that’s my brother ~ he got the hat for his birthday (on his birthday, before dawn, after sleeping 4 hrs, on the tail end of the 4th or 5th week of 70+ hr weeks at work….poor guy ~ he looks exhausted but I hear I made his day!). I will definitely get a better pic when he’s not so tired and with my good camera instead of an iphone!

finished #1 last night ~ knits up pretty big so doing reverse colors on this one and going down a needle size, plus a few tweaks to the pattern -- I got 2 hats out of this yarn by reversing colors

this one turned out much better for an average sized head (my gauge on this one for 4”= 18 1/2 stitches and 26 rows) ~ I did tweak this one a bit, too

it’s a great pattern ~ FREE! ~ and the folded up ear flap is worth the extra knitting ~ probably the nicest hat I’ve ever made (not that I’ve made that many but quality wise, I’d buy this one if I saw it in a store!)

MODS:

• the last row before decreases I decreased evenly by 2 stitches to get to a number divisible by 4 and put remaining stitches (96st) on each of 4 DP needles (24st per needle)

• instead of decrease rows as written, for each needle I did k1, k2tog, knit to last 3 st, ssk, k1

• when there are 4 stitches left on each needle, I did k2, ssk to get down to 8 remaining stitches before threading end thru and weaving in