it won’t matter if it’s not in the middle. My first hat had 10 garter bumps before the first ear flap. It was going to be too big, so I only knit 5 garter bumps after second flap. Seam is off to the side, but is completely invisible so doesn’t matter.

Final “recipe”: 7 garter bumps before first and second earflap. Reduced down to 23 stitches before beginning front headband. Knit until hat measured 5 3/4” from bottom of back headband before beginning decreases. Knit 1 round after K8 K2tog, but after this left out the Knit 1 rounds and decreased on every row. Pre-block 9 x 9 3/4”. Post block 9 x 9 1/2”.

Just now seeing instructions say “Do not block.” Not sure why--I did block. Takes forever to dry because it’s double thickness.