For these first two hats, I cast on 108 stitches using Patons Classic (worsted weight) wool and 4 1/2 mm needles.  I like 108 stitches if I am doing something that pulls in a bit, like cables or colour work.  108 has a lot of ways to be divisible 3 x 36, 4 x 27, 6 x 18, 9 x 12. For more ordinary tension stitches, I usually cast on about 100 stitches, which covers stitch repeats of 4 or 5 nicely. or 98 or 105 for a stitch repeat of 7, 102 for stitch repeats of 6..  These first two hats used 9 different stitches, all from Chapter 4, Color-Change Patterns.  For the first hat I started at the bottom with Pin Stripe Pattern.  I did a total of 14 rows of each colour, then joined back in to the cast on edge.  I continued up the hat with Three-and-One Tweed, Corn on the Cob Stitch, Pin Check, Pin Check Variation, and finished with Waffle Check. I separated each section with a knit row, then a purl row of black.  I like how the hat fits and it is really cozy and warm…not that we need THAT any more this year, YEAH!!.  Here is the top of that first one:

I liked how the pinstripe looked, but I felt the band could be less puffy.   I experimented on the second hat and did 7 rows of knit 1, purl 1 ribbing before doing 8 rounds of each colour in the pinstripe pattern and joining back to the cast on edge.

I continued up this hat with Maltese Cross Stitch, Waffle Check Variation, and finished with Dotted Ladder Pattern.  I did a two stage decrease at the top, and I liked the effect (for each quarter of the hat, I decreased on 2/3 of the stitches with the decreases heading toward each other, then when these stitches were gone, did the same thing on the remaining stitches).

I was pleased with how that looked, so decided to do the same basic thing on my next hat, this time doing half the stitches first, then the rest, but without the visual distraction of the colours.

I like how this top looks, but unfortunately maybe not on the hat I did.  I used Little Hourglass Ribbing from Chapter 3, Ribbings for 14 rows, then switched to Quaker Ridging from Chapter 2, Simple Knit-Purl Combinations.  As I was knitting this hat, it struck me that it was a pretty flexible stitch and the purl sections might roll up like my socks from a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it might work well as a slouch hat, which I did.

Heather and my friend Jen both liked the slouch thing, so I decided to do another using Cross-Stitch ribbing and Banded Insertion Pattern.

J decided for this one to just let the stitch itself tell me how to reduce it, even though I still have some ideas related to the last cast off.  I will save them for the future.  I have made notes so I don’t forget.  I quite like how the back turned out.