My lovely friend, Amy, is expecting her first child! She asked if I would knit a cowboy hat for her new little boy, and I gladly obliged!

This pattern was quick and relatively easy! I read through the entire pattern and made a few changes, which resulted in an even easier pattern, I think.

Here are my changes:

• Use a provisional cast-on with scrap yarn to prevent having to pick up a million stitches. I suck at picking up stitches, so the provisional cast-on helped me tons!
• I wanted the top of the hat to have a little vertical fold in it like cowboy hats do, so I closed the top a bit differently. I stopped decreasing at 12 stitches (I just didn’t do the last k2tog in that round), cut the yarn (I left about 8 inches, to be safe), and put those stitches on a spare circular needle for safe keeping (You could use scrap yarn). Later, once I was done knitting the brim, I turned the hat inside-out and put the saved stitches on 2 straight needles so that they were parallel to the long sides of the hat. Then I used the long tail and the 3-needle bind off method. Once you flip the hat back right-side in, you have a nice inward fold at the top!
• When doing the brim, I didn’t cast off and then pick up stitches. (Again, I suck at picking up stitches). Instead I just worked in the round, knit 20, transferred those to a straight needle, cast off 18, knit 20, cast off. So I ended up with 2 straight needles on either side of the hat with 20 stitches each. Then it was easy to just knit up each side!
• After binding off the long sides, I suggest letting them curl up and then sewing them in place with the remaining yarn tail. Otherwise they flop about and look strange.
• I created a star with some leftover Vanna’s choice yarn and this Knitted Star Pattern, using a cast-on of only 7 stitches. It’s perfect!

And just a personal pet peeve, for the love of all that is noodly and holy, please re-export this pattern in anything other than Comic Sans! I know it’s a pattern for a child’s garment, but jeebus… I thought my brain was going to explode!