Definitely should have gone down a hook size to an H. Turned out too big for my tiny head.

I really misunderstood how the hat is made. Despite making many crocodile stitch projects I thought the crocodile stitch part of hat was made to fold back over the main hat part. Didn’t realize the crocodile stitch part builds off of the base post stitches. This is why I originally made the base of the hat with an H hook and ripped back to redo it with an I hook. It was way too small for my head at that point.

I wanted to let the gradient play out naturally, but of course I started cutting the yarn to align neatly with the rows. Now I have a bunch of tiny skeins of various colors.