My friend Sharon said she’d love a purple hat, so I dug into my stash and screwed in my size 10 circular needles and my shortest cord (not sure the size, but the shortest that came in my kit).

Then I c/o 60 stitches and joined to knit in the round.

Rows 1-6: K1 P1 for ribbing.
Rows 7-12: K all
Row 13-18: P2, K6, P2 - repeat for the round.
Cable Row 19: P2, K3/K3, P2 - repeat for the round.

Rows 20-25: Repeat for rows 13-18
Row 26:Repeat Cable Row 19
(Repeat the above two until hat approaches the crown of the head and looks like it needs to start decreasing in. I turn the ribbing up, but you can also make the hat with the ribbing flat too.)

For your first decrease row, P2 tog in each of the 6 purl areas. For subsequent rows keep decreasing by P2 tog in the purl areas until all you have left is the knit from the cable areas. Then decrease within that as you wish until you have a small enough number of stitches to gather.

Gather stitches and pull closed, sew the tail thread on the inside of hat to secure it closed. Add a pompon if you wish.

Note that after I started decreasing, I had too few stitches to comfortably use my circular needles so I transferred the stitches evenly to four size 10 double ended needles and continued working with the 5th needle.